Welcome to the nexus friend.
It's always a good idea to take the baby steps if you're unfamiliar with the effects. It's a strange feeling to say the least. Being that you have no way of accurately measuring doses you could always resort to making enhanced leaf with your dmt. If you just throw it in a pipe and try to smoke it, it will burn it and tastes horrible and you will waste the vast majority of it. The goal is to vaporize it, or smoking in enhanced leaf and changa. Since you are a smoker then enhanced leaf would probably be a good starting point and will allow you to control a little better how much you take in. Plus you can smoke in joints or a pipe plus you didn't mention anything about trying aya/pharma.
I'm an ex smoker myself, I did quit after taking on dmt. I also drink very little, maybe twice a year. Used to be everyday weed smoker, last year I consumed less than 8g of weed. I was informed I was using it for the wrong reasons during a breakthrough. I like mushrooms too. Just most the time I don't have the time to dedicate to the trip duration, but every now and then I make the time. Clean Lsd is just too hard to come by in my parts so I choose to stay away from it.
There's no rush to get to a breakthrough, test the waters first to see if it's going to be for you. Look into making changa if you like smoking, I personally smoke more changa than freebase dmt. The added harmalas slow the onset a tad and prolong it some too and adds it's own flavor to the experience.
There's tons of information on here to look through, continue doing that before embarking on your journey to find what methods going to work best for you. Main thing is research and then do some more. This is a good community to be a part of with lots of knowledgeable people that are here to help if you need it. No need to apologize for your writing style, I'll be the first to say that it was absolutely fine and was a nice enjoyable essay and thanks for sharing a bit about yourself.
Always safe and happy journeys and welcome to the community.
Peace