DOSE:

3 hits

oral

DMT

(powder / crystals)

BODY WEIGHT:

95 kg

Set: Sitting at on a sofa in an unfamiliar flat with a good friend and a new acquaintance (BEING FILMED). This time we experimented with 3 times as much as I had in first experience, smoked through a pipe. Upping the dosage may have been a little arrogant. As you’ll soon realise, it did ensure, for myself at least, that I ‘broke through’ or more aptly just 'broke'.

From web-based accounts of DMT, McKenna acolytes and any novice psychonauts worth their salt want to talk about elves, the 'self-replicating machine elves' that is. We should avoid this semantic quandary bequeathed to us by McKenna, for whilst it serves its purpose he would be the last person to want us to try and interpret our subjective experience through the lenses of his work or words.

Elves? They could well be children playing with strange devices of celestial calibration, laughing like the Buddha. Deeply inhaling the heavy smoke I laughed out loud, my old friends were back, this time more vivid, incredibly large and spinning and levitating in and around me. The same kaleidoscopic-geometric forms appeared. The carnival theme carried over from my first time, the black and white checkerboard with a memorable harlequin design motif.

Self-replicating? Yes, or embedded in the very fabric of the universe yet eternally creating themselves. Machine-like ? Yes, playful in robotic way (?) but nonetheless sentient.

Then the wheels fell off.

What happened next could well have been the classic problem of set and setting, an unfamiliar house in an unfamiliar part of London with someone I’d just met filming the whole process. Very probably. On the other hand, the next terrifying few minutes could have be part of the dancing space babies ‘initiation’. Fuck knows.

The first thing I remember was a sound followed by a glance down at my torso. Not that I could ‘see’ it as it was or the room at this point, yet my eyes remained open for the whole show (unlike the first time round). A terrifyingly sensual popping, melting, squelching, shitting/pissing feeling. My body felt bursting with completely new energies. McKenna calls this ‘breaking the membrane’ . I’d say it’s akin to something sucking your body off. I felt like a naked child. A loss of cosmic virginity. The feeling wasn’t off being violated, just the stultifying shock at the loss of my internal organs, torso and legs and perhaps more terrifying still, the loss of my ego.

The elves were long gone when the police arrived. And an ambulance crew, a film crew and whole host of people had gathered from across the city to witness my death. He’s taken DMT someone commented, 'we’ve seen this before' they murmured. ‘Oh no, there goes his body’ someone said. Except no one actually said that, nor did I actually visualise any of these people. Rather it was more like my subconscious had gone nuclear, extrapolated the actual albeit unfamiliar (but not alien) setting into some gigantic act of hallucinary ego-centrism.

During this challenging test my wingman had asked me one question, and I’m not sure how I actually heard him.
‘Are you OK mate ?’
‘No’…..I answered quickly. As if to remind me my body was very much alive and present he hugged me and then sat beside me. I looked at his face, the only thing I recognised in this mad, panic-stricken extraterrestrial accident scene that I’d become victim of, trapped inside. Suddenly he became the chief representative of the assembled host.
‘Ride it out mate, you’ll be fine’
His face now red and black, polka-dotted, like a comical, friendly demon. His arm which I was touching was covered thickly in off-white, yellow tinged hair, like a ferret’s. This was immensely comforting for some reason. It was the most mammalian aspect of what was otherwise an alien nightmaretime. After all, I was a mammal, wasn’t I? What did I have in common with the spoiled Children of the Aeon, and all their orb-swirling exhalted haughtiness?

Then my brain finished its absorption of the chemical and I stood, exhaled violently, and attempted to fetch a cigarette. I could see the room again and its occupants and I could speak. My vision seemed to have been artificially enhanced, as if someone had upgraded my eyes whilst my body had been dismantled. Vibrant, brilliant colours streamed out of the most mundane of objects, everything had a vague holographic effect around it, the walls swayed in and out enlarging themselves. I was convinced all the furniture had been rearranged, and that the room itself was twice the size. For a second I felt as if I was going to be permanently left with this gift of ultra-vivid sight. As if my eyes were able to bend and refract light at will. This gave me the sense that everything, down to the ash in the ashtray, had been reformed or rebuilt rapidly by crazed psychedelic nanobots after its initial destruction. They rebuilt it along the same lines but with a dose of cartoonish and video-game Technicolor shininess and vividness. This was my nu-world. I held out my packet of Camels, which appeared comically large, jumped up in the air at the unrivalled joy of remembering where I was, who I was, and what had just happened.

Just as before this trip was so unfathomably removed from mundane consciousness that words wash off it. There are no reference points. Perhaps this remains DMT biggest disadavantage. With LSD and Ketamine there seems to be a clear process of dismantling and rebuilding one's self-identity , and of interaction with our own minds and thought-patterns. This can of course be incredibly useful for personal development and can have some lasting effect in reality. In contrast, DMT presented entities, other minds and intelligences superior to my own, yet conscious and observing my thoughts. There was no mental breakdown and recovery, or if there is it occurs in seconds. A passive, relaxed mind allows the experience to wash over me, without imposing myself on it. Since it is so unlike normal reality it was, and still is, difficult for me to bring any of the trip back to daily life.

To conclude, this wasn’t quite etheogenic maturity – or entry into the club which boasts the heavens and cosmic beings as its members. That is yet to come.

If we are all, in these potentially dangerous and damaging psychedelic pursuits, aspiring shaman then I believe true appreciation or even some notion of understanding of the entheogens must come over time, and with some form of training. DMT offers a form of shortcut that might not be for everyone. As my first near-death experience, my first intense ‘flash’ in the divine pan, it will stay with me for the rest of my days. It will remain a significant glimpse into what the Rigveda refers to as 'that deathless, undecaying world wherein the light of heaven is set, and everlasting lustre shines.... that realm where happiness and transports, where joy and felicities combine...'.

Exp Year: 2009	ExpID: 88380
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 26
Published: Apr 4, 2011	Views: 28,313
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DMT (18) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Entities / Beings (37), Glowing Experiences (4)