Hi all. I've been lurking around the nexus for the last few months and decided to register an account today.

I've been experimenting with LSD since my mid-teens and in my early twenties I had a solid connection for Mushrooms so experimented quite a bit with those as well. At one point in my life I was heavily into stimulants but with the help of some good friends and the Rave scene managed to outgrow that without any permanent damage (to my knowledge anyway). I eventually outgrew the Rave scene but became somewhat inbittered and confused one night when I 'saw God' on an LSD trip.

My atheist leanings turned to a hard headed belief that what I saw was in fact God. From this feeling grew not peace though but paranoia. Eventually I chalked the experience up to 'it was just drugs' and the paranoia lessened but never quite went away. I lived this way for the next ten or so years and continued to experiment with psychedelics looking for a way out.

Eventually I settled down, got married, had a kid. But that feeling that something was missing from my life (that *thing* I was always searching for on psychedelics) and my paranoia never left me entirely. Away from the people I grew up with (I had moved) my anxiety began to turn towards anger and I would lash out at my wife, kid, and stepson.

With my wife on the verge of leaving me (as she's told me since) I rekindled my relationship with psychedelics and began working on my issues again. One of these substances was DMT.

I took my first plunge with DMT about two months ago and feel it's opened my mind more then any other psychedelic I've experienced. I think part of this is because of the come up I felt the first time I smoked it. I just had to let go and allow the experience to wash over me and I now feel like that 'thing' I was always trying to figure out and was searching for on all my LSD and Mushroom trips was simply this act. This act of letting go and allowing the universe, myself included, to be without my obsessive need to put everything into boxes and define it.

Needless to say, my perception of things has changed from being a somewhat hateful atheist/skeptic to being a much more open minded agnostic with animist leanings. When I smoke DMT I get the distinct feeling that everything around me is built and maintained by playful gnome like entities that coexist all around us. They have shown me amazing things and a few nights ago when I closed my eyes for the first time after partaking I felt as if they were cleansing my heart chakra (or as I put it to my wife 'gave me a soul massage' ).

Anyway, the skeptic still lives inside of me and I can't say for sure that this animist perspective of life and the universe I experience on DMT is real or simply, you know, drugs. But my experiences have been amazing either way and regardless of the cause I appreciate the beauty of these experiences as well as what I've learned in regards to kicking back and allowing life to come my way. Or to put it another way, I don't know what it is but I try to keep an open mind and consider all possibilities

So psychedelia aside...

I'm in my early thirties, have an amazing wife that goes to school full time, and two boys (one two and a half and the other five). I'm currently a stay at home dad but have been planning to go to school for computer sciences once my wife finishes her education (graphic design). I spent the majority of the last two years (that time I wasn't raising our toddler anyway) working on an open source game and learning computer programming. That said I'm also interested in many things related to psychedelics (chemistry, pharmacology, mycology, etc. etc.) so I may change my mind and go into a field related to that instead.

I also enjoy cooking and have worked on and off in the food service industry all of my adult life. The work itself I don't terribly enjoy anymore but I still love to cook at home for my family.

I guess that about sums it up. Thanks for having me.

Thanks for sharing that.

Hello edge2054,

Wow, what a great intro essay. Thank you so much for sharing.

I also came back to psychedelics - for me it was midlife after a very long break - during a crisis. I like to tell folks that for over 40 years I was literally a hard-ass, card carrying, dyed in the wool atheiest who had had endless books, people and chemicals try to convert her over the years. . . .

As I like to tell people I had over 40 years of atheism burned out of me in about 5 minutes flat (on the realtime clock). I also stress I am not religious in terms of organized religions, Gods, Goddesses, etc., but much more a spiritual being than I ever was and now embrace a strong sense that there is something more/extra out that, something perhaps beyond death that is not measurable or perceivable in this consensual reality . .

Anyway, I felt a strong resonance with your story. . . sorry this is not about me. . what I really meant to say was . .

Welcome to the Nexus! Be sure to check out all the subfora as well as the invaluable links in the upper right hand corner of your screen. . . things like wiki, FAQ and Health & Safety. . .. Chat too . . . I'd love to see you around this place some more.

A very warm welcome indeed. . .

Thanks Pandora

It's always comforting to hear of other people who have had similar life experiences and I quite enjoyed reading about your's.

I checked out some of the links you suggested last night and there's a lot of good advice in them. I think I had read some of it when I first became interested in DMT but now that I have a bit more perspective on the subject things make a bit more sense

Hi Edge2054, and welcome to the Nexus!

Thanks for sharing your personal (hi)story. I liked reading it a lot, also because it resonated with my own experience a little.

I found one of your thoughts especially interesting:



I think we could put this problem the other way around, couldn´t we? Something like: "I can't say for sure that this ´consensual´ perspective of life and the universe I experience ´normally´ is real or simply, you know, ´brain chemistry´"

I think that everyone taking their psychedelic experience seriously have to reconsider what ´reality´ is, or is not...

Fucking amazing intro!! I totally understand your experience but an order of magnitude greater. Once you connect, break through, etc.; The volume of normal life seems muted, turned down. If you read enough intros here you will see this is a common theme. I found your intro relevant, relateable, and riveting. Enough Rs for you?! :-)

If you wish to see a description of what I have seen, a connection to the Universal Prime Mover, or whatever you wish to call it, we all know basically what it is. Check here: https://www.dmt-nexus.me...aspx?g=posts&t=37451

Secondly, you have to understand my background. I was a biochemist by trade and by education. The more I learned about the utter complexity of the human body, the less my Atheism could sustain. Interestingly, many scientists work the opposite way. Not I. I saw something so absurdly complex and synchronized that I had no doubt whatsoever it had "help" along the way, even after 5 billion years of evolution. Animist indeed...

https://www.dmt-nexus.me...aspx?g=posts&t=37577