DMT: Sex in Reverse, Entities Gave Me the Finger; Mushrooms: FAIL TEK

Wednesday, April 10, 2019

Substance/Time: 

  DMT - 35 mg. / 7:55 PM

Setting: my living room

Saturday, April 13, 2019

Substance/Time: 

  DMT - 40 mg. / 7:20 PM

Setting: my living room

  Mushrooms - 2 g. / 8:50 PM

Setting: walking around Brooklyn

Age at time of experiences: 44

Weight at time of experiences: 184 lbs.

Companions: solo

While it still makes me very anxious, I’m becoming more comfortable with traveling into the DMT realm. It’s becoming a bit of a ritual for me to smudge the house, gently strike a small gong, and meditate for a few minutes after I’ve set up my gear but I can’t help but laugh at myself while I do this. I’ve never been comfortable with spiritual displays and doing these things, even when I’m alone, makes me feel a bit embarrassed. Still, they help me get into a humble mindset and prepare me for entry into the cathedral of my own mind. I’m learning there is an unfathomable, endless power in there. I’m probably better safe than sorry in treating entering that space as if I’m visiting gods.

Last Wednesday, when I put down the pipe and let out my last hit, the shuddering came over me and I closed my eyes. I immediately slid into the swirling, white, plastic chrysanthemum-like space I’d seen during previous trips. Instead of being overcome with awe like other times, I felt peaceful. Comfortable almost. There was a sensation like hands lightly caressing the length of my body and a chattering of little voices that seemed to say, “...yes yes yes yes yes yes....” I had this idea that I was inside a blinding, annihilating orgasm unhooked from time and stretched to an impossible length. I snuggled into it and felt absorbed into the space, like we were moving together. I felt the entities around me even though I couldn’t see them. I whispered slowly, “I’m learning to be with you,” and sensed they knew and that they wanted me there. My whispering also broke the trance I was in and I opened my eyes. I giggled on the couch as I became aware of myself again and whispered, “I’m talking to myself on my couch.” I saw my cat sleeping on her perch across the room and slowly drifted back into terrestrial space. I texted a couple of friends from the local psychedelic societies whose meetings I attend asking, “You ever feel like DMT is almost like sex but backwards? Like it starts in an apocalyptic, annihilating orgasm and then trails off into the fucking and then the foreplay of whatever life is? ... So strange and beautiful and fleeting and with no describable lesson to bring back to normal life except that it too is strange and beautiful and fleeting.”

I can’t remember now but I might have vaped some cannabis concentrate in the hours before Saturday’s trip. I used to take it for granted that I’d get very stoned every day, several times a day, as a way of being. Lately, I feel much more sensitive to weed and I approach getting high with a much lighter touch. I can’t deal with the paranoid self-criticism that comes with getting completely ripped anymore. Anyway, I’m only mentioning this because if I had been a little high going into, it might explain some of the weirdness of Saturday’s trip (as if they’re not all completely fucking weird).

When I put my pipe down and closed my eyes, the shuddering brought with it elements of a bunch of my previous experiences. Once I was in the space there was a lot of excited high-pitched chattering and the familiar, swirling white space started scrolling past me from left to right. The LEGO-like builder men I’d seen a few trips earlier were smiling and sitting on a pile of blocks made of pieces of my living room. By that I mean it looked like my living room was a solid substance that had been diced into brick-sized pieces and taken apart so it could be the building blocks of another structure. They jumped up and started bouncing around in a funny little dance. The cosmic yogis were there too and it was the first time I’d ever seen them dance outside the dark dome space I’d entered in my earliest experiences. They had a funky dance going on too. The whole lot of them were making faces at me while they danced and at one point they all flipped me the bird, waving their alien middle fingers at me (Do they actually have 5 fingers? I’ve never noticed before). I saw the elf for a second and he did the giggling and pulling at my eyelids thing he seems to always do. These entities all seem to work together and have specific purposes in the space. All the while, this constantly morphing tableau scrolled past in the background. This trip seemed a little shorter than the previous trip but I’m starting to think that might this might just be me acclimating to DMT’s way of dilating time. I certainly don’t feel like I’m gaining a sense of control there but I’m definitely earning some familiarity. I need to make sure I don’t take this familiarity for granted or expect it to stay.

I was feeling very refreshed and centered when I returned from hyperspace. The wether on Saturday was beautiful and I had all the windows open in my apartment. I decided it would be a good night to take some mushrooms and take a long walk around town. I ground up 2 grams and left the power to soak in the juice of a whole lime while I prepped some food for the coming week. While I hard-boiled some eggs and grilled some chicken breast I thought about how delayed the onset of my 11 gram trip was in March. I’d never done a Citrus Tek before and wondered if it would actually speed things up. At 8:50 PM, with my stomach empty, I slugged the lime juice and mushroom matter down in one gulp.

I waited about 40 minutes before I realized how hungry I was so I ate a little salad. I then left the house and went out for a walk. I was experiencing some discomfort in my stomach about an hour after consuming the shrooms but I’d expected that. I’d been listening to Squarepusher’s Just a Souvenir when I left the house. I’d never heard this album before and though it was very odd but occasionally delightful. When that ended I listened to a new album called Excitable, Girl from 96 Back. I enjoyed the wide range of electronic styles - from Cornish acid to Italy disco to Detroit techno to ambient - and it made me feel like the mushrooms might be kicking in soon. But the album started and ended without liftoff ever happening. When I got about 40 blocks from my house I turned around and put on Bassnectar’s Divergent Spectrum. I wondered, “Am I going to get home before these mushrooms hit me? Are they going to hit me at all?!” They never really hit me, at least not much harder than a normal microdose of 0.25 grams would. I now mostly understand why my March macrodose took so long to kick in.

When I harvested the mushrooms I grew over the winter, I did not separate the two strains. I just dehydrated them and threw them all in the same jar. I knew this was sloppy as hell but here we are. The spore syringe of one of the strains must have had very weak genetics. I’m thinking that the first 5-7 grams I ate in March were mostly of the weak strain. Since I didn’t really take note of the appearance of the mushrooms I’d eaten either time, I still don’t know which are the weak ones and which are strong. Lesson learned. In the future, I’m going to keep a journal for my grows and take much better care in labeling my containers. I might just take all the shrooms I have left and grind them all up together so that I have a more homogenous product to use until then.

DMT - Experiments 3 and 4

Sunday, March 31, 2019 - 3:00 AM - 4:00 AM

Substances/doses:

DMT - 3 sessions: 20, 30, 40 mg. approx.

Tuesday, April 2, 2019 - 12:30 AM - 2:00 AM

Substances/doses:

DMT - 2 sessions 40, 50 mg approx.

Cannabis (concentrate) - vaped one toke

Age at time of experience: 45

Weight at time of experience: approx. 184 lbs.

Setting: home

Companions: solo

When I read Internet forums, users of DMT talk about the “work” they do with it. I’m starting to understand what that work is about. Clarifying intentions, developing rituals and ceremonies, practicing skillful routes of administration, and, above all, trying to understand DMT’s ineffable mystery and trying to understand of one’s self within it. I put in some work this week and had some interesting results.

Late Saturday night, after I got off work, I thought about trying a solo launch. I usually trip alone on mushrooms because I am very comfortable with them, even in ridiculously high doses, and I usually find the experience more rewarding than in groups. I’ve had far fewer solo trips on LSD. For some reason - maybe that it’s synthesized not grown, maybe it’s the duration of the trip - LSD scares me more. I figured DMT could go either way. An inexperienced sitter could end up being distracting but having someone around to check on my physical safety and to help integrate the experience afterward never hurts. I figured I’d be ok.

I decided to eat dinner first and set some rice on the stove. For a little bit I considered that I could pretty much have a full trip while the rice was cooking and even weighed out crystals, filled my pipe and filled my torch lighter. I thought better of tripping while cooking and it’s a good thing I did. Ten minutes after putting the rice on the stove it was burning because I didn’t have enough water in the pot. Holy shit. Disaster averted.

I really got fussy about the whole set up to tripping and my pre-flight jitters were strong. I made my bed, straightened up my room and did the dishes. I picked “Consciousness” by Windy & Carl to listen to and, for what it’s worth, I highly recommend it as tripping music. I meditated, smudged my apartment with burning sage, and set a simple but clear intent. Before lighting my torch I did some deep breathing to oxygenate my blood so could hold my hits longer. I really felt like I did everything I could do to respect the work and the spirits of the molecule. All of this was, of course, solid and responsible trip prep. 

However, as far as the actual trips went, I barely made it off the runway with any of my attempts. The first time I just got a little high. I heard the shimmery echo of the come up and felt the vibes of the spice but not much happened in the way of any visual activation or time dilation. I thought, “This is fine. I’ll set myself up for the second round and maybe hitting hyperspace won’t be so shocking.” I did that and, indeed, the second round wasn’t shocking at all. I felt the unique gravity of the hyperspace pulling at me on my bed but, rather than traveling there, it was more like I was on a city bus, looking out the window, and watching hyperspace pass by like a missed stop. There was a physical feeling like a caress from the DMT space and I let out a little, comforted giggle. It was like the entities in there knew I was trying and were trying to reassure me it was all good. My third attempt was as gentle and anti-climactic as the first. I was disappointed and I got a little bit down on myself. I thought my technique must have been shitty or that my scale was misleading me about my dosage. I started thinking about gear I might buy to invest more deeply in this work. I don’t want to keep having failures like this and wasting product. By the time I was down it was around 4:00 AM and I was tired. I stopped with the negative self-talk, put my gear away, and slept well.

In retrospect, it just might not have been the right night for it. I’m learning that there is something fickle about DMT. In my experience with LSD and mushrooms, if you eat the dose you’re taking the ride wether you’re ready or not. With DMT, it seems like you prep all day and wear a mandala covered space suit for the occasion and still never get off the launch pad. People on forums talk about getting “shut out” of hyperspace occasionally and that when it happens, one shouldn’t press the issue.

A couple of nights later, I gave it another go. I prepped in a similar way to Saturday night but wasn’t feeling quite the same nerves. I decided not to listen to music, thinking that maybe it had been a distracting and grounding force the last time. I waited until my roommate got back from the birthday party he’d been at during the evening so I wouldn’t get surprised if he came home while I was in hyperspace. I came out of my room out to greet him and he was cross-eyed drunk and already on his bed with his laptop. I knew he wouldn’t be awake for long. I made some tea and returned to my room.

On my first go I loaded up approximately 40 milligrams. I used the torch lighter I’d used the last time and I noticed it got really hot while I was using it. I managed two hits but decided against the third because I felt like I was going to have to burn my thumb to get it. When I leaned back on my bed and let the hit out, the shimmer came over me and it was strong but gentle. The ceiling lit up with a matrix pattern. I waved my arms around and they left trails of liquid smoke behind them. My hands seemed to have lots of extra fingers. I closed my eyes and rolled over into a pile of pillows.

The silent, sub-hyperspace world behind my eyelids was different from my previous experiences. The visuals were hazier, milkier. Swirling, dappled whooshes of color lazily breezed through my field of vision. I liked how the silence of my room allowed me to really hear the “room sound” of DMT, which I’d describe as a quiet, shadowy reverberation. I saw a woman in the darkness who kind of looked like she was from an art nouveau absinthe advertisement. She was a good distance from me and paid me no mind. She seemed to be pouring water from a pitcher but I couldn’t see what into.

My self-talk during this trip was annoying but valuable. A fractured, kaleidoscopic chatter comprising my own voice, a voice of the spice space, or both was cascading through my mind. “You can’t enjoy this because you’re not present in this moment. You are disappointed because you didn’t get what you wanted. But look at you! You’re SO HIGH! Isn’t THAT what you wanted? I mean you see what’s going on in here, right? Look at this! And this! Isn’t it kind of amazing? And you’re just dogging the whole thing. It’s kinda lame of you. You really need a better attitude about this.” This continued until I landed. As my normal internal narrative was piecing itself back together I felt almost embarrassed.

This string of disappointments was getting to me. I really needed a win. I looked at my pipe and there was a dried puddle of unused DMT in the bulb and saw it as an advantage. I dropped another 40 milligrams on top of it. The inadequacies of the lighter I’d been using were no longer acceptable. The big guns needed to come out. A couple of years prior, I’d bought a big butane torch during a fleeting moment of enthusiasm for dabbing cannabis concentrates. It’s really too big for this kind of job but it has an adjustable flame. It also has an ignition lock on it which I knew might get complicated on the third hit. Nonetheless, I knew it would be hot enough and that I wasn’t going to burn myself while using it.

I sparked the torch and the spice melted quickly. I got my first, milky hit in and felt optimistic. I got the second hit in and I could feel the big rumble coming on. As I’d expected, I had some trouble with the ignition lock on the torch after blowing out the second hit. I managed to get a small third hit in and quickly put the gear down and leaned back on my bed for what I could tell was going to be an intense rush-up.

Immediately, my vision became segmented into tiles and little hands were taking my mind and my vision apart piece by piece. Little voices stuttered in my head saying, “And here. And here. And this goes here. And that goes here. And here and here and like that and like this.” My view of my room was scrambled up like a plastic, sliding 15-puzzle. Then there was a flash of my room looking normal and then like - PFOOM! - it was gone.

My vision was filled with a white, patterned, moving space similar to one I’d experienced during my second round of experimentation. The way in which it was different is that it was much closer and that the matter of the space formed a mass of rounded-tipped tentacles reminiscent of a sea anemone. They filled my entire vision and undulated silently. While this was happening I experienced what I would later realize was my first full psychedelic ego death. Any concept of my personality - my inner narrative, my history, my desires, my sense of time passing - were completely gone. All that existed was right there in the waving arms of this inter-dimensional anemone. For all I could tell, this could have gone on for eternities.

I remembered I had eyes and they were closed. I opened them, saw that I was laying on my bed in my room, and was deeply startled. I gasped, “HOLY SHIT,” and curled up into the fetal position. I’d completely forgotten everything about my life and was shocked that I was still here, that my apartment was still here, that either was anything at all. I felt a chill come over me and pulled my comforter up to my neck as I started sobbing. I was still totally tripping and could still see the tentacles in my eyes but I knew the landing was was coming soon. I rocked back and forth weeping “oh my god” until I was tired. Soon after, I slept.

I have a lot of thoughts about this ego death experience but, for now, I’m going to keep them for myself.