Hello fellow explorers! I started my journey into this world years ago. I have struggled with depression and PTSD for most of my adult life. Ive always been good at hiding it from those around me with a false smile, but i was hurting inside,, something just was never right. I finally broke down and sought medical help for it, but all the drugs the doctors gave me just seemed to put me in a fog or did nothing at all to really help the things that i was feeling!
Then one day my wifes father had a stroke followed by a massive heart attack right in our house and he died. this broke something in her and she had a almost total break from reality.. the doctors gave her all kinds of drugs and turned her into a walking zombie.. So getting frustrated i started researching everything i could get my hands on to try to help her. this led me to the world of psychedellics specifically mushrooms. after a lot of research i found that mush were not the answer for her and her particular condition, so i moved on. eventually the doctors have gotten her medication to the point where she is at least able to communicate with the outside world, but sadly i have resigned myself to the fact that i may never get my vibrant wild and crazy woman back. But sitting at my Pc one day i started thinking back to my research on mushrooms and their possible use for depression. i figured why not. Ive never been the type to go buy anything that i can grow or create myself so i dove deep into the world of mushroom cultivation and after a while i had some dried mushrooms! i took them and had an amazing experience,, but when i woke up the next morning it was as if a weight had been lifted from my body! For the first time since i could remember the feelings of depression were gone!! i walked around for several days waiting for the depression to return,, but it didnt! weeks went by before any signs of it started to creep back in, and another quick trip and bang i was back to feeling like a normie! I ended up getting heavy into growing and joined quite a few mushroom cultivation groups.. ive even been a part of a mushroom podcast called the FAFO CULT. Some of the subjects we have covered in there can be a bit course and some might find parts of it offensive, so i dont recommend checking it out unless you have a sense of morbid curiosity! Im the one they call dad on there cause im always trying to herd the cats and keep things on topic.
fast forward a few years and i was talking with a mush friend and i mentioned to him that my mush visuals havent been quite as vivid as they used to be lately, and he told me that he had the same issue a while back but the problem solved itself after he smoked some DMT.
This intriqued me i had always heard of DMT as the death drug and dismissed it. But i started researching here on the nexus and in other like minded groups and found out that there is a LOT more to it than i had heard! So i found a supplier for some bark and learned some extraction TEKS and talked to a few friends who knew how to do it. and Here i sit with some spice ready to go!
But wait a minute???!! i have no idea how to consume it! how much? soo many questions!! so i decided to go ahead and make an account on the Nexus and start researching. I gotta say i joined the chat right away and was instantly blown away by the awesome people there who jumped right in to listen and help me with my newbie questions with zero signs of judgement! I already love you guys!
but i hope to hang around for a while and become a good member of the community! Im almost ready to dive into the DMT ocean, but i might need you guys to give me a little push! and maybe toss me a lifeline if needed!

FAFO,

Welcome to the Nexus.

Thank you for sharing your story. I enjoyed reading it.

I was sorry to read about your wife and hope for nothing but the best for the both of you.

Your story of self healing with mushrooms was inspirational.

I really enjoyed chatting with you this evening and I suspect you are going to like DMT.

I do hope you will continue to keep us posted and again welcome.

Yooo wildFAFO, welcome, I'm another new registrant on the forum.

I can say that I can relate to your story a lot. I have suffered from chronic depression for as long as I can remember. After breaking down completely after the death of my father, the failure of a business with debts and the sentimental failure, not knowing or having the tools to manage my emotions, I only saw a way out.

-"Dead there are no debts"

That was the obsessive phrase I had hammering away at my head.

I can say that if there was easy access to firearms in my country, I probably wouldn't be writing this post today. I had to go buy the tools for my own destruction, pick them up, accept what I was going to do. Which gave my brain time to look for a way out. There was something inside of me telling me not to, but that voice was hidden under tons of darkness.

I felt the "need" to express something before leaving, to tell an experience I had had at the age of 17, something I hadn't understood, something I'd never told anyone.

-"I'm sure they were going to think I was crazy", now I know that it was an altered state of consciousness reached endogenously.

So I postponed the day, turned on the PC, and looked for a suitable site to publish. Then I turned off the computer, convinced that this was the last time I would do that. I remember the sound of the fans shutting down as if it were an allegory of what I was going to do the next day.

Silence filled my room, a sea of tears welling up in my eyes incessantly. Like a river, but almost without emotion, without breaking the silence. And suddenly, a notification rang on my phone.

Angry, I turned on the light saying, "WTF, notifications are off." The notification was from an e-mail, which was not muted, where it said:

-"Hi Falcata, we have read your post and we would be delighted for you to join this Telegram group, we are looking forward to hearing from you"

It was as if I was struck by lightning, the electricity was flowing and before I knew it, the fans of my computer were working at full power again. What is Telegram a website?, hahahahaha. After installing the app and joining the group, I found the people who would give me the tools for my own healing. As you say in your post, that feeling that "it", dark and sinister, is not there, is a weird and pleasant feeling, right?

I remember the first DMT trips from which I would come back crying, but in gratitude and from which I would repeat a single word like a mantra:

-Thanks, thanks.......THANKS.

Now, years later, I only take one or two DMTs experiences a year and with that I have my darkness under control. I think it's been over a year since I did the last one. Although now I plan to do them more regularly for different reasons. And before that, I've ended up registering here almost unconsciously. Psychedelics are an exceptional tool.

I don't dare to use the chat because English is not my mother tongue and I have to rely on web translators to understand and make myself understood in a coherent way xD. But I'll leave you here how they taught me how to dose myself:

Let's say that whatever degree of intensity you want to achieve, always do it "knocking on the door" as I call it. I suppose each person will have an opinion about it, but I'll tell you the way I think it's less "disruptive".

Knock on the door, I mean instead of doing a single take, spread the total over several times. A very light first take, which does not induce visuals of any kind, which serves to "prepare the body" and begins to silence the voices. In general, when I do initiations I usually use this dosage:

-A first dose of 10mg.

After 1 minute.

-A second dose of 15mg.

Then he lies down and closes his eyes. This usually induces mild visualizations and lasts less than 10 minutes. After that, if the person wants to go deeper, they would do a 10+20mg. after 10+25mg, etc...

My deepest and most coherent journeys were doing successive series, let's say, 10+20+30+30mg. Rather than a single 90mg shot. I also suspect from my experience, although it will change from person to person, that even if you put 100mg, the lungs can only be loaded with 80mg. approximately.

I wish you and yours all the best. And that you really enjoy the path that you are going to start with DMT, i hope that it brings a lot to your life.

wow Falcata thank you very much for sharing that! I am going to have to reread your post several times in order to truly take it all in i think! i really hope to visit with you some more around here!

FAFO, this was a great introduction, and I can relate to your story. There have been quite a few dark times and up and down roller-coaster events in my life that had me in a very very dark place, for extended periods of time. From a failed relationship with the person I believed was the love of my life, to extreme chronic back pain (and a high dose of painkillers which were not working due to my high tolerance levels built) coupled with copious amounts of stress, I questioned why I was even bothering sticking around. I couldn't stand, sit, or sleep without constant pain, or being jolted awake the second I started to sleep with excruciating back spasms where I couldn't move a millimeter. Having to know my kids were watching their "hero" having to crawl on hands and knees to the bathroom and not being able to play with them was the worst. Having to pull myself into a vehicle to go to a stressful job each day added to. Everyone would be better off without me, and I had every means imaginable to follow through on it.

It took a lot of effort each day to think about something I would have regretted not seeing in life had I ended it "the last time" I was in this state. Imagining my kids finding me, or the lesson this would teach them and how it would impact their lives, along with the instilled belief that taking my own life was the unpardonable sin (whether true or not), was what dragged me through each time.

Were it not for my discovery of hammock camping (oddly), and then implementing that apparatus into my home, which has kept me essentially pain free without the need for pain meds (except on very rare occasions..and I just use ibuprofen on those days) for years now, I'm not sure I would have had the strength to keep going. Something so simple changed my entire life. Had I given up, I would have missed so much good in life.

Being able to share these stories, and know that there are others out here that know what those dark, end of hope, places are like and somehow landed here at the same destination looking for the same answers, is amazing.

I'm glad you made it through. I'm glad @falcata made it through. I'm glad we can all share our stories here, and we have access to people with experience in the potential of this "wonder spice" (should have been one of the Spice Girls names) to educate and guide without judgement.

We are survivors, brother!

I'm glad that somehow, we've met in this space and can share our experiences. We never know how a sentence can affect the person who reads it. But I believe that those of us who are in a way "survivors" have a duty to share our "escape routes".

I always say that people are as similar as drops of water, because we feel emotions in the same way, even if it is for different reasons. And this society and the consumerist culture makes us believe the opposite, that we are unique and special and that no one else can understand us, they artificially separate us because that generates profits and allows us to keep power in a few very greedy hands.

But in this case we look more alike, we have similar injuries, brother.

At the age of 25 I was diagnosed with a herniated disc at L4/L5 that was pinching the sciatic nerve. The first year I could barely get out of bed. Every movement was like a knife being stabbed into you, very unpleasant and exasperating.

In addition, doctors, so to speak, "hedge his bets"* and are usually a little more exaggerated than they should be. The doctor who treated me told me categorically:

-"You're going to have to get used to living with pain for the rest of your life, you won't be able to do any kind of aggressive sport, you must lead a life as relaxed as possible from now on."

Obviously, if I was already living with a depressive disorder, those phrases had an impact like an ICBM. And a few months before the injury I had started climbing with some friends, my mountain dreams destroyed forever.

The thing is that in rehab, they put a harness on me and hung a weight from it. And I had to hold on to a bar and keep myself hanging. "This is just like the climbing harness," I thought.

In the second year and after reading experiences of people with the same injury, knowing that I did not have what is called "compromised spinal cord" I decided to go for a walk every day as far as I could go, I remember that starting to walk was torture, but always, when I came back, it gave the feeling, that it hurt less, Then it started to become apparent and my walks got longer every week. Then I bought a pull-up bar and held on to it every day until my hands lost their grip.

By the end of the second year, I was already doing 4 to 5 pull-ups without pain, and one day I found myself at the base of a climbing route, a very easy one, I think in the United States you have other numbers for the degree of difficulty, but let's say it was a route with a positive incline and big grips with obvious steps, Not very long, but getting to the top was a tremendously encouraging experience, years later I was doing medium/high difficulty routes in granite with tiny grips, more than 100 meters off the ground. Laughing at that doctor's words

The thing is, as a physiotherapist friend told me years later:

-"Every injury is recoverable if you know which muscle group to work with".

There are two groups of elongated muscles that run up and down the back, which are next to the spine, if they are strengthened it helps a lot in cases of herniated disc, being able to reduce pain to very acceptable levels. Also the injury caught me young, which helps a lot.

While I was climbing, I had years where I only had one or two painful crises. And they had me "out of action" for only 4 or 5 days. Now I haven't climbed for about 7 years and the last crisis I needed crutches and more than 10 days for the sciatic nerve to deflate. It's a warning loud and clear.

-GET TO WORK LAZY!!!

xDDDDDDDDDD

So I've taken the pull-up bar out of the back of the closet again.

Anyway, I don't know exactly what back injury you have, but an electro-stimulator or proper exercises can provide an acceptably good life. On the other hand, as I was able to verify years later, without us realizing it, exposed to that constant pain generates a "resistance to pain" that we are not aware of and can be useful to us at some point, but that is a story for another post.

A hug Dex, I haven't responded before because I've had a couple of complicated days.


*(I don't know if it's a correct expression in English)

I feel you Falcata.
I know the slow roll in the morning and grabbing on to the side table to try to get up. The depression when you thought things were back in order and then suddenly you're couch bound again.

My back was all the way from L3-S1. Ruptured discs. The nucleus leaking out both sides so when it touched a nerve on one side it would cause a spasm, and when that spams happened and my back would try to adjust it would squeeze the other side into that nerve, and excruciating pain. The hip pain you get walking and inflamation.

I'm honestly curious to know if hammocks could actually help people.

- I have a Ozark Trail Folding Hammock Stand (from Wal-Mart). I actually have two because I won't stay in a hotel room without it when I travel. It is the best hammock stand for indoors. Takes about 2 minutes to setup.
- I have several ENO doublenest hammocks.
- I have a few underquilts (OneTigris is my go to for indoors) which you will need to keep from freezing with the convection effect.
- I have a mini myPillow that I use as a neck pillow (but any small pillow is fine).
- I take the caribiners off the hammock and tie knots in the end cords so that the hammock is pulled as tight as possible on the stand (because it will eventually stretch).

So for about $200 (for one setup), I no longer have that pain.

It might help you if your mornings are really painful getting up. If you do try it, let me know, and pass it on.

You're right about walking. I walk every chance I get. 3 miles minimum, which I can do in 1 hour.

There is another thing that also really helps. It's called foundation training. If you go on youtube and look up "12 minute foundation training", there is a Dr. Goodman who has a routine out there that truly helps. Just use the back of a chair to hold your hands on the forward stretches if your back doesn't feel right. Eventually you won't need the chair.

I definitely have a soft spot for people who have chronic back pain.

Take care, brother.