DOSE: T+ 0:00	1 cap	oral	Ayahuasca	(tea)
T+ 24:00	2 caps	oral	Ayahuasca	(tea)
T+ 0:00	3 hits	smoked	DMT	(plant material)

BODY WEIGHT:

250 lb

I took ayahuasca and DMT with a group of people for the first time. We took it twice in two days. It was my first time taking it. My prior psychedelic experience was that I’ve taken mushrooms several times (up to 3.5 grams) and San Pedro cactus once.

I’ll skip most of the details about the other spiritual and ritual things that happened that weekend. It’s not that it wasn’t important – it was very important, and I met some really wonderful people. It’s just that I know people reading experience reports are usually looking for specific information about effects (at least I am – I skim down all the narrative until I get to the part where they take the substance). My general mindset was that I was eager to take it, but slightly apprehensive. I had followed dietary recommendations (no meat, no SSRIs, no stimulants, no processed foods for one week) very closely except that one day before I had a cup of coffee.

We took it twice across two nights. On the first night, we all took the MAOI inhibitor then waited for an hour. It has no effect on its own, it just stops the enzymes that would normally break down the DMT in the ayahuasca. We took the ayahuasca after that. The shaman split it into doses which were about the size of a soda bottle cap. Since it was my first time, and given my sex and weight, she recommended two doses to me for a start. I said I’d prefer one to start and take more later if I feel I can handle it. She gave it to me and I drank it slowly. It tasted a little like paint (like the way paint smells). It wasn’t nearly as bad as everyone says, but I don’t think I’m going to start putting it on my pancakes in the morning either.

First I heard a buzz, almost right away. At least one other person in the group reported this too. It was weird. It was like a steady buzzing sound through the entire trip. I thought at first it was a drone or lawnmower outside and I didn’t know I was hallucinating, I didn’t pay attention to it and didn’t realize it was an effect of the ayahuasca until like an hour in, when I noticed it got intense every time I moved my head and almost silenced if I stayed still. That was when I realized it was coming from within me and was not a real sound.

After taking it, I laid down in the dark and waited for something to happen. A few minutes went by. I felt “weird”. My sense of where my limbs were got confused. My skin felt like maybe it would rather be somewhere else. It was mildly unpleasant but not awful.

Next I saw an image (almost a shadow) of a panther, from above, on an orange background. I only saw it for a moment. After that, I saw faces of Native South American men coming out the darkness making scary faces like they were trying to frighten me. Then they looked at me with pleading, desperate eyes. I felt like they were sorcerers.

I could see the flicker from the candle light with my eyes closed and I wanted to see blackness so I covered my eyes. I saw blackness alright, like a complete void, blacker than black, and it kept getting blacker whenever I had my hands covering my eyes.

I started to get hot. My face started to sweat and pretty soon my forehead was drenched in sweat. I started to wish I hadn’t taken it. I usually have a stomach of steel, but I began to feel like I might throw up. We were given bowls for that purpose, so I got ready, but it never happened. That period lasted a minute or two, then I laid down and felt better. I no longer regretted taking it, but felt like one dose was enough for now. Other people barfed. I heard crying and retching all around me.

After that it was kind of like mental channel surfing for a while. I would see a little vignette playing out, then another, and it just went on and on like that. Some of what I saw related to my family members, particularly around the possibility that they might die and I’ll miss them. I also saw myself as a child and me as my parents, and how odd it must have been to have me living with them when they were basically still kids themselves (they were young parents). I saw my ex wife, mentally ill and in anguish, needing my help, and having to abandon her because she was just a black hole sucking me down into her despair.

(trigger warning for this paragraph) I also saw images of graphic cruelty. Like war crimes, soldiers sexually assaulting people in humiliating ways. I saw an old man, like a Mr. Rogers type, befriending a young child who had no friends, then suddenly chopping off the child’s hand and spitting in his face, just to make him have to live his life one handed. I saw other things worse than that which I don’t even want to describe. The overall feeling was of the amount of hate and cruelty operating in the world. I was oddly detached when seeing all this horrible stuff. It bothered me much less than the images of my family members dying. I also saw images of people using machinery to clear forests, which is not “cruel” exactly but seemed to fit into this group of images.

I saw pop culture images, like Humphrey Bogart holding a picture of an old woman and saying “this is the woman who almost killed Adolph Hitler!” accompanied by a laugh track, then it switch to Star Trek and Worf was taking ayahuasca. Lots of weird, random stuff like that.

At one point I decided I actually would take a second dose, but as I sat up I found that I was very unsteady. I couldn’t walk over to ask for one. I also felt very bad muscle pain in my leg and hip and thought I might get a cramp. I decided one actually was enough for the first time.

The shaman was a comforting presence. She came around checking on people and burning sage and other herbs I didn’t recognize. I always felt a wave of safety when she came by. Even when she wasn’t nearby, I saw many images of her in my mind. I felt so much gratitude for her.

After a while, the ceremony was over and we all got together and debriefed. I felt like the trip was pretty much over, but as I started to walk I could see it wasn’t quite. I felt weak and still unsteady, the candle flame seemed to be dancing to the music, and with every saccade of my eyes, streaks of lights appears in front of me. When I spoke to everyone about my experience I felt disconnected from my words, like they were just coming out of me without my help. One thing I learned from the debriefing from other people was that dosage seemed to be irrelevant. One person took half a dose and had a very difficult experience. One person took 7 and just seemed to feel kind of high. Some people had few mental effects, but just felt physical pain. A lot of people talked about confronting past trauma and finding meaning. For me, it was a profound experience, but I come more from a place of existentialism where I want to get comfortable with meaninglessness, rather than search for ultimate meaning. There was an eclectic mix of people there and not what I would expect, from soccer moms to former opiate addicts, a married couple, an actor. I thought I would be the oldest person there but most of us were middle aged.

The next night was very different. I took one dose and waited. I felt like it was starting to happen, but I never got off the ground. When I stood up I realized I was feeling nothing, I went and took a second dose. Same thing – it seemed like it was beginning but I never got there. I figured I didn’t want to test my luck, and I’ll have another chance to do this another time, so I just went into the back room to hang out with people there. That’s when it got really weird.

Someone had a substance, some kind of plant based smoking substrate they made themselves that had pure DMT mixed in with it, which they were offering people to smoke. I took a hit and nothing happened. I took another and nothing happened. I took a third, then got that same weird-skin feeling I had the first night with ayahuasca. I laid down and saw things that I have no idea how to describe. It was like fractal patterns, but also architecture, palaces, crystals, endless multidimensional gears turning together, flashing spinning lights, zombies. I tried to put it into words so I could write it down later and I realized I wouldn’t be able to because it was just so intricate and weird. I just thought “what the fuck am I even looking at?” At the same time, my sense of space changed. I felt like the room was much bigger than it was, that I was in the engine room of the Enterprise on Star Trek, that there were various people in the room who weren’t there. The only way I can describe this is if you are familiar with Plato’s allegory of the cave, imagine you are one of the prisoners and you turn around just for a few seconds to look outside the cave. You see “things” but you don’t have names for them and you aren’t looking long enough to learn how to see it. All I could say about it was “wow”.

This is just my own subjective experience, and I hope you read others’ experiences to get a fuller sense of what it could be like for you. When I left, what I took home besides the memory was three intentions. One, I want to share it with the world, and I had specific people in mind I feel like I have to tell about this so they can experience it. Two, I thought of the possibility that my children could die at any minute and I thought of times I didn’t have time for them and it made me resolve to be a more involved parent. Three, I write books sometimes and ended up with a burst of creativity at the end of the two days, getting unstuck on various plot points in my books I was trying to think through.

Exp Year: 2022	ExpID: 116276
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 44
Published: Apr 23, 2022	Views: 631
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