John Chavez is the founder of DMT Quest, a non-profit organization created to solve the chronic funding gap in endogenous N,N-dimethyltryptamine research. Drawing on five years as an independent investigator and the authorship of Questions for the Lion Tamer (Vols. I & II), he has built a transparent “pass-through” philanthropy model to fund laboratory teams studying how, when and why the human brain may synthesize DMT.

John’s scientific focus intersects directly with out-of-body experiences (OBEs). Psychedelic and pharmacological studies with exogenous DMT have consistently elicits core OBE phenomenology with vivid extracorporeal perspective and a persuasive sense of leaving the physical body, suggesting that either a natural DMT surge could be one biological trigger for spontaneous OBEs or may be triggered by them. By underwriting neuroimaging, endocrine profiling, and rigorous first-person reporting protocols, John is interested to demystify such perceptions, converting them from anecdote to measurable biology and, in his words, “create a new conversation about what we think we know about this world and our places in it".