My introduction to DMT is a strange one, like it was always meant to happen:

My whole life, meaning 'drug career', I was into Trance music, clubbing in Amsterdam, smoking weed and taking stimulants (in particular for the after-party sex). I did acid and mushrooms a few times but it really 'wasn't my thing'. Anyway, I gave it all up a few years ago (because I couldn't handle the comedowns anymore/it was becoming increasingly impossible to go to work on Mondays and I have serious job) and was happy with where I was in life. Even though Joe Rogan would frequently force DMT down my throat, I wasn't really interested or tempted because I had been there and done that.

Little did I know, the seed had been planted. Bit I bit, I started to hear things about The Big D, read an article here and there, talk to someone at a party etc. Then one night I was in a bar and I found a little baggie on the floor in a toilet.

This was DMT being gifted to me, but I didn't realise it at the time.

Anyway, I had a smell of the contents then gave it to some friends who were with me, only to find out later from them what it really was. This is the strange part - ever since that day in the bar I have continued to smell it, often in fact, and I can't explain it. Even at home in my apartment.

Has this happened to anyone else or am I going insane?

Regarding DMT smell, the indole molecular backbone of DMT is quite common in nature, many substances have that structure and have very similar smell. I've smelled pure gramine and it smells just like DMT, and so do a lot of other substances. I've definitely had similar "omg this smells just like DMT" moments in life. The last one was when opening up a packet of corn flour tortillas LOL

As for my introduction to DMT, I also started taking MDMA and psychedelic drugs through psytrance music scene 20 years ago, and remember once a friend's friend from Australia had some DMT. I didnt get to try it because our schedules didn't meet before he left, but was very interested in the stories. I did not know it could be extracted at the time. I continued taking LSD often and also picking mushrooms, and then finally tried ayahuasca, which was an amazing experience.

Soon after that I met a guy who was extracting his own and he gave me some to smoke and explained to me how to extract. It took me a couple of years to get in a situation where I was ready and willing to extract DMT but I finally did, and just searching around the internet for DMT extraction info I came across the Nexus. I remember reading posts by Acolon_5 helping others with their extraction doubts, and I thought he was really cool and in general in the forum it was just a super good vibe. Back then the Nexus had only a couple of posts a day, but it was already a quality forum with the right attitude and good avantgard scientific psychedelic knowledge. Over a decade and many experiments later, I'm still here

I work in a cheese plant, in which we use industrial chemicals for cleaning. We use a chemical that is basically liquid NaOH with some other detergents. Every time I have to fill a jug in our chem cage, I can smell dmt.

My first experience with anything mind-altering other than alcohol was MDMA some 14 years ago. It didn't impress me that much and I didn't understand what the hype was all about. I liked the afterglow though. It might have had to do with the setting - I was around people during the experience, and alone during the afterglow.

Soon afterwards I got my hands on HBWR seeds. I took 6 and that was the most profound experience of my life I'd had to date.
It wasn't much later that I finally tried Ayahuasca and that was it. I've also tried iboga, mushrooms, LSD and cacti, but 97%+ of my etheogenic experiences have been with Ayahuasca.

A couple of years ago I joined the Nexus to learn more about the plants and their chemistry. I was still kind of against extractions, but as my chemistry knowledge grew and I did my first Manske extraction from Syrian rue, I became convinced and extracted DMT from MHRB for the first time. I haven't vaped DMT that many times and I've only ever done it with harmalas. I don't feel a particularly strong calling to vape DMT, my primary motivation for extractions is research and the quest to find alternative DMT plant sources that can be grown and used in cooler climates. But who knows, they say the only constant is change

I was turned on by a friend to smoked dmt on a bowl of weed about five years ago on my birthday. I broke through that first time and it was awesome. Up to that time I had taken LSD and mushrooms many times, had heard about dmt and had always wanted to try it. A couple years after my first smoalk I started reading about dmt and ayahuasca which led me here to the Nexus. Extracted my first spice shortly thereafter. I love this place.

Endlessness cool story. Some of those old threads were among the first things I read about dmt. Thanks for paving the way.

Got introduced to dmt crystal by a friend about 2 years ago by a coincidence. 15-16 years after I had my first ceremonies with aya.
I was very impressed . I have tried different psycedelics during the years. These days I stick to dmt/changa, weed, lsd and mushrooms.
Did some MDMA and 2CB but never got a feel for them. The mdma hangovers are a bit too much.

I did psychedelics and lots of other drugs as a teen but defaulted to alcohol as an adult. Got sober after 30 years drinking and drugging and was totally sober for 10 years. While googling "Xeriscaping" one day I came across a random reference, something like "There are many species of mescaline-containing cacti besides Peyote" and it was on. Joined the Nexus because the info on Trichocereus Cacti seemed consistently good. The Nexus got me interested in DMT.

I knew I was destined for psychedelics ever since I was a kid. During my D.A.R.E. class in elementary school, I remember reading about LSD and thinking "that's what the hippies used, that sounds really cool."

I started smoking a lot more cannabis on college, experimenting with the effects of really large doses from a bong to see how far I could go. Cannabis can be deceivingly powerful, and I've had some of my most intense and spiritually enlightening experiences on the plant.

Eventually a friend gave me LSD and I had my first full-blown psychedelic experience. I became a kid again, revisited my childhood dreams, and rediscovered my love for life. LSD opened my doors of perception, and although I don't use it much anymore, there will always be a special spot in my heart for that substance.

My path to DMT is amusing, actually. I bought a PC game called "Everything," where there are little bites of Alan Watts lectures. I enjoyed Watts so much that I watched a bunch of clips on YouTube. His lectures eventually lead me to Terence McKenna, who was my first introduction to the idea of DMT. Around the same time I started watching Joe Rogan, and I knew I had to try this substance. So I extracted some, smoked some changa, and the rest is history.

The psychedelic experience really is a journey. I've learned so much about myself and life in general. I love myself and the world more. Life itself truly is the strangest trip of them all, but now I live every day with passion to learn and grow.

EDIT: Just wanted to add how I found the Nexus. I had always appreciated old-fashioned internet forums, but struggled to find one that satisfied my interests AND had a wholesome community. Alas, I have found my people .

Apologies in advance for the rambling essay... This thread really gets me thinking about what now must have been the 'good old days'. My first psychoactive experience besides alcohol [EDIT: notwithstanding that I was indoctrinated into tea drinking from such an early age that caffeine was effectively transparent!] was with nitrous oxide. I used to work at a cafe and noticed that the whipped cream cannisters had a fair amount of gas left in them after the cream had run out. On a busy day we got through several of them - and there was a way of getting the cream used up while maximising the amount of gas left in the can. So that was my introduction to a lifelong interest in obtaining free drugs

I already knew about the properties of nitrous oxide from my autodidact chemistry interests and was intrigued to read of Humphrey Davy's experiments with the substance. Besides this I had been wild foraging mushrooms and found accounts of Fly Agaric intoxication in certain mycological field guides to be equally beguiling.

Information-wise, prior to this in my school library I had already encountered a book published by the Australian research organisation, CSIRO, which had one page on psilocybin. I don't think the teachers were aware of this, but then again - who knows? If only I could remember the title of the book - it was a fairly thick volume about science and society.

Of course, at school we got the obligatory 'drugz are bad' indoctrination and again I found, in common with Lampeyelittle, that LSD appeared to have qualities that distinguished it greatly from the other rubbish like barbiturates, benzodiazepines and opioids. Back in the '80s, magic mushrooms barely got a mention and MDMA had appeared on the news about once, thus having to wait several further years before it started to appear in the drug information leaflets.

I still remember the first time I heard MDMA mentioned on the radio. At the time I was avidly collecting the names and formulas of any and all organic compounds of the slightest interest. Methylenedioxymethamphetamine... it would be about five years before I got to try that one although the earliest part of the UK rave explosion passed me by as I was too young, naive and uncool to be getting into that. At the time I preferred Mozart to acid house.

Aaanyhow... DMT, yes, DMT... the first mention of it in popular media I every recall was Ruby Wax on TV explaining she had been given some at a party in LA, which she said she snorted - but maybe she didn't want to mention smoking it from a crack pipe. She described the effects as "having the entire universe funnelled into [her] head," and of course this caught my attention as well.

Meanwhile, I went off to university to study chemistry and besides drinking far too much, at some point I concluded arts students were far more fun and over the course of the next couple of years encountered LSD, MDMA, speed, cocaine, hash and weed for myself - but mostly just lots of booze. It was also apparent I was somewhat psychologically disturbed, in retrospect I had PTSD from a car crash and a number of other events.

The university library proved to be of great utility in my drive to understand psychedelics. I encountered Shulgin's work in J.Med.Chem. and pored through paper copies of Chemical Abstracts to find out about compounds of interest. Thus I learnt about his range of mescaline analogues, as well as the pioneering work of Claudio Naranjo using harmaline in psychotherapy and the work of David Nichols in the field of tryptamines.

Speaking of fields, a year or two after leaving university I discovered my uncanny knack for finding liberty caps in enormous quantities. This was when I dived in the deep end of psychedelic exploration. In the course of events, years turned to decades and I finally got to grips with computers and the internet. Someone turned me on to the Shroomery and it was there that I first read about people extracting MHRB in their own homes. It was also through the Shroomery that I found out about the Nexus.

The seemingly out of reach suddenly became tantalisingly possible and at some point, nearly 15 years ago I extracted DMT for the first time. It was unbelievably easy and suddenly I had an enormous pile of pale tan crystals. I had actually tried DMT a couple of times before that; fast forward fifteen years and I'm somewhat surprised that I haven't had DMT that many times more since. Again as Lampeye says, it really is a journey.

First time I ever smoked DMT was 16 years ago at a camping party. The second night of camping I offered anyone who wanted it LSD for free. I brought a sheet with me in the hopes of spreading free trippy cheer I guess you could say. One of the people I gave that acid to asked me if I wanted to try DMT. I had heard of it but really knew next to nothing about it to be honest. I said sure. DMT on a head full of acid is pretty groovy man!

I was blown away by the experience, I had never seen anything remotely as crazy and wild as that DMT trip, some of me I think was trying to capture that one trip again, maybe like chasing the dragon, so to speak. I asked the dude all about it and he told me about extraction. It was all I could think about for awhile, perhaps bordering on fanatic. I mean it just grabbed me.

I found the Nexus by googling DMT a few years ago. I have never been very social, so for me to join such a thing is off character for me. I just kind of loitered for a long time. I think I decided to join because DMT really did grab me. It made a huge impression on me if I am being honest I would have to say it feels like it picked me or something to that effect. I would also have to say that it has shown me a conflict within myself. On one end I am not social and perhaps anti-social a bit and on the other end because I had these profound psychedelic experiences I feel a deep connectedness with all of the universe. I look around sometimes in this world and I don't want to be connected to it. I know that probably sounds nuts.

Here I am and here we are doing what we do and saying what we say. Cheers for being able to even do that I suppose. We could all still be stardust.