DOSE:	3 hits	smoked	DMT
		smoked	Cannabis

BODY WEIGHT:

205 lb

My backyard was prepared for the experience even if I was mentally not. Earlier in the day, I had cut the grass and walked the yard to make sure that everything was tidy. I had spread out my beach blanket in the yard and took my shoes off before sitting down. The blanket is one of those cheap nylon ones that you can pick up at any box store next to the coolers and beach umbrellas. This one was covered in comets and shooting stars with a neon orange background.

I was as organized as I could be for the evening. My girlfriend and our pets were inside the house and no one come outside until I gave the sign. I had a small glass of water that I slowly sipped as I breathed and tried to center myself. I had a bag of small magical objects that I’ve collected throughout the years – a pearl that I crunched on from an oyster that was served at my college graduation dinner, a small stone that traveled with me when I went to take Ibogaine and the beaded bracelet that returned with me from there.

This wasn’t my first trip into the DMT realms and I really can’t count how many times I’ve gone. If I had to guess, I’d say at least fifty times. I say this not to be braggadocious but to show that I should be used to the experience. I’m not. It’s still just as intimidating the fiftieth time as it is the first time. I used to be part of a group of four that regularly met and blasted off from the little porch of their apartment in the French Quarter. At that time, we were such regular users, we used to joke that the little porch doubled as a DMT NASA control center with rockets launching to the inner realms every night. We don’t really talk or see each other any more since at the core we’re radically different people, but at that time we were bound by the call to adventure that DMT brought. Our pinnacle moment was a three-day trip to the beach where we took acid, smoked weed and blasted off at least twenty times each. We were in constant communication with the aliens that weekend but that’s not the story I’m telling.

The story I’m telling is my first venture back into the land of the elves in over five years. It’s the story of me, sitting on my magical comet blanket, working up the courage to light the pipe and travel. For this trip, I had decided to use a bong. I had never used one for DMT before (only bowls and the occasional machine) but I had hopes that the water would mitigate the burning plastic taste. I had sandwiched the DMT between two fine layers of grounded Jock Horror. Small blue bong in one hand, lighter in the other, a clear dark night hovered above me dotted by the few trace outlines of almost clouds. A slight breeze pulled at me and the old oak tree near me bristled with movement. I wasn’t physically; the New England summer night was cool enough that I almost couldn’t be in shorts and a T-shirt. Clear and cool, the mosquitoes had decided it was the perfect Saturday night for a party and hovered through the air in large groups. I had anticipated them and sprayed myself down with a generous coating of bug spray. I hoped that the entities answering the call of the DMT would not share a genetic lineage with the praying mantis or other insects.

It always takes me a long time to prepare for a DMT journey. I’ve seen people who can dump crystals in the bowl, toke and be on their way but that’s never been me. I’ve always had to prod myself closer and closer to launch. I have to calm my roiling mind and gather myself before I go. I think a lot about ‘good’ entities and ‘bad’ entities that I might run into during my travels.

Watching me from the outside, it would quite boring. “Why is he just sitting there?” you might ask. “Hit the pipe and go! Those self-transforming machine elves are waving at you from the beyond.”

My answer to that: you only get one shot at this so you better be mentally ready. Miss toke the pipe and you’re sitting on the sidelines. Cough or exhale too early and you’re on the sidelines. Freeze up in between hits and you’re on the sidelines. It’s better to prepare for your journey.

By now, twenty or thirty minutes had passed. I had the bong to my lips at least ten times, fake drawn on it five times and sipped my water to where nothing was left. I’ll hit the pipe as soon as the breeze dies down I tell myself. When the wind fades to nothing, I haven’t moved. Just a few more minutes. My mind was a chorus of different voices – some of them cajole me to be off, others speak words of caution and worry and some laugh at the humor of the delay. They gabble at each other like chickens in a coup.

When I’m ready, I’m ready. I flicked the lighter a few times and adjusted the flame to medium height. I’ve had grabbed the wrong lighter from inside; it was flimsy and cheap and what you would buy from the checkout counter of a gas station. I’m ready to be off so I don’t consider going inside to find a better one. I had my courage and it was time to go.

Some people consider it too New Agey but I always state an intention before I go. “Help me conquer my fear. Fear of life, fear of financial failure, fear of death, fear of fear.” I flicked the lighter a few more times and hovered the flame near the mouth of the bong. I try to be careful and not draw too hard. I want the flame to caress not kiss the DMT crystals. I inhaled slowly and evenly. Within seconds I can feel the medicine entering my body. I felt a slight shift in consciousness and know that I didn’t get a good full hit. I exhaled and did not see much smoke. I know I don’t have much time and took another long draw on the pipe. This time I inhaled more of the medicine and I forced it deep into my lungs.

I exhaled slowly. I glanced up at the sky and can see a repetition of patterns and distortions across the horizon. I’ve been here before and know that I haven’t taken enough. I won’t break through. I need more and I’m almost out of time. I heard the spiritual conductor of the DMT train shouting at the top of his lungs, “all aboard.” I’m not going to catch a ride if I don’t hurry. Terence McKenna’s nasally voice intones from the beyond, ‘when in doubt, double the dose and always, always take the third hit.”

I flicked the lighter but it won’t light. I shake it up and down and tried flicking it again. Nothing. A few more times and it still won’t light. The flame hopped and jumped but quickly disappeared. My control center, clearly altered, was still trying to issue commands. “Don’t burn yourself; flick it harder, wait for the wind to die down, time is limited, hurry, hurry.”

My body was growing clumsier by the second but it tried to respond. I held the bong to my lips and incessantly flick the lighter. I panic because it looks like the sidelines for me but the flame finally caught and I buried it deep into the head of the bong. I saw the weed catch flame and inhaled deeply. As I inhaled, there was a weird atonal grinding sound that lasted for a few seconds. I reached over and set the bong on the ground, then exhaled strongly. I watched a long projectile streamer of smoke leaving my face. My head was ringing. It’s like someone had setup a large brass gong next to my blanket and started banging it loudly. It signaled the start of the journey.

I consciously leaned backwards and stared at the sky. I didn’t move and didn’t take off. In fact, I didn’t travel at all. Unlike other trips, I wasn’t shot from a canon or blasted on a rocket, instead the dimensions travelled to me. I watched as an alternate dimension fell from the sky and fell on top of me. It approached quickly in full three-dimensional brilliance. I remember seeing the outlines of a face in the middle but I couldn’t describe it. It wasn’t a vision per se but there was a face there. A woman’s voice tried to calm and soothe me.

“Don’t be afraid. It’ll be over soon. Don’t be afraid. Just look. Just watch.”

My ego made one more last gasp effort to assert its presence. “This isn’t right. This shouldn’t be happening. You should open your eyes.” Its voice was like a whisper in my brain and my body after a few seconds reported back that my eyes were open. I closed my eyes. I heard my ego shouting “nooo…” and it disappeared.

I felt it slip away. I felt my body convulse upward. I saw a brief flash of Alex Grey’s ‘Dying’ and then it disappeared. At this point, I was no longer watching the experience with a set of eyes. I was no longer in a body. I didn’t even know what a body was. I wasn’t breathing. I wasn’t human. There was an infinite set of things that I was not. What I was is too broad to describe. I was an experience in the infinite oceans. There were fractals and entities everywhere. I was one of them and did not seem to be out of place. It was so deep and so intricate and things changed so fast that I can’t bring a single image back. I can’t describe what it looks like. Not a single image. I heard the voices of the entities speaking to me. “Look around. Look around.” I, the experience, could do nothing but float in the realm of infinite fractals.

Time disappeared. There was no time. There was not even a concept of time. The beings here didn’t know what time was. As words on paper, read by a sober reader, these concepts won’t hold much meaning. “I’m reading this story in a linear way,” you’ll say. “It’s taken me five minutes to read this. How is it that you can tell me that time has no meaning? That it doesn’t exist? I feel and experience it right now.”

True and point well taken. But I can with just as much sureness tell you that I experienced a world where time was non-existent. There was no time. Whose dimension should be granted ontological authenticity? Should we put it to a vote? I experienced the DMT realms as infinite. I was there forever. By human time, I could have been there years or minutes. By sober human time, it was minutes.

“Did I smoke something?” The question popped up repeatedly through the trip. Each time I thought, “No, I couldn’t have smoked anything. I have always been here.” I felt my ego groping to reestablish control and I briefly popped into my body. “I did smoke something,” I thought, and then disappeared again.

An idea popped in. I’m visiting the death realms. That’s what I’m doing here. I must have died. Did I smoke something? This must be the place where things go when they die. My little human spirit floats like a minnow in such a vast and dark ocean of spiritual life. I watched things float by that reminded me of spiritual whales. These vast ideas that lumbered on to wherever they were going. I couldn’t follow them. Even in their slow lumber, they moved to fast for me.

“I feel weird. Did I just smoke something or have I always been here?” This question kept popping into my mind through the entire trip. I’m pretty sure I didn’t smoke anything so I must always have been here. Wait a minute I did smoke something. I sent myself here. The thought was so vague and foreign that it quickly slipped away. I lost my body and floated away.

I heard the female voice again. “Why do you feel fear? You can do whatever you want and nothing can stop you. Not the people around you, not your circumstances, nothing. You are a being that can do whatever you want. You cannot fail and guess what? If you do fail, if you do die, it doesn’t matter. You’ll just come here and it won’t matter.” Slowly I feel my mind starting to put back together my humanity. I was an I. I do live with people. I do talk to people. I do live a human life. I am a human being.

These thoughts from the ego also alternated with thoughts from the spiritual world. I do live shamanically. I do mediate with the spirits. I do cross into the land of the ancestors (dead human beings). I should never be afraid to stand on my head for four hours and see things. I must do this. I must tell these stories.

With each passing moment, I feel my ego and my spirit slowly start to settle back into my body. I started to do some gentle stretching, my arms and legs lifted into the air so I looked like an overturned beetle. I felt the strength growing in my body. I stood up and went inside. The pets were there to greet me at the door, a dog and two cats. My girlfriend had started making dinner.

“How was it,” she asked.

I traveled the stars, witnessed the truth that we are all infinite beings swimming within an ocean of other infinite beings and have been told that we have nothing and no one to fear. Each of us has the power to transform our world through deep thought, the harnessing of powerful psychedelic ideas and we can transmute the entire world through tiny, little mouth noises. I have visited the death realms and seen that I am called to journey here and mediate with the spirits. Nothing ever truly dies and we, egos aside, continue on forever.

“It’s powerful,” I replied, “and strange.”

“Do you want some corn?” she asked.

“I think I travelled into the death realms. I think I died for ten minutes.” Also, I did want some corn.

“You have that psychedelic look in your eyes,” she said.

We sat down to eat and looked at each other.

“This is the problem when only one person travels,” she said. “It’s hard to have a conversation. It’s a good thing I know you and know where you’ve been.”

She’s right of course.

I consider it psychedelic maturity when you can sit down for dinner after a DMT experience and act somewhat normal. Now granted, if you’re taking or even reading about DMT, you’re probably not quite what society has in mind when speaking of normal, but it doesn’t matter. As long as you’re not flinging off your clothes and running into the street speaking the new gospel that has been handed down from the psychedelic messengers, you’re doing all right. I’m not saying don’t share. I’m saying don’t share when you have a crazy gleam in your eye.

With any psychedelic experience, you have to give yourself time to integrate and process. You need time to mesh what you saw into your worldview and framework. If you did it right, some part of your worldview should have dissolved and some part of your worldview should have expanded. If it’s your first psychedelic experience, Yowsa! Congratulations and well done, but you have a lot of integration to do. This is especially true if you’ve been raised under the banner of the white male, feminine suppressing, ego worshipping, nature destroying, western, scientific, rational modeling dominator culture. The quicker that you kick those ideas to the curb, the closer you’ll be to finding the stone.

If it’s your thirtieth or three-hundredth psychedelic experience, you still need time to deepen the layers of your framework. Don’t be a dominator culture psychonaut where you honor the rush of experience and throw everything else away. This is the path of a spiritual drunkard and drunks don’t typically have the best time at the party. Terence McKenna speaks of psychedelic travelers as fishermen. Every person who goes into these realms is trying to catch some piece of it within their nets. Some ideas are so quick that they dart right through the nets and others are so large that they eat the nets and the boat as well! Our goal is to bring back the medium sized ones. We might have to struggle but if we can get it into our boat, we can consider the day a victory.

And if we fail? Well, the DMT told me that we can’t fail – so let’s work under that aegis.

Exp Year: 2014	ExpID: 104016
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 30
Published: Jun 30, 2020	Views: 995
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DMT (18) : Mystical Experiences (9), Entities / Beings (37), Personal Preparation (45), General (1), Alone (16)