OK, I haven't had a single bad DMT trip, and yet I still freeeeeeeak out every time I pick up the pipe. It's irrational, and I want to stop it. I know it's a common part of the experience, and it teaches you a lot but... There are people who don't even flinch before taking a hit. How do you do it?

Id say the best way I stay calm before doing a substance like that is reading posts and what not about it on here or I just wait until I am in the perfect mind set.

I always put on my positive, uplifitng music several minutes prior to blastoff. I get into the moment with the music which tends to always make me smile and pumps me up. During this time I think about what's ahead and any trepidation is replaced by this joyful drive.

20-30 minutes meditation beforehand can do wonders.

I've been there, I started exactly the same way. It goes a long way to relax yourself with a pre-flight ritual. Take your time and relax as best you can; then you have to swallow a courage pill, commit yourself and just do it.

Given the nature of our travels it's perfectly normal, and really quite healthy to feel some trepidation before blasting off, it always pays to treat the spice with respect so this is no bad thing.

Peace

Macre

The way I get past the hesitation of flight, is actually pretty simple. If I feel the uncertainty, I just take a momment and ask myself 2 questions.

1. Do I really want this?

2. What is the absolute worse that could happen?

I never heard about anyone being killed or put into a permenant psychosis so the worse that could happen is a scary "bad" trip...either way you come out the other side alive and with one hell of a story to tell. Even "bad" sex is still pretty good, ya know? All about the perspective. In the end, the only thing to fear is fear itself.

I hope that helps you as much as it helps me.

Fear and trepidation is totally rational and I would say useful. If you aren’t at least slightly apprehensive about what may happen you are either foolhardy or haven’t been very far.

The last pipe I had sat in my drawer over a month before I could deal with it.

Edit:

That probably sounds very harsh and possibly slightly condescending, sorry if it does! After several hundred journeys it really is one of the scariest things I could possibly imagine. The more I have flown, the scarier it has become. Death-like experiences, not knowing who or what I am when I come back, not knowing whether I have come back to the same reality I left, being chopped and torn apart into infinite pieces, these experiences are not to be taken lightly. I keep going back though!

I think once youve had a particularly challenging experience, you will not regard the fear as irrational.Perhaps it may be wiser to regard this fear as analagous to a 'healthy respect', or at least a facet of this.If this healthy respect becomes absent, then DMT has an uncanny knack of re-teaching it in a way that does tend to keep it fresh in ones mind.

Attend to your mindset and setting-the attention paid to these is the closest thing you will get as a guarantee with vaporised DMT.

I agree with d*I*b and corpus callosum. It's normal to be nervous; these are wild rides upon which we embark. A healthy respect & bit of nervousness is not only normal, but wise. Overconfidence in such matters has been the cause for my harshest journeys.

I've also found that the older I get, the more I approach these experiences with caution. I need to be in the right state of mind, right setting, and with a solid reason for dosing. My days of megadosing are also long gone. Vap'd DMT is a little different, due to the immersive nature of it; I'd rather take a little too much as opposed to too little. It's a quick experience though.

My method of dealing with the nervousness is a combination of meditation and prayer. I also accept the fact that the experience may not be entireably enjoyable, and may be quite the opposite. However it will hopefully result in some lessons learned, and some growth.

CHANGA.

Make it a weaker blend. take a few tokes and ease into a an elevated mood and then blast off for real. When you do it this way the DMT actually comes on very VERY slowly...it just sorta vibrates it's way right into your already heightened state of awareness.

Peace

What the others have said... Fear & apprehension are normal for most 'normal' psychonauts.Once you have experienced the full power of DMT, or even a slither of it, you learn that this stuff is not to be trifled with. Having some sort of ritual beforehand can help.

For me it goes something like:
Empty your bowels / bladder completely before hand, have a shower, change into some comfy clothes (I want to get some ceremonial clothes just for the job)

smudge some sage, light a candle. Meditate, pray. Smoke some harmalas (I have tried sublingual a few times, but not a fan of having a paste under the tongue), meditate some more, set your intentions (mine are often simply 'learn & grow'.

Smoke a warm up dose, 15mg should be sufficient. After that mini journey you will be in a much better frame of mind to be totally immersed, or, if the vibe of that dose doesn't feel right, you can stop there - dipping your toe in the water before diving in is, IMO a very wise thing to do. I would rather lose a toe than jump into some freezing cold water that happens to be infested by sharks, wouldn't you?

Now, go for it, load up 25-30mg (which was ready and waiting, using scales while DMT'ed is a ball ache) - the harmalas will keep the previous dose rolling around in your system for some time, so this dose will be more like 35-40 if done at the right time, but the onset will be much easier to deal with, since you are already 'in the zone'. I find smoking the harmalas before the DMT is better than smoking them together in Changa, although you can pre load by smoking a large ish dose of changa slowly before a freebase dose.

Some one knowledgable needs to write a sticky about ritual / ceremony, and I would love to see moar info about how it is done in a traditional context. I feel this would help new comers greatly, as I have had to piece this together myself, and would love some pointers...

Best of luck calming those nerves, they don't go away, but can be managed

changa

take low doses beforehand and do some meditation/yoga

don't forget to smile

Wow, amazing and very insightful replies, everyone!

joedirt, yep, sounds reasonable.

Purges, haha, I actually did this the other day. A really light, pleasant dose, and then blastoff. I was so confident after the light dose, and I was torn into fractal pieces, swallowed and spit out by the universe, hahaha! But I wasn't afraid beforehand, no...

Quoted for truth. This is a great method.

I can not stress enough how solid of advice this is. I am someone who has strong anxiety before I start a session. There have been times where I would set everything up only to back out over some lame excuse (Oh, the neighbors dog might bark tonight, don't want THAT slipping into my head!...etc)

So I make my Changa very mediocre. Like everyone else is saying, a few hits to kind of get into the zone seems to have a great anti-anxiety effect. Then once I have meditated a bit I can decide to smoalk it up if needed. I also keep a few Caapi joints rolled close by, when I take longer sessions I like to smoke one of those every few cones.



Safe travels friend!

you need to create a set routine or ritual that frees your mind of such constraints

ie:

-weigh set amount and prepare it in your piece

-put on light music, meditate, or read a psychedlic essay by someone like McKenna, watts, whoever you can relate most with to better calm your mood

after you finish your ritual don't even think about hitting the bowl, just pick it up like clockwork and do exactly what you set out to do

it's simple habits like these that create an everlasting reward system within your brain

you've been programmed your whole life to think certain thoughts a certain way at certain times, sometimes i feel like you can tell who has been muting the commercials they're whole life and who has not

reprogramming yourself can be just as easy

Great post Krellog, I love the comment about programming and reprogramming, I think I'm starting to be able to tell within a short conversation when I meet someone if they have been unwittingly programmed by mass media and society/culture and haven't questioned that yet at a deeper level. I still am to an extent myself, but can catch myself more and more when I think a certain way that comes not from my deep self, but from what has been crammed down my throat my whole life by TV, magazines and whatever else out there is telling me how to think and behave. Psychedelics and especially for me, mindfulness meditation to help with some OCD and anxiety issues earlier in life taught me to step back from my thinking and question what to me, is true or complete rubbish... As Terence has said "Culture is your operating system", so do you choose to accept or question that?

Anyway, before I derail this too far, I'm slowly putting together my own ceremony for a regular low dose changa meditation ritual and some of the advice is helping out greatly in this thread. Good luck in conquering your fears OP and godspeed!

To be honest: No, no, it's not.

20-30 minutes of meditation should get your heart rate pretty leveled off and in turn kill some of the anxiety. It's never going to be fully effective though. IMO anyone who's not the least bit nervous about doing DMT is either putting on a charade or completely insane.

Also, you can try to take a small testing dose before your large one. I find that after a DMT trip I immediately want to do it again without fear. It's only a couple days after that I start to get a little nervous at the idea of it. So maybe a carefree trip will set you in the right mindset for doing a breakthrough.

Your fear is what keeps you respectful of the spice. Pre-flight anticipation is very normal, especially if you're shooting for the moon (break-through), as I call it. One thing you might try (in addition to the wonderful suggestions put forth here) is a lower dose. I've found with lower doses, I am able to integrate the experience a lot better if the set and setting aren't right for a breakthrough.