DOSE:	1 hit	oral	LSD	(blotter / tab)
	2 hits	smoked	DMT	(powder / crystals)

BODY WEIGHT:

120 lb

A Divine Moment of Truth

Background: This report documents my first experience smoking DMT. I am male, at the time of this experience 22 years old and weighing around 120 pounds. I take no prescription or over-the-counter medications, but use marijuana and yerba mate on a daily basis. I have experienced breakthrough doses of Salvia divinorum and 5-MeO-DMT, as well as experimenting with ayahuasca-type brews, so I had some good preparation for the territory I was about to enter. I have also done extensive research and reading into the DMT experience, so I knew roughly what to expect. Other commonly available psychedelics I was familiar with at this time include mushrooms, hawaiian baby woodrose, 2C-I, Trichocereus cacti, MDMA and LSD.

Setting: This experience took place in August 2007 at a large (around 12,000 people) electronic music festival. It was late afternoon, and we were up in the woods away from the noise and chaos of the party. The forest was primarily red cedar and alder, and scattered around us were the burnt-out stumps of some ancient forest giants. The last light of the sun glinted golden through the tree tops.

Mindset: I had spent the previous four days ecstatically dancing, smoking tons of pot, hanging out with friends and tripping on a variety of substances. On Wednesday night I had done mushrooms, on Thursday night a lot more mushrooms. Friday I moved on to 2C-I and nitrous oxide during the day, rounded out with a small dose of MDMA in the evening. Saturday we had an amazing group trip with peruvian torch cactus and high doses of MDMA. Sunday I was generally in a very blissed-out state, feeling good in mind and body although a bit worn out after four nights of partying. I was definitely still on after glow of the cactus and MDMA, when I took a hit of blotter acid. That was several hours before smoking the DMT, but I was still feeling some mild effects of the acid when I smoked the DMT. I was in a very open state of mind, enthusiastic about life and ready for whatever came my way.

The experience: There were four of us who partook of DMT, myself, my friend Dean, his friend Stan and Stan’s girlfriend. It was Stan’s first time doing DMT, but like me he is well read on the subject. Dean has plenty of experience with synthetic DMT, but when he showed me the slightly red crystals and when I opened the capsule and smelled it I knew immediately what we were dealing with. Jungle DMT. Pure alkaloid extract of Mimosa hostilis root bark. I was excited and envious of Stan’s chance to try this drug, as I have also never smoked DMT, just used it in ayahuaca brews. It looked like there was maybe 100 to 120 milligrams in the capsule of DMT, Dean said the guy who got it for him said it was two strong doses worth. We found Stan a comfortable spot on the ground with a pillow to lie back on, and his girlfriend sat close by to observe.

Dean loaded about half the crystals into a little freebase tube, and started heating it. The crystals bubbled, melted, beginning to vaporize. Long and slow Stan breathed in. It hits him. “I feel like I’m on a roller coaster ride” he giggles after a moment, eyes bulging.

“Give him more,” I say, “if he’s still capable of talking he hasn’t had enough yet.” So Dean loads the rest of the crystals into the pipe. This time the smoke billows thicker, Stan gets a very large toke. Holding it in he falls backwards on the pillow. His eyes shut and he begins to breathe with huge, deep, slow breaths, in and out. I can see his chest rising and falling, his heart beating visibly. His hands dig into the tarp underneath him as if trying to root into the ground, and an expression of rapture sits on his face as if he’s on the brink of orgasm. A minute passes, another, then another…

“He’s still in it!” says Dean in a low voice, surprised.

Soon after Stan comes out of the trance, saying “Wow!” and jumps up, running around and positively glowing with energy. “That was so amazing!”

“Do you want to try some?” Dean asks me, as he stares down at the tube. There is a huge puddle of the melted DMT in the middle of the glass, Stan did not get anywhere near vaporizing it all.

“Yes, I do want to try some!” I say fervently. I sit myself comfortably cross-legged and start heating the pipe. It bubbles and melts. I take a hit, but it’s not a really thick one. Holding the smoke in, I feel directed to put both my hands and head straight down on the earth, as I sit in half-lotus position. I ground all the energy out, into the earth. After just seconds, I know that I did not get enough to break through.

I come back up and ask Dean if there is more in the pipe. There is more, so Dean heats the pipe for me, and I don’t start inhaling till it is bubbling furiously. Long, slow, deep breath in. A good solid hit this time. I feel the DMT come on, it’s a more beautiful and smooth transition than either Salvia or 5-MeO-DMT. I stay sitting with legs crossed, not completely loosing contact with my ego and body. My head droops down as all my muscles relax.

As I breathe in, I feel and see fractal patterns spreading and expanding outwards from my core. As I breathe out, the fractal patterns spread inwards towards my core. I hear Dean and Stan say something in the background, their voices come through clear and undistorted and there is a little part of my mind still processing all this, but it’s disconnected from me, disconnected from what I am feeling and being a part of now. I am involved in the internal experience.

Then I am beginning to come out of the trance. I open my eyes and the DMT directs me to lean backwards, my hands on the ground behind me and back arched with chest skyward, facing directly up into the trees. This is a power position, I did not mean to position myself this way but I just somehow moved into this stretch without thinking about it. I felt the energy coursing through my body with the muscular exertion. It would be difficult for me to get into this position while sober, let alone hold it the way I was doing! But under the influence of DMT, it was very natural and easy to move into this body position, and I did not feel the strain of holding it.

I stayed still, trembling slightly, gazing up at the trunks and leaves of the trees. There was a beautiful kaleidoscopic pattern, the leaves and branches formed fractal patterns that constantly shifted, changed, rearranged. I was seeing nothing but pure energy, pure light, as I merged into the forest consciousness. When I let myself down from my arched-back pose, I saw the earth, it was so full of life and love! I rubbed my hands in the dirt, turned them back up, and felt incredible energy pulsing out of the dirt on my hands. The earth was alive, Gaia, Pachamama, Mother Earth, whatever you want to call it. I felt her love and richness in a way I’ve never felt before. I reflected that we think of earth as “dirty” but really it is clean and beautiful, and full of life force.

As I was doing this, Dean was taking a couple hits off the pipe too, as there was still lots of resin in it. As soon as it hit him, he moved off the log he was sitting on, straight onto the ground. Without any spoken words or conscious direction, all four of us arranged ourselves in a square on the ground, holding hands, eyes closed, meditating, sharing the energy. We all merged together and fused with the forest around us. When Dean came down a bit and we all eventually stopped meditating, I asked Stan’s girlfriend if she had felt it, if she had come with us on the trip when we all held hands. She said she had definitely felt a strong effect, felt the energy flowing through all of us, and down into the earth, and up into the sky. A reciprocal ebb and flow, a web of interconnectedness.

Dean said he had been looking at this piece of bark on the ground and saw fairies in it, and that everything had then vibrated apart into pieces. He also described this incredible audio trip he had, where beings were singing to him in a very high pitched, high frequency vibrations. The sounds he made trying to demonstrate reminded me of the “voice in the head” phenomena of high dose mushrooms, and also of some icaros which are learned by shamans under the influence of ayahuasca. I told Dean that this song was a very powerful gift, that they could be used for healing himself and others, and that in the future he may be able to remember and bring back to reality these songs, these healing vibrations.

So three of us had these amazing experiences, and there was still resin in the pipe, so of course Stan’s girlfriend wanted to have a go. This is where things get weird. We give her one toke at first. She inhales, holds it, a little twitch of sadness in her face and then she says to us “nothing’s happening.”

“What do you mean, nothing’s happening?” we query, and give her a second toke, much larger, in fact larger than any of us had taken so far.

“Nothing’s happening” she says again, and then breaks down and starts crying. She really and truly did not get any psychedelic effects at all. The pipe is exhausted now. Why did this happen?

Well, after a while discussing it becomes clear that something did indeed happen. As the drug tried to take effect, she was resisting it somehow. It manifested the only way it could, as repressed emotion. The DMT tried to release something within her but she clamped back down on it hard. Partially I blame us for not preparing her properly. Stan and I both knew exactly what we were getting ourselves into, and Dean has done plenty of DMT in the past. She was the only one of us who didn’t quite know what to expect. She told us after that she had not been sure if she was ready for DMT, and had even decided to wait till next year to try it. Seeing the three of us have these amazing trips changed her mind, but I don’t think we did enough to make sure she was truly ready, taking extra special care to prepare her set and setting for a good experience, to just let go and flow with the feeling.

I found it very strange that she could journey with us through meditation but not let go herself when going under the influence of the drug. Since this experience, I have learned that with DMT, if I resist the effects then the tendency is to simply bounce off the edges of the trance state. Also it has been suggested to me, since DMT vaporizes at such a low temperature, that the three of us had already exhausted it. Although there was smoke coming out of the pipe, she may have been smoking nothing more than plant oils and resins, with little or no DMT in it.

After smoking the DMT I was in a very pleasant afterglow. I was of course still somewhat high on acid when I smoked the DMT in the first place, and that combined with the residuals of the DMT and a few bowls of bubble hash we smoked was a very interesting state of mind. I had this band around my head, a slight pressure as if I was wearing a ballcap, where the DMT had blown my third eye wide open. This slight feeling of pressure round the head, of tingling and seeming to sense information coming through my third eye, faded slowly over the next several days. It would come back at odd moments in time though, I felt this a very long-lived and positive after effect of the DMT. Maybe it was for this experience that I had drawn the runestone “breakthrough” the day before, because breakthrough I certainly had!

I went back to Camp Love eventually, because twice already I had felt their thoughts touch me, felt that they were calling me back. Dean was becoming bummed out again, obsessing about how his girlfriend was mistreating him and fucking with his emotions. I couldn’t do much for him but tell him to live for the moment, for the here and now, because that is what festivals like this are all about. I thanked him for introducing me to DMT, and he said he had this funny feeling it would be him who introduced me to it.

He also said that he had never had trips like that before from synthetic DMT, that this was a one-off for him. He just marvelled at this song he had been sung, at the way we had been directed into meditation, the whole spiritual nature to the trip. Jungle DMT, man, jungle DMT. There’s something in that Mimosa bark, some kind of spirit or presence, some other active ingredient, that makes a powerful difference in the quality of the trip.

Sure enough when I arrived back at Camp Love, they had been trying to manifest me as they were just finishing preparing dinner. “Oh, you’re just in time!” says Star, “Actually you’re a little late, you just missed some liquid acid. What have you been doing?”

I look at him with a newfound gleam in my eye and say “DMT.” I tell him of my trip, of the feeling of nothing but light and energy, the spirit of the forest, the kaleidoscopic leaves and branches. As long as I live, I will never forget this trip. If I never do DMT again in my life, this one trip is enough to know that I’ve been there. It was so beautiful I can’t truly do the experience justice with words.

Exp Year: 2007	ExpID: 83785
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 22
Published: May 21, 2010	Views: 12,021
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