PRE-CONDITIONS
(mind)Set: Feeling ok, but some mental baggage from a personal loss
(physical condition) Set: Healthy
Setting (location): Bedroom
time of day: 14:19
recent drug use: None
last meal: A light lunch ~3 hours before

PARTICIPANT
Gender: M
body weight: 70 kg
known sensitivities: none
history of use: experienced, >200x

BIOASSAY
Substance(s): Psilocybe Cubensis, DMT
Dose(s): ~2.5 g mushrooms, ~35 mg DMT
Method of administration: Tea / oil burner


EFFECTS
Administration time: T=14:19 (mushrooms), T=10:00 and 17:00 (DMT)
Duration: ~ 6 hours
First effects: T=15:00
Peak: DMT: T=17:00 - 17:10
Come down: T=18:00
Baseline: T=20:00

Intensity (overall): 4
Evaluation / notes:

OPTIONAL
Pleasantness: 0 (for the 17:00 DMT exp), 3 for the rest
Implesantness: 4
Visual Intensity: 4
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AFTER-EFFECTS
Hangover: 0
Afterglow: 4, Felt very open and alive after


REPORT
(write your trip report as you would normally write it here)



I woke up with the intention of taking some LSD and meditating, but I woke up feeling like I didn’t get adequate rest and was pretty fatigued, so I decided it was best to put it off. I also woke up with pain in my neck and shoulder, and I don’t like to journey into the magic kingdom with physical pain, as it often becomes amplified. I went about my morning, having breakfast, a few chores, etc. A few hours later, still feeling pain in my neck, I decided to have a bit of DMT, as I’ve noticed it will instantly remove all pain, as well as helping with fatigue. I had loaded 35 mg and ended up using about 25 mg of it.

I broke through into a space where the bed I was lying on merged with my being. It was a bit confusing, and I found myself moving around trying to get comfortable. After a few minutes, I came out of the experience and noticed my pain was gone. I got up, moved around a bit and definitely felt better than I had all morning.

Since my energy had increased, I felt the need to clean up the house. Then I had lunch and spent a bit of time outside in the sun. The time was now 2 pm, and I wanted to take some mushrooms to help me work through some difficult emotions.

I have been feeling somewhat depressed the past few days, since my daughter had once again run away to a life of addiction. Psychedelics have helped me to not only realize the deep pain I have for this loss, but have helped me to work through the pain and find healing.

I had prepared some fresh mushroom tea a few weeks before and had made ice cubes. From a previous experience, I found them to be about half the expected strength, but this was a different batch that was blended rather than chopped. I took what should have been 3 grams worth at 2:19 PM.

I’d like to mention that the fresh tea is definitely different in effect compared to dry tea. It is highly preferred, as the come up anxiety is much less and the experience is more euphoric and smooth. I have also noticed I tend to yawn a lot with the fresh material, compared to dry. After 2-3 hours, I felt the experience had the strength of ~2 grams and suspect the lower potency is due to low solubility in water, given only 25-30 grams of water for each gram of mushrooms was used. Next time, I’ll try to acidify the water more to enhance solubility.

About 2 hours into the experience, I found myself in a pretty good space. I spent some time thinking about a huge personal loss and was able to grieve and let go. Then, around 5 PM, I decided to try a bit more DMT. There was maybe 10 mg remaining, along with some deposited in the glass. I used a torch to gather the deposit and suspected I now had 35, maybe 40 mg.

Being a bit cautious, I took 3 tokes. First two only gave mild feeling. Then, I took the last inhalation and knew it was enough. I set down the glass and lie down.

This time, instead of bursting into a space with color and animation, I had a strong sense of dread. In my mind, I said, “Oh shit, I’m dead. I really did it this time!” Under my closed eyelids, I saw what little color was remaining shift to black, gray, and white. I saw a scene of a graveyard with tombstones with crosses on them and as I shifted my attention, even those faded away into nothing.

I opened my eyes to see the room, but it was different. It was different in that there was no life. The information that made up the room was no longer being animated. I realized that I was dead. The beautiful tapestry hanging on my wall was disintegrating before my eyes. Only the very center of my vision held some color, as the rest of the image became pixelated in a way that washed out as I shifted my attention.

I saw what death is and I’ll try to explain it with this analogy:

Imagine a computer running code that produces a beautiful animation on a screen. Now, imagine what would happen if the power that keeps the memory bits where they need to be is slowly removed. The animation starts to loose some of the resolution and introduces glitches and noise into the animation. Eventually, noise flips enough bits that the prior images slowly turn to dust.

This is what I experienced. I was dead, no doubt about it, and the reality I saw was no longer “powered” so that as I moved my attention around, REALITY WASHED AWAY!

I saw death as a stagnation of perception. One where as “time” passed, perception became more and more noise, until all information is lost.

I don’t want to die, so I breathe. I breath in and out to try to keep life from completely fading away, but it is no use, it doesn’t help and now there is almost no information. The only thing I still have is the “observer” that is still observing the disintegration of reality.

Somehow, I got up and walked to a window and looked outside. I saw an image of what the back yard is supposed to be like, but as I moved my attention, it too began disintegrating into nothing. I went back to my bed and lie down. I was in a time stop – this was eternity. I had an understanding that this is death. Death is the loss of information. The loss of the power that animates reality. It is the most scary thing I have ever experienced.

I mourned the loss of my life. I mourned not getting to experience ANYTHING EVER AGAIN! The scariest thing is I felt that I would still be an observer, observing disintegration for eternity.

Then, a thought popped into my head. Jesus. Keep in mind, I’m not really religious, but do feel spiritually connected to something. A higher power, perhaps. Once I had that thought, the center of my vision lit up with a bit of color. There was life again in the center of my vision. Slowly, this circle of vision opened up. I was reborn. I went through a resurrection!

A few moments later, I got up and started moving around, looking around, very thankful for the miracle of life. I’ve been given LIFE!

I then had a realization that God is the “power” that energizes the reality created by our attention. Without it, our reality is like a memory chip without power in that any noise, or change in attention will add randomness into the perception and flip the bits in the direction of noise, static.

Reality is when this “power” is combined with attention to form matter. Without either one, reality doesn’t exist.

In Genesis God breathes life into dust and thus man is made. We can see the source code written into our DNA, but there is some principle that keeps the code running, that time progresses and there is causality.

DMT has given me significant feelings of being alive and gratitude for it. Being connected to a higher power... or current 🙂

thats a powerful trip...

I hope i never have anything like that.

This is a follow up on my experience. Since this experience, I've tried DMT a few more times, but have been careful and have kept my dose under 30 mg. I've had many mushroom and LSD experiences since, and all have been good. On one of these journeys, I took maybe 25 mg DMT, but took it slow, maybe 6-7 mg at a time, spaced over a few minutes. The resulting experience was not intense, but it had elements from my previous experience, namely, a disintegration of the world around me combined with a feeling of dying.

I took some time off and maybe a month ago, decided to try around 25 mg again with a sitter present. I was very nervous to go in, as I planned to take all 25 mg at once. After taking a few minutes to relax, I took maybe 15-20 mg, held it, but realized there was more, so I took the rest. I didn't have the usual high efficiency method, so some was wasted. The resulting experience was not intense, but seemed to have the pleasant feel I typically have. While this experience was mostly ok, my body's reaction was one that left my heart beating fast from the fear.

Fast forward to my most recent experience. I took a low dose of maybe 1.5-2 g mushrooms and at around the 3.5 hour mark, felt the call. I loaded a low dose of 19 mg to test the waters. I took it in two inhalations, after the first, it felt ok, so I took the rest. I closed my eyes and lied down. Going in, there was little fear, mainly because the dose was so small.

After a few moments, I felt like something was wrong, sat up, and noticed the room, and my arm and hand starting to disintegrate. I could no longer feel the arm that was turning into gray sand. Part of my hand was still there, while part had turned into this sand. The room also was turning into this gray static. Nearly the same, but with less intensity of my first experience of this type. The energy that keeps this existence in order was turned off and the information was fading into nothing. Even though it was not nearly as intense as the first time, it was still very scary.

After this, I think I'm going to have to take some more time away from DMT. It has been a wonderful ally for over 20 years, but either it is saying no more, or there is something I have to learn from this experience.

I've contemplated what this experience might be trying to teach me. One, is that if death is the end (which I don't believe) and this experience is what death is like, I am terrified of death. Being the observer of nothing for eternity is a scary thing.

This is in great contrast to my many other experiences. Usually, while quite varied, I feel connected with a source of knowledge and greatness. I haven had lessons that have increased my appreciation of everything in this life, and with great beauty. I've also been kicked out of the realm in the past with lessons like, "don't drink alcohol and come here" a day after drinking. I've had similar ones when I combined with pot.

I've had open eyed experiences where I watched my limbs turn into lego pieces and fall off my body and bounce on the floor. While this may seem scary, it was not. A bit unnerving, perhaps, but I would still consider these all good experiences.

I would love to hear what others think of these experiences. For those who have similar experiences, what helped you make sense of them and move beyond? Thanks for reading!

Perhaps the trick is to smoalk moar. Even moar. So you become comfortable with that space you associate with death. I know the feeling of a hard trip and then later wondering 'if that is what death is like it will be a nightmare!'

Then I remember that I have no way to confirm that DMT is a window into death. It is an irrational fear from an ambiguous connection.

Having said that, I also take long breaks as I am getting in debt to hyperspace often. By that I mean that my level of understanding is still much lower than the sum of everything I have seen there.

I smoalked today for the first time in a while and it was really pleasant. A hand came visibly in front of me and supported my head under my chin while I watched the trees dance. Since then I've felt light and happy.

I recently had an experience on DMT, my whole self started to merge into this sort of eternal wheel oscillating between infinite comfort and infinite exhaustion.
Ive had this sort of back and forth with shrooms too.
Knowing that the dream goes on forever and there is no way to end it, regular life feels almost like an escape, relief at last.

These are hard experiences, personally I dont think they are the "ultimate truth" per se, in the same way as humans we have to learn how to appreciate and balance, lets say shame or sadness, we will learn how to appreciate eternity at some point.

These are fascinating experiences. Everything I write is just one opinion.

First, I suspect a break and some serious integration time might be all that is needed.

DMT tends to put some of us in touch with the numinous and sometimes it surprises us.

In my limited but memorable experience, I often personally found I had to surrender utterly, try to accept material, including the inevitably of my own death. One way or another I often felt DMT was good practice for dying.

And yes, sometimes it was anywhere from difficult to harrowing.

I think ultimately it helped me to think about the quote in my signature. "But even if nothing lasts and everything is lost, there is still the intrinsic value of the moment. The present moment, ultimately, is more than enough, a gift of grace and unfathomable value, which our friend and lover death paints in stark relief."
-Rick Doblin, Ph.D. MAPS President

I do hope you find the answers you seek and keep us posted.

-Pandora

Thanks everyone for the replies. I think the answer may lie in Pandora's response to step away from it for a while and integrate. I did a test with 13 mg in the mist of my most recent mescaline + LSD experience and while it didn't get to scary levels, after a while, it had a similar theme of order to disorder in the visuals.

I suspect one aspect the experience is showing me is one of my remaining fears: the fear of death. Perhaps by letting go completely, one can go through this and pop out the other side. That said, I think I'll integrate for a while, and maybe check the waters in the summer.

When one hears that inner voice telling oneself that maybe it is time for a break, maybe it is enough for now - then maybe it is good to follow this intuition. I personally always like to ask myself, will a break hurt? Most of the time the answer is 'probably not'. And I have personally never regretted taking a break. One should not feel bad for indulging in the dreams.

Apart from that, I found your trip reports quite inspiring, especially in light of the quote Pandora added. You indeed experienced nothingness, present moment after present moment. You also experienced that the present moment can be filled with intention (or attention as you called it), the intention to create something from nothing. Ultimately, this has not necessarily shown you death, but maybe also what has been there before there was something. The great mystery of our reality is, where does it come from? Maybe you have not only witnessed the end of all, but also the beginning. The Daoists like to say, something can only come from nothing.

But as others have stated, we have no way to know. And having hard opinions, standpoints, or even arguments on whether DMT indeed gives us a glimpse into the afterlife or not, is quite...well, let's say futile at best. Nonetheless, our interpretations, the stories we make from our experiences, can be profoundly meaningful. Why tell ourselves a dreadful story then; why assume the worst and live with this fear?

Following the example of Rick D., I will take your experience as something profoundly beautiful.

Thanks for sharing!

triptaminedream,

The fear of death is a big one and bravo to you for being willing to face it head on and try for integration and acceptance.

One thing that I find helps me think about death with a funny smile is this simple fact:

When we are born it is typically a terrifying, painful and traumatic experience. We go from floating in a heaven made of warmth, love, floating and always being fed to a day of radical change.

One day everything changes and our world starts to fall apart and collapse. We are in motion that we did not create and cannot control! Things are getting tight! We are squeezed and constricted! We are suffocating! This is the END! We are DYING! WE CANNOT BREATHE!

And then, . . . what typically happens? We quite literally, see a light and emerge into a new world . . .

Terrifying, traumatic, and painful is a pretty good description and it was somewhat like a birth experience in that I did feel reborn. I've mostly abstained the past few months, with only 1-2 ~10 mg journeys to test the waters. I'm not sure (because of the low dose), but it still seems different. Later this summer, I'll try ~20 mg, as that is usually enough to get visions without being so disconnected that the experience could be considered terrifying if it does the same direction as before.