Hi all. I'm wondering if any of you have any ideas and experience with this idea.

Ego death on psychedelics is rather scary for me. Whenever a trip nears this threshold, the experience becomes harder for me to navigate. This hasn't always been the case. But after a very difficult mushroom journey several years ago, my confidence in navigating these realms has diminished.

My experience with smoked DMT thus far has only been small doses of changa. And I have not yet attained a breakthrough on this substance.

Have any of you been there before and been able to successfully overcome this fear? And do you think smoking DMT freebase or changa would be a good way to overcome this? And would overcoming this fear on DMT translate to being fearless in the face of a high dose mushroom journey?

I used to be able to navigate the mushroom world very well. And was able to help others do the same. And I wish to reach that point again.

Does the fear ever go away? I am amazed by those of you who can smoke a breakthrough dose of DMT all the time. Do you guys also find a high dose mushroom journey as easy to navigate?

I realize there are many threads on this "fear". But I haven't been able to dig anything up on how this translates to other substances. Many thanks, fellow travelers.

-J

I don't have any fear anymore in regards to DMT freebase. If anything I became bored. For me it was facing my fears over and over until they changed into something else. I would liken it to the same unease that may come from crossing a busy intersection. Be careful to cross the street.

The thing is with DMT freebase is that it is over very quickly. I mean I just don't have the time to feel terror. With ayahuasca I was terrified and I couldn't get out, had to ride it out. I learned more about fear and what it is about for me after I integrated. I would definitely have some trepidation trying ayahuasca again, I will at some point, but right now I am cool with the short changa and freebase journeys.

When I was younger I abused LSD quite a bit, taking very large doses. I have tripped very hard on LSD. I think it reaches a point where you just can't trip any harder. During these high doses I would ride it out if things got to feeling a little freaky. Just gotta maintain.

I have to say that high dose mushrooms blew my doors off! I had never tripped that hard my entire life. It was difficult. The body load was hard. The visuals were so intense I began to loose touch with reality, snapping in and out as the waves washed over me. At peak it was very much like a DMT trip. It felt similar to me anyway. Complete reality replacement. I would say that I would also have some trepidation with high dose mushrooms. Gotta have respect for that experience all around, it is nothing to play games with.

The fear does not go away. Your fear is there for a reason. Let it be. Just watch it and learn what it means for you. The fear changes. It becomes dulled as far as fight or flight and can begin to feel more like exhileration. You learn to watch it. Integration is very important in this.

You can let the fear tear you up or you can allow it to empower you. Facing fear is the only way I have found to learn about it and thus not have such a strong reaction to it. Instead or running or fighting it becomes something you look to engage with. Many kinds of fear. Deal with each one that comes up individually.

I would say some of the fear just disappears do to gaining knowledge about where it comes from. Dealing with the core of each fear. As I mentioned, some of the fears we have are perfectly healthy. That is why you have to learn so you can pick it apart and see where each fear comes from. Perhaps asking yourself question like, is this rational or irrational? etc..

Fear is fear and it translates from one psychedelic to another and directly into the fears we experience in our waking reality. It doesn't change. You do. Fear is fear. Behind the fear is something very special. It can make you stronger. It can create courage. It can create love. It can help in so many ways. I think it's important to face fear in all aspects of our lives. We need to be strong and we need courage and we need love.

Fear and Love are the same thing in some ways to me.

"Set, Setting and Skill"

Last year I did the online "DMT psychonaut training" which was offered to begin selection for the DMTx project. This is the project which is aiming to bring subjects to a peak plasma level of DMT, intravenously, for extended periods. Their goal was to keep their participants in a state of "breakthrough", if you will, for 30-60 minutes. It's an ambitious project and seems quite interesting. I decided, however, it wasn't for me. Not the journeys (I was all for that!), but the time commitments, the travel, and an enormous amount of psychological and medical screening. Not to mention I was right on the edge of their age-limit ceiling.

Yet, I took away some very valuable information, some of which might help you with this challenge you face.

"Set and Setting" is a well known phrase regarding use of psychedelics; we've all heard this. "Setting" is making sure that your environment is conducive to pleasant, undisturbed and safe travel; this is essential. This alone is where a lot of people go off the rails. Wondering why one's mushroom or acid trip went bad at a giant festival, a bar or a huge rave/party is really an indication of both poor planning as well as a lack of respect for the medicine. Being in a safe, quiet space with no distractions is key. The use of a sitter is often a good idea, but sometimes is not necessary - depends on experience and of course melds directly into the next term below.

"Set" is all about the inner landscape. One's mental and emotional state. Being in a good place in life, having a good self-image and feeling of wholeness. While psychedelics are very effective in navigating difficulties and challenges in one's life, it's not a great idea to do these medicines in the middle of or right after some crisis or huge loss. This is not to say that answers and insight can't be gained while under the medicine, but one wants to be in a confident place that the trip can be handled, even if there is residual unease from a trauma or difficult life event. There are, of course, exceptions to this (many people would say, i'm sure), but as a rule of thumb - don't trip if you're in a bad space.

The psychonaut training added one more to this...a third "S": "Skill". This was really important. There is, so to speak, a "skill set" involved in tripping. What does one do when a difficult part of the trip develops? What does one do when thoughts start looping? What should one do when sadness comes, or despair, or paranoia? There are things to learn on how to deal with these things that can happen when tripping - and these things WILL happen...we just can't predict when and how. Having the knowhow and the tools to navigate these peaks and valleys of the journey not only equip us to face and diffuse the difficult moments, but also knowing we have the tools allows us to enter the journey with a new confidence...that whatever the Spirit might throw our way, we can handle it, face it and use it as a learning experience. It's not just "white-knuckling" it, or "riding it out"....there are tools to USE these difficult moments, rise above them and let them teach us.

I would be happy to share more about this third aspect...but this post has gotten WAY too long already!!!

@ducdevil - Please. By all means elaborate on #3. PM me if you’d prefer not to post it here.

I had taken high doses of other psychedelics before I used DMT and that may have made DMT easier... However after using DMT many times I did note that intense effects of other psychedelics that were comparable to DMT in intensity but lasting more than 10+ hours were both manageable, enjoyable and no longer debilitating.

I had become comfortable with prolonged visits to hyperspace so to speak and DMT played a role there.

Length
I think it has to do with the length of the trip, a DMT breaktrhough does prepare you for Bufo Alvarius (sacred toad), although this one is more physical I think, but with regard to mushrooms or ayahuasca, it´s a different game, it´s not as intense but lasts way longer, a lot of things can happen during one session, both with eyes opened or shut. If you are coming from a bad mushroom trip, I wouldn´t be so worried about changa, worst case scenario it lasts 15 min, and sometimes if you open your eyes you can shake it off, unlike mushrooms or aya.

Sidekicks
If you are timid with respect to the DMT breakthrough dose, I recommend you not to take free base only. Use harmalas, specially caapi, you can try changa or perhaps a caapi tea 1 hr before, you can purchase caapi concentrated resin very easily, but don´t overdo it, start with a 25-30gr leaf equivalent, you don´t want a full aya dose.
Vaporising caapi previous to freebase (or in combination) is also good.
Rape is also good to give you a little push into warrior mode.
And finally, other helpers such as LSD or mescaline (haven´t mescaline combination myself yet), I think the magic in twofold, some pure chemical interaction I don´t have the expertise to talk about, but also the simple fact that it puts you in a good, relaxed mood before taking off.

Set and setting
Last but not least, the old "set and setting" everybody talks about. I don´t want to be redundant here, my personal view on this is that your mindset IS the magical element, your state of mind is like a phone dialing which determines the quality of wathever is on the other side of the line, do some meditation, maybe restrain yourself sexually a few days before a ritual, shamans in the amazon recommed that, and if you are a woman you are not allowed to participate in the ritual when having your "moon blood".
With regards to setting, clean your house, burn some inscience, palo santo or white sage, light some candles, put a bowl full of salt in the door, ring a bell or tibethan bawl around your house, wear amulets or object you only use in that ocation, nice mandala blankets and pillows, etc. Even if you don´t believe in spirits, at least it will set you in a sort of ritualistic mindset.

PD: By the way, when you talk about "high dose mushroom", there are different levels... is it Mckenna´s heroic high dose (5gr), Kilindi Iyi´s Dr who dose (30gr)?

It was in September of 2007. I was almost 21 and I had eaten mushrooms a whole TWO times before. Therefore, I was obviously a professional.

A friend called, prouldly exclaiming that he had a whole bunch of mushrooms and wanted to know if I wanted to eat some. "Of course! Come on over!"

I was already planning out my trip. Or so I had thought.... hahahahaha. Oh silly me.

We'll call the friend Duggers - Duggers is an alias. Another friend, Bret, and an ex-girlfriend (I'll refrain from using the name that I think is MOST descriptive of that lying, cheating, sack of...... I digress) were involved as well.

Bret lived with us at the time, but that went south shortly after this experience - when he began stealing my tools and electronics to pawn for heroin money. (I'll save the outcome of that for another day - it didn't go well for Bret.)

So, Duggers shows up and reveals a large bag of mushrooms. He told me to grab a handful and enjoy! So, the first time I had eaten mushrooms, I ate roughly 5 grams of p. cubensis over the course of an evening. It was an amazing trip! The second time, I'd eaten about a gram and a half and felt that it was lackluster compared to the first time. So, my genius self was dead set on eating 7 grams (a quarter). Bear in mind that I had never heard of Terrence McKenna or a "heroic dose" or any of that. All I knew was that if I consumed mushrooms, then neat things would happen.

I found my scale and weighed the "handful of mushrooms" and it was just under a half ounce. I weighed 7 grams, down the hatch. I gave 3.5 grams to Bret, and ex-gf wanted nothing to do with it, so she went to bed.

Bret and I went to the living room to watch "adult swim" - bad choice, btw. After 45 minutes, we were not really feeling much from the mushrooms, so i ate another unweighed large cap.

30 minutes later, "family guy" was on and things were beginning to get weird. Really weird. This didn't seem like the experience that I'd previously had with mushrooms. It begin to quickly escalate and it was very dark and disturbing. (So I had thought.)

I began to feel uncomfortable and asked that the television be turned off. At that point, I began to panic. I looked down at what was supposed to be my hands and they were breaking apart into little geometric shapes that began "dissolving and disappearing into the wind created from the fan." It was as if my body was atomizing and floating off into nothingness.

This was very concerning. I started freaking out and yelling, "call the ambulance! Call the ambulance!" Bret decided that this was a little too much for him, so he ushered me into the bedroom with x-gf. I continued to disappear, and my whole world was seemingly coming to an end. Persistently screaming to call the ambulance. X-gf asked, "What do you think the ambulance can do?" And I replied in agony, "THEY CAN KEEP ME FROM DISAPPEARING!"

Everyone, aside from me, got a chuckle at that comment. They wrapped me in a blanket, fed me a xanax and told me to chill. About 2.5 hours later I was feeling semi-human and the xanax had gotten me to calm down - enough so that I stopped demanding the ambulance. Eventually, I fell asleep and had strange dreams.


The next day, I officially decided that I would never eat mushrooms again. I later found out that they were Pan. cyans rather than cubensis. Whoops.


It took about 5 years before I was willing to try mushrooms again. I had this ingrained fear of that night. I eventually just decided to make the leap - worth about 1.75 grams of cubensis. It was manageable, and that is when I began delving deep into the world of psychedelics.

Where am I going with this story? Sometimes things just ARE not able to be navigated. Sometimes we just have to roll with the punches. After returning to psychedelics, i realized that I have very little "control" over navigation. I am able to observe, but navigation indicates that you know, or have an idea, where you're going.

Rather than navigation, I focus on observation. Not just visual observation, but observation through all sensory components.

Take care,
ACY

Isn't it fascinating how all of this resembles navigating the ocean? You can not fight the storm, your only choice is to accept your fate and whatever happens next to you

Thank you for sharing your story

I 'd. 7 g and some...

At least in between 'heroic' and 'stupid' we can add the category of 'uninformed'. My one real horror trip I've related on this forum more than once already. While it was carelessness that got me into that situation, it was ducdevil's third 'S' - skill - that got me through it gratefully unscathed, if psychologically a bit shaken.

I dread to think what might have happened to an inexperienced individual under those circumstances. Had it been my third trip rather than my - actually, I've lost count - one-or-two-hundred-and-somethingth, I wouldn't just have been screaming for an ambulance...

Back on topic, I can't honestly say that experience with DMT helped or hindered with this as all my most intense psychedelic experiences have been with mushrooms. Perhaps this means I need to 'Smoalk Moar'?

Exitwound --- It's very synchronizetic that you mention that. I used to describe LSD like waves. When the wave is coming near you, you can make a few choices. Some people dive directly into the wave and try to minimize any unwanted currents; some people just stand there, and let the wave smash into them, pressing them to the ocean floor, able to do noting until it passes; and then some people turn around and ride the wave back to the shore. It's usually the last group that tend to enjoy it, and continue to go back out to the breaking surf.





DFZ, hehehe - yeah I look back and laugh, now. At the time, I was really shaken. You are correct, I was uninformed - ignorant. I had next to no experience and there was obviously no skill involved. I had no idea what was happening. I had no idea that a psychedelic could even do that.

There were a lot of disturbing parts of that experience, but I try to look back and realize the errors that I had made. When I did finally start eating mushrooms again, I tip-toed back into the psychedelic world. After a few "good" trips on lower doses, I began growing them and using frequently. In some way, there was always a memory of that day and I was using mushrooms to face that fear. When I realized that they had more to offer than confronting a fear, I began exploring much deeper.

Eventually, I worked my way back up to higher doses - but this was during a period when I would eat mushrooms minimally twice a month.

And then I found DMT. That whole disappearing thing..... that seemed like a walk in the park after freebase DMT. BUT - overcoming my fear of the mushroom experience made it so that I was able to "handle" the DMT experiences.


Take Care,
ACY

I have no knowledge of the how the use of dmt could help one through a high dose psychedelic but I do have the notion that it could be the one thing that you need to give you a push through the door. To me psychedelics are the enhancement of all suffering to the nth degree. Its sort of like a compound that you digest so that you may learn all the wisdom in the shortest amount of time. Because of this many have not been able to handle the ride and choose to opt out. However if you learn to navigate this head space things will eventually start to clear up for you.

You talked about a sense of fear deep into the trips that you were having I believe if you persist and see through the fear you will come to a greater understanding of what this fear is.