DMT time dilation: why minutes can feel like ages, and what research actually measured

THE SHORT VERSION · SWIPE

▶ Watch it as a 20-second video

‹›

A few minutes on the clock that felt like years: some version of that description turns up again and again in accounts of DMT. It is one of the most quoted features of the experience, and one of the least studied. This article separates three things that often get blurred: what people report about time, what the clock says, and what timing experiments have measured, most of them with other psychedelics.

What is DMT time dilation?

In everyday writing about DMT, “time dilation” covers at least three different reports: that much more seemed to happen than the clock allowed; that time slowed down or stopped; and that time stopped meaning anything, a sense of being outside past and future. These are descriptions of experience. They say how time felt, not how a person’s internal clock performed, and they are usually written down after the event.

The largest set of written reports shows how varied this is. In a 2022 analysis of 3,778 DMT experiences posted to an online forum, researchers coded each report for themes, including items taken from the Mystical Experience Questionnaire. “Loss of usual sense of time” appeared in 9.6% of reports, a sense of being “outside of” time, beyond past and future, in 4.6%, and an “experience of timelessness” in 4.0%. By contrast, “loss of usual sense of space” appeared in 71.7% (Lawrence et al., 2022). These are unprompted mentions by self-selected posters, so they undercount anything people did not think to write down. Evidence: preliminary.

Interviews give a slightly higher figure. In a 2025 analysis of 36 interviews from a field study of people using DMT in their own homes, researchers coded “time dilation” during the experience in 5 of 36 accounts (14%) and at its onset in 6 of 36 (17%), and “time–space transcendence” in 8 of 36 (22%) (Michael et al., 2025). The participants were experienced users and a researcher was present, so the sample says little about anyone else. Evidence: preliminary.

How long does a DMT experience last by the clock?

Clock time is the part we know well. In Rick Strassman’s 1994 study of intravenous DMT, psychological effects began almost immediately, peaked at 90 to 120 seconds and were almost completely resolved by 30 minutes, tracking blood levels (Strassman et al., 1994). A 2023 Swiss study found the same speed in reverse: when an infusion was stopped, all drug effects rapidly decreased and subsided within 15 minutes (Vogt et al., 2023). Evidence: established.

That gap between minutes on the clock and the “ages” people describe is what makes DMT interesting for time research. It is also why the reports need care. An intense, unfamiliar experience leaves a lot to describe afterwards, and a long description is not the same as a long measured duration. For the full time course in research settings, see how long does DMT last.

What DMT-specific data exist on time?

The 2018 Imperial College study gave 13 volunteers placebo and then intravenous DMT and asked them to complete the Greyson Near-Death Experience Scale, which includes a question on whether time seemed to speed up or slow down. On that item, the DMT group averaged 1.15 out of 2 and a matched group of people who had had near-death experiences averaged 1.54; of all 16 items, only “a border or point of no return” differed at an uncorrected level (Timmermann et al., 2018). A single questionnaire item cannot tell us whether time sped up, slowed down or simply felt strange. Evidence: preliminary.

What do timing experiments with other psychedelics show?

Because DMT itself has not been tested this way, the closest evidence comes from psilocybin and LSD. These are different drugs with much longer effects, so their results are a guide to what psychedelics can do to timing, not a description of DMT.

Psilocybin, 2007: longer intervals go wrong

In a double-blind study, 12 healthy volunteers were tested under placebo and two doses of psilocybin (doses not reproduced here). Psilocybin significantly impaired their ability to reproduce intervals longer than 2.5 seconds and to tap in time with beats more than 2 seconds apart, and it slowed their preferred tapping rate. The timing changes came with working-memory problems and with feelings of unreality about the self and the world (depersonalisation and derealisation), including a disturbed sense of time. The authors concluded that serotonin seems selectively involved in timing intervals longer than about 2 to 3 seconds (Wittmann et al., 2007). Evidence: preliminary, from one small study of psilocybin.

Psilocybin, 2026: time slows, precision drops

A 2026 double-blind, placebo-controlled study of 24 healthy volunteers used a temporal bisection task, in which people judge whether an interval is closer to a short or a long reference. Under psilocybin, participants needed a longer interval before calling it “long”, a shift that matched their reports of subjective time slowing down on two rating scales. Their judgments also became less precise. As in 2007, the effects were significant for durations longer than 2 seconds. The authors argue that psilocybin alters time perception mainly by disrupting working memory and attention (Scholle et al., 2026). Evidence: preliminary.

LSD, 2019: dilation without feeling different

A randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial gave older adults placebo or one of three very low doses of LSD (doses not reproduced here). LSD reliably made people over-reproduce intervals of 2 seconds and longer, in other words their reproductions ran long, even though the doses produced no robust changes in self-reported perception, thinking or concentration (Yanakieva et al., 2019). The authors describe this as temporal dilation of intervals over a second without a noticeably altered state. It suggests that a drug’s effect on timing and a person’s feeling of being altered can come apart. Evidence: preliminary, one trial of LSD.

Two reviews set these studies in context. A 2024 systematic review of 60 studies (10 in humans, 50 in animals) found consistent evidence that serotonin plays a role in timing, with increased serotonergic activation appearing to speed up an internal clock, though some findings did not fit that model (Akhmirov et al., 2024). A 2026 review of 32 placebo-controlled studies of LSD, DMT and psilocybin on cognition noted that many had small samples and that it is hard to find a convincing placebo for drugs with such obvious effects (Kase et al., 2026). The direction of the drug studies is consistent, but each is small and the mechanism is not settled. Evidence: preliminary.

Why might time feel stretched? The leading ideas

None of these explanations has been tested with DMT. Each is a hypothesis drawn from the studies above.

• Working memory and attention. Judging a few seconds means holding the interval in mind. Psilocybin impaired working memory alongside timing in 2007, and the 2026 authors attribute the timing changes to disrupted attention and working memory (Wittmann et al., 2007; Scholle et al., 2026). Hypothesis.
• A faster internal clock. Some animal and human work suggests serotonergic activation speeds an internal accumulator, which would make more “ticks” fit into the same clock time (Akhmirov et al., 2024). Hypothesis, with exceptions in the literature.
• Drug effect versus felt state. The LSD trial found timing shifts without a felt altered state, so the stretch may be partly a direct effect on timing circuits rather than a by-product of an intense experience (Yanakieva et al., 2019). Hypothesis.
• Remembering, not perceiving. DMT reports are written afterwards. A brief experience packed with unfamiliar content may be remembered as long. This is a reasonable interpretation of how retrospective reports work, not a tested DMT finding. Unresolved.

Each idea predicts something different. If working memory is the bottleneck, timing of intervals beyond a few seconds should fail while very short intervals stay accurate, which is the pattern seen with psilocybin. If memory after the event drives the reports, people timed during the experience might judge time normally and still describe it later as endless. Only a study that measures timing during DMT, not afterwards, can tell these apart. Evidence: unresolved.

Is DMT time distortion like near-death time distortion?

Altered time is a classic feature of near-death experiences too; a large study comparing written reports lists timelessness among their typical features (Martial et al., 2019). In the 2018 lab comparison, the DMT group and the near-death group did not differ significantly on the time item (Timmermann et al., 2018). In the 2025 interview comparison, time-related themes appeared in both the DMT accounts and the near-death narratives, though the two sets of codes were not identical (Michael et al., 2025). We look at the overall comparison in DMT and near-death experiences. Evidence: preliminary.

What we still don’t know

• Whether DMT changes timing performance at all; no objective timing task has been run during a DMT experience (unresolved).
• Whether time feels slower, faster or simply absent for most people; unprompted reports and questionnaires give different pictures (unresolved).
• Whether the psilocybin and LSD findings, which concern intervals of a few seconds, say anything about the feeling that “years” passed (unresolved).
• How much of reported time dilation is formed in memory afterwards rather than felt in the moment (unresolved).
• Whether expectation shapes time reports; people may have read that DMT “stretches time” before they try it, and no study has tested this (unresolved).

The fair summary: DMT time dilation is a common way of describing the experience, but it is less common in unprompted reports than its reputation suggests, and it has never been measured as a change in timing. Experiments with psilocybin and LSD show that serotonergic psychedelics can shift how people judge intervals of a few seconds. For the wider picture, see what is DMT, DMT entity encounters and how psilocybin, LSD and DMT differ.

Shroomverse sells mushroom products. This article is general information about DMT and time perception research. It is not medical, legal or purchasing advice, and it does not recommend any product.