Okay, so if DMT is produced naturally in the human body,
occurs naturally in most plants,
then why,
WHY

...does its nature seem foreign to us? Why does it smell like plastic--something unnatural/synthetic-smelling?

...does the experience seem alien, foreign, otherwordly, outside of us?

This is my theory, or at least preliminary thoughts:

The pineal gland, contrary to popular belief, is NOT located in the brain. It is located just outside the brain, just outside the BBB (Blood-Brain Barrier).

When you smoke something, the chemicals go directly to the brain. This means that, instead of receiving DMT "naturally" from the pineal gland (from outside the brain), the DMT comes from the opposite direction, or at least, unexpected by the body. This is connected to why the smoked DMT experience feels foreign.

Further conjecture:

Drinking ayahuasca allows the DMT to be "processed" by the pineal gland, and let into the brain according to the body's wishes. That is, unless the user's BBB is broken (this can happen due to a past concussion or an infection), in which case, the experience may have some elements of alien-ness.

Keep in mind this is all conjecture, and I'm presenting it as food for thought. I am not trying to make objective scientific claims, so please don't get up on my grill about "Find me the studies and then we'll talk," unless you want to get

~fried~

If you were to isolate a number of chemicals contained within the human body into large amounts and smell/smoke them, you can bet some would smell pretty odd and foreign. The indole smell of DMT is nearly identical to many other indole based compounds. The closest thing I've found is the flowers of a green plum tree, I believe it was.

It all goes through the BBB and hits the same receptors regardless of the route of administration. The ayahuasca experience is different for me because of the slow come up, drawn out nature of it, and the huge impact harmalas have.

I think those of us who have had "sober" tryptamine/DMT experiences usually find it different than smoked DMT because of the range of other tryptamines, beta-carbolines, (at various amounts), and complex mental processes or phenomena involved.

But at the end of the day, while it is undoubtedly very foreign in some ways, at the same time it's oddly familiar and deja-vu inducing for me. Like going home to something I've forgotten.

Well answered, Uni. Thank you. (Still open to other viewpoints of course.)

One of the most baffling aspects of dmt is actually how familiar it can feel. Its ability to smash reality is not so much due to temporarily replacing the normal world, but because of the dmt version feeling like it is more real than the normal one.

Pure dmt doesn't smell plasticy or shitty, it smells flowery. It is the products of pyrolysis that smell like plastic poop from another dimension.

AFAIK so far, the scientific evidence points to the lungs as the main site for endogenous dmt production.

I feel you on the foreign aspect OP, it is such an alien experience sometimes, but it can also be terribly familiar as pitubo noted.

There's a paper by Szabo, Frecska, McKenna and friends that actually focuses a little bit on describing some of the theoretical ideas and evidence pointing toward a preferential uptake of DMT into the neurons of the brain across the BBB, via active transport.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23619992

I feel one tree, as universecannon I think mentioned at least is a relative of, that smells particularly like DMT is the ornamental pear tree as well as Sapindaceae flowers sometimes. Due to their indole based compounds.

Appreciate the musings though

Lunaria annua, a popular ornamental plant, is known under various common names such as money plant, silver dollar, chinese money, pope's money or judas' coins. Though not containing any psychoactive principles, it is a lovely addition to the ethnobotanical garden: in the evenings the purple flowers smell like a conduction vaporizing dmt pipe.

The flowers:


The seed pods (coins):

Funny anytime I smell DMT, it's amazing how quickly memories come back of past experiences. Love that smell.

The experience for me is a constant mix of alieness and familiarity. Very moving.

The feelings I get when I smoke DMT, they effortlessly outweigh every other factor. Yeah, it can be visually overwhelming, yeah it can be auditorily smashing to the point where outside influence is unrecognizable and everything is subsumed by the experience im having. But the feelings I get, those are why I keep going back; the intense deja vu, the knowing of always having been a part of this thing im witnessing/experiencing. An undefinable beauty and essence to it.

Definitely an underlying quality to the experience that I can't shake, and only becomes moar apparent the deeper I go.

Indole has the interesting property that, in low concentrations, it does smell very floral, while in high concentrations, it smells like feces. Fecal matter has a large amount of indole in it, which contributes to it's characteristic smell.

Blessings
~ND

Hmm, I always thought that the characteristic fecal indole smell was due to 3-methyl-indole, not indole itself. I'd also guess that part of acridity of the plastic poop smell of burnt dmt is due to some indole-3-alkylaldehyde.

I'm betting on this...

Not because of any science that I have done myself nor any that I have perused lately...

Only because many of my DMT journeys have more or less told me so (and, of course, not in words).

I could not agree with you on this more Tatt!

This type of statement always cracks me up!

First of all, I generally counter with, "you haven't smoalked real plastic before, have you?"

I have (on accident, of course!) and DMT does not smell/taste anything like it...seriously...

I don't wish smoalking/vaping plastic on anyone.

Secondly, I have to state, that when I first encountered DMT, I did find the smell quite odd, although now, having used it so many times, I find that I get whiffs of the very same odor from all sorts of natural things...like some flowers & some poop as has been mentioned on this thread already.

Just my two cents on the smell issue.

Could you elaborate on this? I do put stock in intuited/transmitted knowledge.

To everyone else- thank you for all the definitely more experienced perspectives. Every day I realize how much of a newbie I really am with all of this stuff (DMT).

There's a lot of talk on why people often see the same types of entities although some people never see entities and some see pretty weird stuff in general.

However talking with friends who have tried it everyone agrees a certain atmosphere to that other place - super real; futuristic yet somehow ancient; totally alien yet totally familiar. It's really too strange! This doesn't happen with any other psychedelic as far as I know that there's a consensus on where you go and you definitely don't return to where you last left off. I do like Andrew Gallimore's explanation in "What's it like to be a Machine Elf". Even though it's only conjecture, he seems to have somehow intuited what's going on with this.

I am not honestly sure that I could elaborate upon that...

All I know is that during more than a few hyperspatial journeys with the DMT, not only did it feel as if my lung system was positively affected by the vaping of DMT in some way, i.e. better lung capacity, clearer, deeper, stronger breathing patterns, the urge to sing loudly & strongly, etc...
but also the intuitive feeling that DMT/hyperspace was communicating to me that endogenous DMT comes from the lungs.

Like I said though, there was no words associated with this communication. There weren't necessarily any entities associated with this communication either, but somehow, some way, it was communicated...

Who knows though? One of the last DMT trips I took I could tell, very succinctly, for the entire 10-15 minute journey, that it was trying to tell me something which seemed extremely important & it wasn't until I was fairly back down to baseline that I realized that hyperspace was trying to tell me to put a pillow under my back! LOL!