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.
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