DOSE:

vaporized

Toad Venom

(dried)

BODY WEIGHT:

87 kg

In 2022, I took 5meoDMT for the first time, in a group ceremony in a yoga studio erected in a suburban back garden, in a small UK town. This was to be the culmination of seven years of infant abandonment trauma healing, which began in 2013 with the Hoffman Process, Osho Path of Love in 2015 (both intensive seven-day residential personal change retreats) and graduated to “meet God and fly around the universe” doses of magic truffles in Amsterdam, ego death and infant screaming amounts of Ayahuasca, many Kambo dots, and at least ten San Pedro cactus ceremonies. All supported by acupuncture, psychotherapy, yoga, theta healing, intuitive touch healing, Active Release Technique, structural integration, Nei Kung, ayurvedic herb preparations, and 25ml of magic mushroom tincture drops and CBD oil. Chuck in some reiki and past life regression to round out the picture of a man trying everything once.

On the way, I’d already learned how to feel my emotions safely, and saw myself opening a small tin box of child abuse whilst on a solo mushroom trip. Blackness wooshed out.

In 2022, my main therapies were nei kung, ayurvedic herbs, and acupuncture. The herbs set my kidneys on fire (energetically), and by the time I arrived at the ceremony two months into their course, I was deep in process. There was a mattress in the middle of the ceremony space, shamanic patterned throws, a toad-themed altar, and eight 5meoDMT newbies, including the sorts of serious hippies who lived in vans during winter. Add two large gongs on stands, and enough musical bits and pieces for a full gong-bath.

The source was actual toad, rather than synthetic, and administered in single use glass globes with straight funnels. The facilitators were dedicated professionals with vast psychedelic experience. One had worked as a clinical psychotherapist, including in secure units and prisons. Her trauma-awareness was off the scale.

Having watched seven other people go through their experiences, and channel everything from rage to past life murder to bliss and connection, I thought I was prepared. This was especially the case since I had savings, no job to go back to, a loving girlfriend, and a safe and tidy flat.

I inhaled the grey smoke (no idea of dosage), saw some coruscating grey smoke writing arranged geometrically as a ring around my field of vision, faded to black, and woke up to disaster. My trip had been hijacked by occultist heroin addicts in Bristol, who had been meddling with stuff way beyond their paygrade, and I was the one dying on my arse for their failures. I tried to take charge of my experience, receiving wormhole after wormhole of downloads on what to do, and who to tell to contact who, and watched as this information forced people who hadn’t spoken to each other in years to interact. I shouted alternately, “Guys, there are monsters” and “Oh my God the Bristol scene is toxic”. Soon, I was abandoned, paramedics pumping my system with tranquilisers to reduce my hysterically high heart rate. I was dying. Here was a thing I couldn’t think my way out of, anticipate. I saw my body black with the dust of karma, some metallic threads beneath almost completely invisible. The paramedic on my right winked, I heard the low hum of an Indian mantra, and I relaxed and accepted, with resignation. My entire miserable junkie experience flashed before my eyes, and I realised that there could not have been any other way, that this was what there was, and that was it. [To be clear, there was no actual paramedics involved, this was all happening within the trip.]

I woke again, as I was being reborn. The genuine, first point of view experience of being an infant in the birth canal. Alarm. Legs kicking furiously as golden energy coursed down my central channel and along my inner leg lines. Breath. Confusion. Touch. The facilitators there, with a gentle hand in just the right place, a touch here, a brush there. Music. Gradual stabilisation of my hammering heart.

I’d never been a junkie. Not in this life. I worked in support functions in financial services, and had a typical striving upper middle-class lifestyle (ballet, opera, London member’s clubs, white tie functions, black tie functions, reeling, blah). I’d never dabbled with Crowleyian occultism, nor did I know any of the people whose character and failings and names I’d so confidently experienced. What I’d had was a system overload so huge, that I accepted my death, and as soon as I did, I received rebirth.

About a week later, I had a huge Kundalini awakening. Like sitting on an erupting volcano in the middle of a hurricane. Waves of heat and cold, pins and needles, a general sense that things had gone very badly wrong. I got in touch with my acupuncturist that day. His standard needles bounced off my skin. Within half an hour, a larger needle through the top of my head, two on the inside of my knees, and not much else, had brought the energy down. Apparently my heart chakra had been glowing like a ruby laser. I got home, spent a night not sleeping, piercing the tips of my ears with a body piercing needle until the blood flowed down my face (this released the internal pressure of the energy), and went for a walk at 4am, during which I visualised cradling my infant self to my heart.

I bought incense, and set up an altar the next day. I also spoke with one of the facilitators, and as I did, waves of pure panic surged through my body. This was pre-verbal, pre-ego terror, that of a baby left alone with no one to help him regulate his nervous system, no knowledge that anyone would ever come back. It had blocked me from my life force for 40 years.

I thought I’d fucked up completely, and set myself up for a life in a mental institution. I didn’t sleep with the light off for a week. Simple EMDR exercises (crossing hands in front of me like an Egyptian mummy, tapping one shoulder, tapping the other), helped manage the terror surges, which eventually subsided. Then the kundalini came back, each night. Nuclear-blast sized orgasms promising total oblivion if I just accepted them. I’m certain I was presented with opportunities for enlightenment. I was simply not brave enough to accept the annihilation that came with them.

A month after the ceremony, and numerous increases in sensual sensitivity later, I’m back to a better normal. Not enlightened, but happier, more content. Delighted to spend time with my young children. Flavours are more intense, felt responses more immediate. My legs feel solidly planted on the ground. I’m finding new energetic and physical depths in nei kung and yoga. Just the other day, I felt a heart pulse in the middle of my liver (indicating, I am told, a readiness to process deeply held anger there).
I had a childhood which culminated in a Crown Court order restraining my mother from ever contacting me again, on pain of imprisonment. I was neglected in every way imaginable. Food, living space, attachment, all of it a battlefield. Permanent criticism and mocking. Blame, shame and judgment for impacting her life outcomes. She made death threats against my wife, tried to get me fired from my favourite job, and was howlingly mad. All this and more happened. But the strong and attractive personality I built as a defence has now been recalibrated to let more life through.

There were monsters. There were also great therapists, shamen, lovers and friends. The pain in my upper back and neck? I had a man on each arm, and exhibited freakish strength as I struggled during my trip.

Be very, very careful with 5meoDMT if you have any indication that you had pre-verbal trauma to complex PTSD level. I’d advise against taking it alone, and without very experienced (and physically and mentally strong) facilitators.

Exp Year: 2022	ExpID: 116209
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 42
Published: Apr 7, 2022	Views: 1,215
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Toad Venom (46) : Group Ceremony (21), Therapeutic Intent or Outcome (49), Hangover / Days After (46), Difficult Experiences (5), First Times (2)