DOSE:
1 hit
smoked
5-MeO-DMT
(powder / crystals)
BODY WEIGHT:
110 lb
Substance: 5-MeO-DMT
Method: Free based
Dosage: A lungful (actual quantity in spoon unknown)
Setting: A 3-day, 2-night party. Those of us indulging in this particular substance were in a small bedroom, adjacent to the main living room where most of the (mellow) party was going on.
Other Factors: I had dosed on 15mg 2cb and 3 capsules full of powdered mushrooms the previous night. I was certainly baseline before taking the 5-MeO, but it is possible that my experience was affected by residual effects on my neurons, kidneys, etc. I normally take a balanced multi-vitamin each day, and I am fairly certain I remembered to have one that evening with a meal a couple of hours before dosing. My mental state was mainly one of frustration and impatience, feeling that my psychedelic experience of the night before was largely a futile re-hashing of the same unanswerable questions and unresolved problems I've been dealing with throughout my life. I hoped that 5-MeO-DMT would be the thing to push me through to a clearer level.
Note: At the last minute, I informed my significant other, 'J', (who at the time was in the living room adjacent to where I would be smoking the 5-MeO) that I would be indulging in this new substance that night.
The Players:
E, who was also taking 5-MeO for the first time.
M, who had experienced this substance for the first time the previous night (snorted), and was having a go of smoking it this time.
P, our ground control, spoon holder, and caretaker.
The Lead-in:
After some debate and confusion over whether snorting or smoking would be the better method for some or all of us, we finally all settled on smoking. E was handed a small tube, shorter but a little wider than a large drinking straw. P held a large spoon containing a dollop of 5-MeO with two lighters beneath it, instructing E to begin inhaling slowly through the tube as soon as the smoke got thick. E got a lungful, said something like, 'Here I go,' and fell back on the pillow. I was not certain whether P then added more substance to the spoon before giving M a turn, but I suspect so. M inhaled, waved, and said 'goodbye' while falling back onto the other pillow with an enormous grin. I believe that P added more substance to the spoon before handing the inhaling tube to me. I found the smoke surprisingly light and easy to take in. By the time I tasted it in the back of my throat, it had me. All I could manage to say was something like, 'guh,' thrusting the tube wildly in P's direction, as I fell back on the blanket bunched against the wall, turning inside out through my chest.
(disclaimer: the following events may be partially or completely misremembered and/or inaccurately portrayed. Statements in quotations may or may not have been actually uttered by the person they are attributed to, or thought by me at the time)
The Experience:
Purgatory. Neither here nor there. A fuzzy white bubble of crumpled time. One fractured moment, jumping around like a DVD randomly skipping between tracks. It tries to decide if this is Heaven or Hell, and cannot resolve this. It burns us and it freezes, precious. Torment and ecstasy rolled all together in a tight little ball. She's right. It's not LIKE anything. Later, someone tells me that DMT is similar. Similar? How could anything be similar? What could possibly be 'like' that, without being that?
M says, 'It's always like this.'
Someone else says, or is SUPPOSED to say, 'But it's different this time.'
Scattered laughter.
P says, 'Do you want me to close the door, so it will always be dark?'
This has always been said. All of this has always happened.
I say clever things like, 'shit,' and 'fuck,' while I think, always, 'Why did I do that? Now I'm trapped here forever.' I wonder if my body will die in this room, or dematerialize; or if it will go on, perhaps with some other entity at the helm, seeming to live out the rest of my life while this consciousness remains in this moment for eternity. Maybe this is the point where I wake up in my mother's womb, destined to live this same pointless life up to this moment, memory wiped but for the occasional, inexplicable deja-vu and an unshakable sense of foreboding. I cackle with lunatic irony. Condemning oneself to eternal damnation is hilarious, when you think about it.
The whole scenario inverts and repeats, eternally.
There is a buzzing sound, like a handsaw. Hzzzzzz. Eeeeeee. Hzzzzzz. Eeeeeee.
J is beside me.
'You're hyperventilating,' says J.
And so I am. The buzzing noise is me.
I sit up. Hands in the air, shuddering, I try to slow my breathing.
'Holy shit,' I say, grinning from ear to ear. Nobody realizes that the grin is an expression of my amusement at being eternally damned.
'You don't say,' says J, with a curious/worried/amused look.
'Multiple orgasms?' asks M.
'No. Kind of. Yeah, I guess. Not really.'
'It's everything,' says M to J, as always. 'You wanna go there?'
'No,' I say, quite emphatically. I can't bear the thought of J having to be trapped here too.
'No,' says J, following the script.
'I know that about you,' says M, eternally.
MUST BREAK THE CAUSAL LOOP, is my urgent and only thought (yes, my brain at that moment had chosen to paraphrase a line from the movie 'Happy Accidents,' still freshly imprinted on my fragile neurons) as I cleverly exclaim 'Goddamnit,' and lunge clumsily for the door. Through the door, the bubble of time stretches and breaks around me. I feel streamers of time bubble still clinging to me, but they gradually dissolve as I concentrate all of my being on interacting with the others outside, trying to form coherent words to describe what is happening to me.
What HAD happened. Past tense, now. That's better.
As J settles beside me, I implore, 'If I ever, ever tell you I want to do that again, talk me out of it.' Immediately, I begin thinking of circumstances under which I would consider taking this drug again.
Recovery and physical effects:
Although nobody was keeping track of the time - and the subjective experience lasted for eternity - the entire episode up to this point probably took no more than a few minutes, somewhere between 5 and 20. Recovery largely involved lying on my back, breathing deeply, and attempting to describe what I experienced to concerned onlookers. It eventually came to me that not only was the hardwood floor under my back rather cold, but my presence there, fervently gasping precious life back into my body, was probably a bit of a bummer to the people attempting to talk and play games there in the living room. With some help from J, I made my way upstairs to the darker, quieter, sleeping/chill area upstairs, where I could finish recovering in a warm bed without bothering people.
My body seems to have been almost completely anesthetized by the drug, and numbness in the roof of my mouth and extremities persisted for quite awhile after I initially fled the smoking room, probably at least 30 minutes to an hour. For the next hour or two after that, my muscles would occasionally convulse as they continued to 'awaken,' though I did not find this painful. It was rather nice to not be feeling the usual chronic pain in my back and hips. After lying in the bed for perhaps 15 to 30 minutes, I got up and did a little bit of slow, cautious yoga, hoping to align my muscles and bones the best I could before they 'remembered' their usual cramped positions.
After crawling back into bed, I lay wide-awake, eyes open, for what may have been several hours, even after J curled up next to me and went to sleep. During that period, I wanted to take in as much of waking reality as possible, and was not eager to lose control of my consciousness to sleep. When I eventually did find myself drifting off, I was jarred awake several times by the sensation that I was slipping back into the drug-state again, fully re-experiencing the conversation and sensations of that eternal moment as if I had never left it. Eventually, I did manage to get a little bit of real sleep.
It is worth noting that I felt no nausea at all, through any of it. I have found that with almost any drug, I am better off if I consume a reasonably sized meal about 2 to 4 hours before dosing. This seems to settle my stomach quite effectively. I understand that many other people have the opposite reaction with this and other drugs, finding that eating first just gives their churning stomachs something to spew. This may be connected to my hypoglycemia, meaning that preventing a blood sugar spike or drop may be the key for me in keeping my stomach happy.
In the next couple of nights, I found myself briefly slipping back into the drug state for brief periods while dreaming, without being jarred awake. This has been a much more pleasant experience than the previous terror of being trapped in that moment forever. I awaken feeling good about it, though I don't recall much of the dream clearly in normal, waking consciousness. I have also occasionally felt on the verge of re-entering that state while awake, simply by concentrating on remembering the sensation of it. I believe that with much effort and practice, I could bring myself there at will. The questions are whether I really want to go there, and if so, what would I do with it?
Post-analysis:
NOT A RECREATIONAL DRUG. If you're looking for a light-hearted experience with pretty colors and fun, I can't recommend this stuff. The experience was intense beyond imagining, and probably worthwhile, but not what I'd call fun. On the other hand, I am a person who tends to have difficulty simply enjoying the experience of a hallucinogen without feeling the need to use the opportunity to deal with important issues (which is one reason why I really should not be taking them at parties), so take this with a grain of salt. Then again, I've never had what I would call a 'bad' trip because I see every trip as a learning experience and an analytical tool rather than a qualitatively good or bad experience. However you look at it, I'll be dealing with this experience for quite some time, likely for the rest of my life. Not a thing to be taken lightly.
One of my first thoughts, as life crept back in, was that this experience had made clear to me that decades of meditation and mental conditioning to achieve a state like that would have been worth it to get there in a gentler, more organic way. I resort to chemical methods to achieve 'higher' mind states in part because I am lazy and impatient and feel that I lack the discipline to get there on my own. However, as previous trips with other substances have hinted, the chemical way is actually the hard way.
At the very least, I think I'd have an easier time of it if I were in good physical condition before undergoing something like this. Good circulation and healthy organs would likely enhance the experience itself, as well as improving the recovery. Having a more positive general outlook, as well as more experience in consciously shifting mind states would most likely be helpful as well. And I'm sure it wouldn't hurt to have my chakras all aligned and spinning properly going in. All of these things would certainly be improved with regular exercise, meditation, and yoga. I'd want to prepare the physical space better too, which for me would mean some sort of ritual cleansing, and surrounding myself with the right scenery (mandalas, ritual objects) and sounds (gentle, ambient music or chanting) to help me keep a particular focus.
In short, it may be impossible to ever be fully 'prepared' for an experience as unique as this, but I'm sure it's possible to be better prepared than I was. At the very least, choose a space that's suitable to the type of experience you'd like to have, and have a goal, general focus, or at least some idea of what you'd like to reach for.
Exp Year: 2004ExpID: 30624 Gender: Not Specified Age at time of experience: Not Given Published: Feb 5, 2004Views: Not Supported [ View PDF (to print) ] [ View LaTeX (for geeks) ] [ Swap Dark/Light ]
5-MeO-DMT (58) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Multi-Day Experience (13), First Times (2) -->