@ Citta: Thank you for correction, is taken into account.

Study has shown LSD is out of the brain before the peak, which may hold true for all psychedelics. Serotonin receptors are left highly sensitive, and you are experiencing natural brain chemistry amplified. Hallucinations are real, just subdued in a brain which is normally 15% active. Chew on that.

thats quite strange, i dont suppose you have a link to that study?

im not sure about the hallucinations being constant but just not visible in a brain that is at "normal" use.
BUT
LSD has a very short trip through the body, and it is out after a very short period. this is proven fact. no links, but look it up.
it doesnt last very long in the body. breaks down pretty fast.
some people have even supposed that the LSD could simply be a catalyst for adrenochrome release as it does affect the adrenal glands.
theres a ton of stuff about LSD that could be true. there just needs to be more research to be honest.

after the LSD has done its job and says goodbye, anything you experience after that initial absorbtion is simply a serotonergic cascade effect of your 5Ht2A receptors and other brain functions.

aint nature marvellous

just thought id add that i can understand LostTraveller's posts perfectly.
it's clear that english isnt your first language LostTraveller, but I for one appreciate that you have made the effort to convey what you have to say, but in a language that is not your native tongue. i cant imagine what it would be like if everyone on here spoke German or something, and i had to learn German in order to communicate with most of the members.
Ich spreche a little bit of Deutsch, but im not good at all :/

my hat goes off to you sir, for putting in the effort.
i actually enjoy reading like that. almost makes it seem kind of mystic. your english reads a bit like the english translation of the hindu Upanishads books, so i dont have a problem reading like that, dont worry.

what is your native language, if i may ask?

<3

So supposing this "proven fact" for which you offer no proof turns out to be true in regards to the effects of LSD persisting for hours after it has been removed from the system, then what would be so different about DMT? It's metabolized quickly from the system and it's a short experience. What makes LSD so special that it can exert its influence after being metabolized whereas DMT clearly cannot?

details strip ideas of their divinity. Yes, all these specifics can be described as biological reactions in our dna...or, one could see it as God (You) filling in the blanks...A balance of those two ideals could yield wonderfully individually unique thoughts to further the rabbit hole with. The only thing that is real is You. Dmt just allows you to know it within 6 seconds... =)

i disagree wholeheartedly.
the divinity is there in the details staring you in the face

@ RebornInSmoke: Thank you for aid. I'm from Russia, but many years ago i was in Germany one month for work. We spoke there on bad English and was laughing. I love Germany... Sorry for Offtop, please Nexians, tell me about necessary security to observe for this forum. I'm very worried this problem. I need work from proxy server?... Thank all!

The point I was trying to make is that the experience is already embedded within our minds. That there only needs to be a protagonist to amplify what is and has always been inside of us all. So many search for god outside ourselves, when, like occhams razor, the simplest idea is the most true, what we've been searching for has been right there all along.

That is such a perfect answer to that question!

Indeed, the possibility that our entire experience is a projection of elaborate brain activity does nothing to reduce or cancel out its reality, or "realness". Humans are incredibly astute reality filters, and the very specific ideas and feelings we bring into a trip are ample material to generate an almost infinitely rich experience.

And contrary to being some kind of degraded mental state, I think something like a DMT trip is more of a form of high-order, hyperstructured mental activity.

Bump.
It can be easy to disregard the experience is degraded, because it is so complex, our language barriers, and the complete novelty of it all paired with the apparent lack of detailed memory recollection that seems to affect most adventurers. Something extremely complex, or so it seems, is going on no doubt. The normal brain perceives only 1 out of 100 million bits that hit our eyes. And vision is only one sense....

And on a humorous note, I'd say that asking how real is dmt akin to asking Neo if the Matrix was coded in Windows or Linux. :-p Dmt is the blue screen of death to the ego.

Reality is real and DMT is part of reality.

Is this seriously not enough? How does this descend into all the bullshit about subjectivity/objectivity, I honestly fail to see how something so simple can get blown so out of proportion.

If DMT is a simple experience, what would a complex one be?

I'm not under the impression that EmbraceTheVoid was referring to the DMT experience as being simple... Rather, the fact that its seamless connection to the rest of reality- the part whose "realness" we experience every day- is a simple relationship; this reality and that reality merge at one point; therefore that reality can be no less "real" than this one.

Is this an oversimplification? can we in fact regard the workings of our imaginations (which are deterministically part of the larger physical universe) as having the same level of reality as our day-to-day experiences? Why or why not?

I wasn't saying "DMT is a simple experience" but that it's as simple as DMT is precisely as real as everything else in reality. Now perhaps the real debate is the age old "does experience have meaning" psuedo-conundrum. And that is where all sides are divided, the nihilists say no, others say yes. But why dress up such an old rehased debate in the form of "does DMT matter" and proceed to work each other into confusion all over again, that's my question.

Through the lens of direct experience with such profound context as DMT provides, the age-old conundrum of what's real may be made all the more clear, as opposed to theoretical philosophical abstraction.

To the OP:

I have thought this myself many different times, but not in the exact same capacity as you have explained it.

I think that every psychedelic or mind-altering substance has its own "world", and that by ingesting them, we get a glimpse into that world. Quite literally a glimpse, as our eyes and bodies are allowed to see and feel what is going on in that world. Our world just so happens to be ruled by serotonin. Ex: If you take mescaline, then you are slowly ferried from the serotonin world to the mescaline world, and you visit there for quite a while, but you always have to get back on the ferry to serotonin world, because that is where you live, where your belongings are, and where the rest of the world lives. If you're lucky enough, sometimes you have friends that will join you on the ferry ride to a different world, and sometimes you just have to travel alone to experience the beauty and nature. The thing is, these worlds are there all the time, always existing, but you can only see them for a few hours at time.

I think of non-psychedelics as modifiers of the serotonin world. They might speed things up or slow things down or even amplify it.

(I hope this isn't too far out, and yes I realize this doesn't account for disso's like salvia, but that is my two cents)

P.S. Jeremy Narby is awesome! I had the opportunity to hear him speak last year, and he is absolutely wonderful. I read both Intelligence in Nature and The Cosmic Serpent, and I must say he raises some very valid points, with scientific evidence to back them up!