DOSE:
smoked
DMT
(freebase)
BODY WEIGHT:
70 kg
About two months ago I obtained two grams of DMT. I was elated, after several years of searching for it. I had really wanted it in the first place but had settled for various other dialkyl tryptamines over the past 3 years which had brought me a wealth of interesting and amazing experiences. I tried a couple of moderately succesful yage journeys which had shown me the potentials of the mindspaces available through DMT. But I have been perhaps a little cowardly about inflicting the physical effects of Yage on myself again, though I longed to visit the mental territory again.
The package arrived one sunny April morning when I had a day off. I loaded a joint with a small dose of the white freebase powder and sparked it. An immediate warm buzzing around my neck and shoulders followed the bite of the harsh smoke on my lungs, and my vision gently morphed with fine horizontal seams like a venetian blind, each band tinting reality either red green or blue in alternating order. Intuitively I felt a sense of potential power, and significance although as the experience quickly dissipated I was strongly aware of the taste of plastic and protests of my long suffering lungs.
Five minutes or so afterwards an old friend from whom I had not heard for years phoned out of the blue to say they were moving abroad. I had heard talk about synchronicities on chatboards etc before but I tend to the skeptic side on such matters. In my thoughts about why I have an interest in the matter of psychedelics, I take the view that you have to seperate clearly in your mind the normal workaday life of a 21st century westerner, and the dreamworld that psychedelics can reveal. I don't believe in ghosts and ufo's etc during normal life. I remain a little wary of those believers with a glint in their eye who abandon their lives completely to the pursuit of one conspiracy or another. But when I am under the influence of psychedelic drug, at a sufficient dose, the dream state I occupy appears to have certain rules and parameters which are different to those of the lucid state. Whether or not the word 'real' can be used in reference to a state where these different parameters apply is a moot point. When I am in such a state I may as well interact with it, if only in the interest of knowledge or novelty.
In the afternoon I bought a glass pipe with a little side hole and some vials from the local head shop. With this new equipment I determined to explore further. I put some dry tobacco in the body of the pipe along with some spice and held it over a candle to heat the pipe. I made several attempts like this with varying successes. I often complicated the lift off by worrying about the safety of the candle flame. I found music distracting. A singer's voice would be morphed into a metalic jabbering.
These first journeys were brief and hard to integrate. The rapidity of the visions was such that only the general tenor of the content was discernable. It seemed to have a sinister tone, consisting of images such as playing cards flashing by, skulls, military hardware, screws. At one point a vicious gun turret on the back of a plane with jutting machine barrels. Just a quick image frame amongst many. The almost instant passing of this phase was followed by a warm womb-like phase where I did not have any technicolour realist visions, just the warm reds of the bright ceiling light through my closed eyelids, across which seam-like waves folded and divided. I had experienced an almost identical state as this latter phase using 4 AcO-DMT and felt very comfortable. In this subjective state I often feel like I am in the presence of a benevolent God, to whom I feel it is only right to thank for all the good things in life, and to send out good wishes to all my loved ones. I then feel a little guilty and send out good wishes to all the people I don't love. Finally I feel very virtuous all round.
When back in the sober state my skeptic brain has a good laugh at these religious epiphanies. This is what I like about psychedelics. They let me experiment with possibilities which in the real world are not possibilities. For example the question 'What might it be like to burst a sack full of dimensions on your head?' is a subject of metaphysical speculation. But under the influence, and you might be lucky enough to participate in some kind of encounter where this actually appears to take place.
I often found myself swaying gently with my arms folded and a warm smile over my face. Almost bowing to the universe in satisfied bliss. I took one hit in the kitchen at the back of my house overlooking our back garden which has many pleasant trees, some still in blossom. The good sunshine that evening gave the foliage a translucent light. In the kitchen I heated the pipe over the gas hob. The disadvantage of my method seemed to be that it led to quite some wastage. I needed to cover the side hole on the pipe to achieve a stronger negative pressure which results in a more effective vapourisation. However the pipe was hot to touch and so again I was approaching the jump with a cluttered mindstate. I managed two tokes, holding the last in, but not convinced of its adequacy. I kept my eyes open holding steady on the kitchen units while seated on a tall stool. The surge began and I watched the kitchen units dancing before my eyes, sliding along left to right in outline form, neon coloured reds blues and greens. I looked at the cooker whose control surface would duplicate along all the units flickering back and forth. Then I looked at the microwave on the work surface, who/which was also indulging in these strange diplays.
Immediately I beheld the sudden exchange of pulses or spurts of neon energy between it and the gascooker. At this point I had to laugh a little. I had a sense that this performance was for my benefit somehow. There had been some comedic element which had struck a chord in me and just seemed absolutely hilarious. I remember thinking that if my Mrs had walked in I would have pointed at what I was witnessing and said 'would you look at that. . .' quite unselfconsciously as though it was there to see plain as daylight.
I began to surmise that my technique was probably flawed and wasteful. The pipe became quite grubby. I didn't want to wash away remnants of the previous burn, but I knew that the remnants would quickly degrade anyway exposed to air. I was getting toward the end of my spice as well, so I made further dispatches to Arrakis, to whom the people of which culture I am eternally indebted. In the knowledge of almost certain replenishment, I decided to purchase a more effective pipe and make the best of what was left to me at that time. I found a light bulb style vapouriser which matched the prescription perfectly at a penny under a �5 from the headshop. Its ease of use has led me to imagine using it to try vapourising some other tryptmines (all in salt form unf.) such as 4-AcO DMT and DPT.
This vapouriser I tested in the kitchen over a hob. I was a little apprehensive because I had been chewing over the sinister tone some of the visions I had experienced. I wondered if that was the thin end of the wedge and that by getting a really big chestfull I was only going to submerge deeper into something sinister that I did not want to see. I could not reconcile this fear with the wonderfull blissful sense of being I was experiencing in the afterglow. I wondered if it was some part of myself that I was genuinely scared to look at. The voice of logic reminded me that whatever happens is over almost as quickly as it begins, and that gave me a sense of strength going in.
The heat melted the light yellow tinted crystals into a colourless pool which gathered in the bottom of the bulb. I watched white vapour uncoiling around the glass as the bulb became opaque. I drew slowly one long potent lungful and as I did so the vapour billowed more furiously. My tongue and lips numbed and my respiratory plumbing stung a little as I filled up. Eyes opened I placed the still billowing bulb down on a cold hob and turned the heat off. As I did this the room tinted yellow sepia, and I shut my eyes looking for a slide show. I was immediately disappointed. Just the womblike state with some extra patterning, but then the warm crescendo of buzzing both audible and physical spread through my neck and shoulders, followed by a very slight crack or snap from somewhere in my auditory canal.
For a short while I was not strictly local. I dont remember events as such, just a sensation of being somewhere in between my kitchen and the dreamworld. Then this absence of self was burst by a small patch of vivid vision. Like the view through a tiny hole in the wall of a darkened room out on to the scene on a bright summer day. I thought I saw a snippet of rows of parked cars, like the US guzzlers of the 50s with their chromed wings, or maybe it was an orderly residential scene. I gasped involuntarily, startled by the many implications of this vision. The stylistic appearance of the scenes were partly culturally familiar, and at the same time slightly skewed. I was startled out of phase with the vision, but I was exhilarated and back in the afterglow where I began giving praise to the universe for what I could only formulate as the privelege of what I had seen.
The question of intentionality came up again in my mind. It felt like I had been shown these things by the big whatever. I gently swayed on the stool and basked in the beautiful concept that the universe was far more bizarre and comedic than I could ever have imagined. I had gasped at the ontological ramification that I might have seen another world or a parallel universe. I felt certain for a few moments inside that I had seen proof that worlds and culture not particularly unlike our own, or sharing certain evolutionary or environmental parameter existed, and there might even be many of them. This was not the kind of revelation that transposes well into conversation so I kept my council to myself. My Mrs does not approve of my little hobby very much, but for all the right reasons, because she cares about me, so I don't recite her my adventures.
The general effect of all this DMT smoking has been strangely positive. I am conscious of the power of suggestion in potentially shaping the experiences we have. After all I think it was Hume who surmised that we are the sum of our experiences. I felt almost virtuous not to have witnessed entities which could be described as self transforming machine elves, though that is not to say I was in any position to doubt the subjective truth of these descriptions. But I had felt what seemed to me divine pressence, and visualised abstract entities in the wide mind space of closed eyes with a strong light source. And I had witnessed something that had startled me to the core of me being in a deeply satisfying way, although I could not fathom its significance. It could have been many possible or impossible things and called to mind a reality along the lines of Michael Moorcock's Multiverse.
I also noticed a sense of well being in general life, which I have heard reported, and subsequently may be a result of preconditioning. However this sense seems so tangible and yet natural as to be too good to be true. I found a part of me thinking that everyone should have a blast with this stuff at least once. A clich�, I know. I also imagined the possibility of a worldwide pyramid selling scheme by which an alien race might prepare humanity for contact. This tickled me, since in my newfound openess to the parameters of altered space, such a conspiracy might be impossible to disprove. I felt heightened empathy with even the people I perhaps disliked, and tangible antidepressant effect. Not that I am generally depressive these days. But there is something to this.
I would only complain that my chest has been taking a beating. There is a strange logic that it appears that the more effective a hit I achieve, the less troublesome my chest is. I cough up some chunks in the aftermath, and the taste doesn't offend me anymore.
My next consignment arrived a week after that final excursion. Excitement boiling over, I prepared myself for more adventures. I was faced with a dilemma. The experience, I felt honestly in my heart, was 'A Good Thing' as far as I could see. It seemed to open my mind on a spiritual level which chimed morally with the parts of my Anglican upbringing which I still respect, and the Buddhist ideas I had been reading about recently. It gave me exhilarating journeys and imaginings which I somehow wished I could record or describe, and would be grist to any mind with a soft spot for science fiction. I also sensed somehow the experiences constituted a revealing or an uncovering, due to the perception of continuity between trips. Something might be captured in my memory in one experience and in the next one I might seek to hone in on that image and it might blossom itself into many possibilities. It was an ongoing discourse between me and the drug.
However, it is expensive to obtain and woefully illegal. I can't see how it can be legal like tobacco or beer. It's just too powerful. I was pretty scared by what seemed hellish imagery in the early part of my experiences, and it almost seemed to be warning me off. I don't like to break the law. I only do so in relation to weed and my 'research'. I don't speed and I am at peace with myself most of the time morally. I had been reading about Alan Watts, a religious academic and Buddhist who at one point said 'when you have got the message, hang up the phone' in relation to psychedelics. I agreed with those words but certain that I had not yet got the message. I certainly wanted to see more.
With this in mind I decided to explore the current two gram I had and order five which I would package and freeze with the other samples for some distant future time when I felt the urge. I had a hunch that this might be just short window of availability, and that the privelege of this opportunity might soon be gone.
I had bought a gas turbo lighter to provide a safe but effective heat source. If for whatever reason you let go of it, it goes out, so that the possibility of dying from burns just as you are on the brink of universal knowledge is avoided. Furthermore it starts the vaporisation very quickly and you can reduce the heat (if your throat is hurting) by increasing the flame distance.
I got comfy on a very soft chair in my converted garage. I had strong spotlights on the ceiling pointed to my head. These help embolden the colours of the closed eye visuals giving garish hues to the visual field. I loaded a 100mg hit and started the flame, beginning to inhale slowly once the vapours rose. I must have managed a long, cool, slow breathful because I was able to calmly hold it in for what seemed like a very long time. I was able to dispose of the bulb and lighter in a civilised fashion and close my eyes expectantly. My self was dissolved again after a short cavalcade of pageantry and carnival, of which I was no longer fearful. But I was again non local, or in dimensional interstices.
To the right of my mind space was a blue mass. A large entity formed of layers of strata, and bejewelled with many crystals along geometric fault lines which folded, twisted and morphed its form in a mechanical fashion, was alongside of me. The blue colour was around the entity, (like an amniotic sack). I moved my mind towards it and I burst into the sack which fell away enough for the entity and myself to make some kind of contact. It was a light green to yellow colour underneath the sack. (Suspension of disbelief obligatory at this point) I sensed a blue sheen spreading over my own body which was rigid but gently juddering with a fine tremor similar to which I have experienced with DPT. I also became aware that I was pulsing and stretching thythmically besides the fine tremor, matching the oscillations of the entity to my right. When I did so in phase with it, the spaces between the strata of its twisting form widened, and the jewels inside showed even more vivid crystal surfaces. It was through these surfaces I again glimpsed the strange world which I had seen that previous time. The more my body matched the entity's dance the greater one of these crystal windows became, filling my minds eye and almost breaking through into the scene beheld.
A sunny 1950s suburban street, somewhere far across the universe. This phase of physical movement and intense vision was accompanied by a strange sensation of flashes of sudden coldness, which intuition told me was something to do with interacting with the entity. Although I did not fear for my life or any extreme drama, it was enough to distract me and the consciousness of my visitor(s) diminished. I was still in the far off state and spent some minutes swaying and basking in the moments of grace. My eyes remained closed however, though I occasionally flashed a look at the room around which neon sparks flitted.
To integrate this experience, I resolved to wrap up warm for my next attempt, and to follow the dance of the entity if I dared. I had begun to entertain the possibility that the entity might in fact be using my curiousity to lure me into contact. There might be no doorways into other universes, just beings using extensive kitsch simulations of such worlds to lure psychonauts for their own mysterious ends. This might explain the slightly skewed stylistic tone of the visions. I also had to acknowledge there was an almost sexual angle to these encounters, a feature I had noted on several occasions when I had used 'heroic doses' of 4 AcO DMT. I also became aware about how much dancing and physical conditions play a part in the shamanic phenomenon.
Using what I had learned I was able to reproduce a very similar experience. The dance lasted perhaps longer, and I persevered the cold spells, so that I got a clearer view into the crystal that I locked onto. I noticed that all the other crystals feature a simillar scene, which might have been slightly different, like cinema film stock, I couldn't tell, since I could only look closely through one crystal at a time.
The entity itself is hard to describe in great detail. It had something akin to an Inca or Aztec architectural influence, combined with the opulence of a wedding cake, except that it could rotate, twist and shuffle like a rubic cube. In this latter trip, I noticed a neon green amniotic sack along with the original blue one I was familiar with. I did not have a chance during the time available to explore the possibilities with that entity though I sensed it was of a species with the first. As I returned to consensus reality I sent my now habitual prayers out and wished all souls well. I decided to hang up the phone for a while, until I had been able to record and describe some of what I had been able to experience. There was still much I wanted to try. I had still not gone for the infamous 'third toke'. I had grudgingly come to understand the term 'self transforming machine elves' with greater intimacy. I have been amazed by how this drug is so specific and unspecific at the same time. And how difficult the game of memory can be, when the recollection of what occurred evaporates like a dream at wakening.
Because of the similarity I have noticed between the post breakthrough phase of DMT and my experience of a good dose of 4AcO-DMT, I am speculating about using the AcO ester as a springboard into the DMT space. I have not got round to this yet, nor a journey which I am postulating using 5g 10:1 White Caapi extract I have, to permit oral ingestion. At the moment, I am happy to vapourise due to the compact timescale. I am not considering the nasal route or plugging since I have the freebase and both routes are reputedly unpleasant, although I am not too squeamish generally.
This stuff is both humbling and exalting. It shows me how little I really know about the universe and realty, but gives a sense of joy at the small part I play in it. And it seems to do this with its tongue in its cheek, for which it seems a reassuring and hopefull thing to my mind.
All the best - peace and love - PiPPUK
Exp Year: 2007ExpID: 62835 Gender: Male Age at time of experience: Not Given Published: May 24, 2007Views: Not Supported [ View PDF (to print) ] [ View LaTeX (for geeks) ] [ Swap Dark/Light ]
DMT (18) : Alone (16), Retrospective / Summary (11), General (1) -->