DOSE: T+ 0:00 60 mg vaporized DMT (powder / crystals) T+ 3:00 170 mg vaporized DMT (powder / crystals)
BODY WEIGHT:
160 lb
[Erowid Note: The dose described in this report is very high, potentially beyond Erowid's 'heavy' range, and could pose serious health risks or result in unwanted, extreme effects. Sometimes extremely high doses reported are errors rather than actual doses used.]
I had been holding onto two DMT rocks for a couple of months, waiting for the right time to use them. I had tried to smoke DMT twice before but with only marginal results. The first two experiences produced only mild psychedelic effects: electric sensations flowing through the body and visuals a kin to LSD or mushrooms. My ego had been left completely intact in both cases, and I had never really left the rooms from which I attempted to launch.
Early in the evening, I decided to attempt a new launch. My roommate Echo was DJing a party somewhere and my house was otherwise empty. Just after dark, I set up my zone, stringing my hammock up between two trees in my back yard. I lit two sticks of incense at the base of the two trees and settled into my hammock. I had decided to smoke the DMT using my Vapor Genie by placing the smaller, 60 mg, rock directly on the VG screen. In the minutes before launch, I attempted to meditate, following my breath; this was very difficult, as my mind kept bringing me back to the idea of the approaching trip. Many report that DMT is very intense, and as I had taken mushrooms and LSD at what I considered high doses several times before, I had at least some shadow of an idea what I was getting myself into.
As I held the VG up to my face, my heart rate increased noticeably. I became short of breath and felt quite nervous. I began to hit the VG, but my lungs protested against the very slow hot stream of air and demanded oxygen. I stopped mid-inhale and gasped for air. Holding the lighter back to the VG I began to hear the subtle sound of the solid DMT popping and whistling its way into a liquid, and the sizzling sound of vaporization. I continued hitting the VG, but never really felt a concentrated hit. After about 60 seconds of hitting the pipe, I laid back in my hammock. I felt only very mild effects, not even close to what I had felt on my previous two attempts. Somewhat disappointed, I pulled out my glass pipe and took a few tokes of cannabis before falling into a peaceful slumber.
I slept for a couple of hours, waking to a rekindled desire to attempt a launch. I like to consider myself a truth seeker, willing to weather the uncertainty of alternative and expanded awareness in the attempt to contact and understand a more fundamental reality. Given an adequately prepared set, an appropriate setting, the right tools, and the right chemical key, a curious psychonaut will seize the opportunity for learning, in spite of his nerves and reservations about the unknown.
With newfound resolve, I took my VG inside to reload. Upon taking it apart I found a black gooey substance caked all over the screen, effectively clogging the pipe. After removing the screen, I found the same gunk running down into the stem of the pipe. The rock I had placed in the bowl was completely gone, but had evidently liquified and ran through the VG screen. I replaced the screen with a new one, laid a thin bed of cannabis and placed the larger, 170 mg rock of yellow-white DMT upon it. I hoped the cannabis would catch the liquified DMT before it ran through the screen and away from my heat source.
During this process, my roommate Echo returned home from his DJ gig. I told him I was preparing to relaunch, and I asked him to serve as my guide. I've had mushroom and LSD experiences by myself several times before, and I knew I could very likely handle this experience alone, but deep down something told me that securing Echo as my guide was the right thing to do.
We went out to the back yard, and I relit two new sticks of incense at my hammock zone. Echo sat in a chair facing the side of my hammock. The cherried incense glowed orange through the darkness, and I was comforted by its familiar aroma. I settled back into my hammock, covering my lower half with a blanket and holding the VG and lighter up to my face. The nerves came back. My heart rate increased and I felt starved for oxygen. Again, I took a few minutes to consciously slow down and focus on my breathing. I was a rocket quietly posed on a launch pad, awaiting the inevitable ignition sequence.
'See you in eternity,' Echo said as I flicked my lighter and held the flame to the VG. Again, I could hear the popping and sizzling of the vaporizing rock, but this time I got a concentrated vapor hit, complete with that subtle plastic taste I had encountered on my previous attempts. I exhaled the white vapor and went back for a second toke. My body began to buzz with the familiar electricity. This buzz kept growing in intensity through the hit, and by the time I exhaled and began the third toke, it was growing with such momentum, I knew this attempt would succeed. I continued inhaling, despite the electricity now surging through my body. The third toke gave me what felt like the thickest hit yet, and as I blew out the column of plastic vapor, I fell softly back into my hammock, body and mind disintegrating into a billion disconnected pieces, scattered across the face of oblivion.
�.
After body and psyche are broken down and blasted out in all directions, there is only emptiness. This is the clear light of the unformed, the un-become. There is in fact no experience here that the psyche can preserve in memory. This state coincides with the death of the ego and a discontinuity of recorded experience. It would be impossible for me to say how much Earth time elapsed during this state of freedom; later Echo would tell me the silence lasted around 10 minutes.
The first flash of experience is a recognition of falling out of this emptiness. Only after slipping out of the void can any conscious recognition occur. As the clear light slipped away, I recognized it as sheer perfection. It is identified as divine bliss; a state completely devoid of imperfections, impermanence, or dissatisfaction of any kind. It lacks any hint of duality or ego and has a distinct impersonal quality.
Just after falling out of the light, I felt I had an opportunity to return to it. This window is quite small however, since the fall out of the light is like the falling of an object toward the Earth. At first the object falls slowly; enough energy directed upward may overcome the downward motion and return the object to its original position, but after some time, the object gathers too much momentum and there is no reversing the fall.
The psyche pulls at one in the same way that gravity pulls a falling object. The initial flash of recognition is produced by the first shred of the psyche reinstating itself. As this piece solidifies, other pieces begin to solidify around it. As more pieces of the psyche fall into place, the self-reconstruction process accelerates like an avalanche. Timely application of just the right kind of concentrated energy could reverse this avalanche and return one to the liberation of the clear light. However, in my case, the pull of my ego is strong and familiar, and affinity for the habitual inevitably pulled me away from the impersonal void and back into the process of reconstructing my psyche.
Almost the same instant that I realized what was happening, I knew that I had fallen past the point of no return. The momentum of my fall back into the ego was too strong to overcome. I began to fall through a sea of imagery collected during my current life. All the people, places, ideas, and symbols I've come to know were interlocking and flowing freely like a fluid. I experienced this vast sea of imagery outside of time, holding all of the pieces in awareness simultaneously. Its scope and beauty were absolutely overwhelming.
During this period, I experienced several profound philosophical realizations. I could see that the emptiness from which I had fallen was the fundamental state of perfection in the cosmos. All efforts to make one's own life as well as others' lives 'better,' culminate in this state. It is the attractor and the end of time, pulling the individual and the whole of life toward its perfection. I felt that the purpose of experiencing life is to cultivate the qualities and skill necessary to find the clear light and to stay in it, without falling back into routine, ego-dominated reality. This applies to the individual, as well as the collective of all living beings. I saw that the cultivation of good mental qualities are essential to the process. Intelligence, concentration, and ultimately wisdom are all necessary to make and then maintain contact with the clear light. In addition, compassionate behavior or right action on the individual and the collective scale, is also essential to the attainment and preservation of divine bliss.
These realizations felt like sacred gifts bestowed upon me by the experience. In my routine ego personality, I consider myself to 'know' these things already. I attempt to study and understand the teachings of the Buddha and practice meditation, although the turbulence of life often distracts me from these efforts, and too often I find myself wrapped in the business of seeking out sense pleasures. Experiencing the falling from the clear light and re-learning the significance and purpose of spiritual endeavors like the cultivation of good mental qualities and the performing of right actions on some very deep and real level of my psyche are invaluable. This kind of intensely felt experience serves to keep me in touch with what is most important in life and what is the closest expression of my true unimpeded nature.
After descending through the glistening sea of symbols and imagery, I began to encounter some turbulence. As the psyche reconstructs itself, it becomes more and more fixed and solid, in contrast to the complete lack of form of the void and the flowing, fluid nature of the sea of imagery. There is a tension felt around the crystalized parts of the psyche as the more fluid parts flow by, lapping and swirling into turbulent eddies. As I felt this tension building in intensity, I remember uttering the name of my most trusted teacher, WW. Her name serves me as protector during the unsteady phases of my psychedelic voyages.
As more and more of my psyche crystalized into a recognizable human form, my awareness across the sea of imagery began to hone in on one particular set of images. Soon I was surrounded by the naked bodies of copulating couples. I did not experience attraction or desire toward these images as I have before on LSD; I was simply an impartial observer. Suddenly I felt an intense connection with my own biological mother; I felt her presence and noted the bond of love flowing from me to her and from her to me. I realized that I was being cradled by the warm fleshy interior of a womb. I sat up in my hammock, pulling myself into the fetal position. . I could see my physical surroundings for the first time, but I was bathed in softly enchanting red, purple, and blue light. Soon I felt the enchanting light slipping away, leaving in its place a deep sense of renewed purity.
I had been reborn.
Then I wept. I wept and wept with joy and gratitude. I was back. I wept and wept with joy and gratitude. I was back.