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Atypical Trip
Sleep Deprivation & DMT
Citation:   Nathanial Dread. "Atypical Trip: An Experience with Sleep Deprivation & DMT (exp98857)". Erowid.org. Mar 4, 2018. erowid.org/exp/98857

 
DOSE:
20 mg insufflated DMT (freebase)
BODY WEIGHT: 175 lb
I consider this to be an extremely atypical DMT experience, both in terms of method of administration and my set and setting.
I consider myself still relatively new to psychedelics: I have taken DMT, and low doses of LSD and psilocybin mushrooms. I have also done ketamine, and of course, cannabis. DMT is by far the most intense experience I've ever had on any sort of drug. Part of what we do here is try to learn about the effects of DMT, so I made myself into something of a guinea pig for you all a few weeks ago.

Around the middle of December, I was wrapping up my fall term at college and had a week of finals. Between the stress of finals, the time it took to finish all the projects I had to do and my own, occasionally crippling insomnia I didn't sleep for the last 48 hours of the term, and hadn't been getting much sleep in the week leading up to that. I don't think I'd gotten more then five hours a night for about a week prior. Suffice to say, I was severely sleep deprived.

By the time I was at 40 hours of consciousness, I was in a very obvious altered state of consciousness: I was having dissociative spells, where I would suddenly feel like I was dreaming and none of what I was seeing was real. My speech and thought patters where erratic, and I was having mild sensory hallucinations: I would hear my name being called, or see shadowy moving bodies where there weren't any.

At around 4:00 am, which would be about 40 hours in the hole, I finished my last project, and e-mailed it off to my professor. I felt a rush of euphoria and accomplishment at having beaten an almost insurmountable past, and in my addled state, celebrating with the last of my DMT freebase seemed like a great way to round off the semester. It seemed like a remarkably good idea at the time.
It seemed like a remarkably good idea at the time.


I had no pipe or changa, so I decided just to snort it. (It was maybe 15-20 mg. I didn't have a scale). Making a line and rolling up a bill, I figured the pain couldn't be as bad as all that. I was right. It was worse then all that. I have never felt so severe a pain as that, and while the initial burst subsided, I was left with a dull throb that stayed with me for most of the trip, and the next day.

I may have blacked out from the pain, I'm not sure, but almost instantly I felt things becoming 'weird.' I managed to turn off the lights and make it too my bed before it hit me. The come-up was very strange, not really like a blast-off, but more like being grabbed and squeezed. I entered a severely dissociative state, and when I looked around, I found that I had lost everything in my head. I didn't know where I was, or anything, including my name. I didn't recognize anything: simple things like my desk by moonlight seemed totally alien to me and utterly incomprehensible. For some reason I still knew that I had taken a drug, and that my bed was a safe place, so I tried to snuggle under my covers and get comfortable, despite my aching nose.

Fighting my rising panic, I lay back, closed my eyes and tried to focus on my breathing. I got some muddy CEVs, but not much else.
I got some muddy CEVs, but not much else.
There were no 'classic' visuals. No patters, no breathing, just this inability to recognize or understand anything. This dissociation got more and more severe, until ultimately my mind dissolved and I entered a sort of fugue state: I have no idea how long I floated: I wasn't thinking anything. I would have completely lost everything (ego, identity, form), save for my aching nose. My consciousness was reduced to a red-hot nose, drifting endlessly through space. I could still feel pain, but I was totally removed from it, I didn't care at all. Eventually I must have fallen asleep because I remember being woken by my alarm at 7:00, to catch my nine hour train ride home.

I awoke feeling totally refreshed, like I had had a great nights sleep, despite the fact that in 50 hours, I had gotten maybe only 3 of sleep. Getting from school to the train station was fine, you would never know that just a few hours before I had been almost totally unable to function from exhaustion. On the train ride, I read a lot, worked on some projects, and watched a few Batman movies to pass the time.

I felt totally fine until about hour 8, at which point, I started slipping back into exhaustion, and found that I was getting very striking OEVs. The car of the train seemed to alternately extend down for miles, and then come rushing back up. I closed my eyes, and got a very momentary, crystal clear image of a city at night, seen from above: all the streetlights arranged in patterns, marking out the roads, and lights from houses and moving cars. For some reason I associated this with the afterlife. Once I opened my eyes, the visuals where gone and I spent the rest of the evening dissociated.

It took mental effort to catch a cab to get home, and when I did, I went right to sleep and slept for close to 15 hours, with an hour long break in early morning to make myself some bacon. After resting up, I felt totally fine, and the trip has not haunted me in any way.

The experience was nothing like any other DMT experience I've ever had, or even heard of, and I don't know if it was from the sleep deprivation, the route of administration, bizarre set and setting or any combinations thereof.

I would like to continue experimenting with sleep deprivation and mind-altering substances, although possibly without the added stress of finals, and if I retry this particular expiratory, with DMT salt instead of freebase. This was not a religious or spiritual experience like DMT usually is. This was just surreal.

Exp Year: 2012ExpID: 98857
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: 18
Published: Mar 4, 2018Views: 1,504
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Sleep Deprivation (140), DMT (18) : Multi-Day Experience (13), Combinations (3), Various (28)

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