PRE-CONDITIONS
(mind)Set: Relaxed, not really nervous
(physical condition) Set: fine, just finished a morning jog
Setting (location): Bedroom, laying in mbed
time of day: Noon
recent drug use: A little bit of tea in the morning, cordeceps regularly, but not the day of the trip
last meal: Fasted since dinner the night before @ 6PM or so. Burrito

PARTICIPANT
Gender: Male
body weight: 70KG
known sensitivities: None
history of use: Mushrooms several times, did this method several times, gradually increasing the dosage to find the right fit

BIOASSAY
Substance(s): DMT freebase, syrian rue harmalas extracted and dumped into citric acid
Dose(s): 30 mg DMT, 135 mg harmalas
Method of administration: Minivap (dry herb vaporizer)


EFFECTS
Administration time: drank all the harmalas, ate a few bites of mango, waited 30 min, heated the DMT to 185C and inhaled as necessary (will explain more)
Duration: 2 hours
First effects: ears popping, closed eye "kaleidoscope" visuals
Peak: no idea
Come down: 1.5 hours
Baseline: 4 hours

Intensity (overall): 4
Evaluation / notes:

OPTIONAL
Pleasantness: 2 - Some pleasantries (though all attributed to the visuals)
Unplesantness: 4 - Very uncomfortable
Visual Intensity: 3 - Mild visuals


AFTER-EFFECTS
Hangover: 2 - very mild headache
Afterglow: 1 - mostly just confused


REPORT
Just a tiny bit of backstory first: I have been working my way up in harmalas dosage (DMT just stays at 30mg) to figure out my "correct" dosage with the exact same method of administration (drink the harmalas, smoke after 30 min). I had a trip 2 weeks before this with 90mg harmalas and 30 mg DMT where I wasn't expecting an ayahuasca-like trip, but got one anyway. It was a beautiful and emotionally challenging experience, though it felt a bit fleeting, and my guess is not enough harmalas (seems like the low end of a normal dose is ~150mg, source).

So this time I was trying to get more of that experience but have it just last longer or be a bit more substantial. My partner was in the other room (we both see ayahuasca/mushrooms as a deeply personal experience so we usually babysit by leaving the other person alone, unless they call out).

The day started out pretty regularly, I woke up, drank some tea, went for a jog. When I came back, I prepared the harmalas by measuring out the freebase and mixing it in water with a tiny bit of citric acid (I wasn't a fan of the caustic burning sensation that freebase alone has) and drank it. Then I packed 30mg of DMT iside my vape's basket, along with some crushed banesteriopsis caapi leaf so that the DMT doesn't fall out.

30 minutes later, I went onto my bed and began to smoke. I was feeling totally fine before, I had a great experience the previous time, so I really wasn't nervous. However, my mind noted small things that were bothering me: there was a loud street guitarist playing outside (he's usually there at this time and it hadn't bothered me before), I couldn't decide if I wanted white noise or not, random things like that started to make me a tiny bit anxious. I'm pretty used to that anxiety, so I thought it would pass once I actually started smoking.

After the first few inhalations, I did feel that calm, then began to see fractal kaleidoscoping images and things were feeling familiar. The trip still felt a little fleeting so I inhaled a little more...

I felt some body load, like a sinking feeling and a sudden giddiness, pretty used to this feeling on mushrooms as well as previous changa experiences, but it was a bit stronger this time, probably due to the higher harmala dose. Anyay, it worked and my visuals were still great, I was now seeing "3-D rendered" shapes like balloon animals being assembled in an infinite factory. I started feeling a bit... annoyed: the visuals were beautiful, but I was hoping get something deeper, so I went back and took another big inhale, the final one.

I felt more of that body load, nausea, giddiness, a sinking feeling, etc. this did stoke my fears a little bit since it was pretty intense, but at the same time I was able to sort of ignore it for the rest of my trip. At this point, the visuals kept getting more and more intense, but so did my emotions. It got to a point where I just felt trapped in the infinite DMT hyperspace eternity. It emotionally felt light a bad dream, where you feel scared about something the waking you would laugh at. Even the music I was listening to started feeling like "eternity" and I couldn't escape (Eno's Ambient 1, I listen to the first song on a loop almost every time I trip).

The visuals were still beautiful, but that made the experience more upsetting - why was I feeling these things yet seeing nothing relevant? The emotional turmoil and anxiety of feeling trapped made me want to never do psychedelics again, at that moment.

My previous trip started out with visuals, but evolved into an exploration of my childhood, I drifted into my childhood homes and felt some of those long bottled-up emotions rise, and dealing with that was a very cathartic experience. It felt like the drug was showing me a slideshow of my life and conjuring up the all their associated emotions at once.

This trip, I just felt stuck, it is similar to a time where I took too much (for me) mushrooms, where I thought I was just going to be stuck in an ego-death state for the rest of my life, but even weirder, I wasn't too afraid, I was worried, but for some reason I wasn't panicking nor did I end up having a bad time. The visuals continued to be random, unrelated stuff, and I finally called out for my partner to come in the room. I was crying (weirdly no tears could come out, I might have been dehydrated) and still sort of coming to terms that that experience was a "bad trip." At this point my senses were still messed up and I wasn't very coherent, but she stayed around and I slowly came down enough to tell her what happened. According to her, it had only been ~30 minutes since I started smoking.

There was no "calming spirit" where people describe as ayahuasca both scolds and comforts you, just pure anxiety and the feeling of being trapped (normally I have pretty low anxiety). I had some random life lessons and introspections, but they felt very tiny and I only thought about those when the trip was coming down.

So now I'm here trying to make sense of all of this. Before this, I believed that trips are never "all bad" and that there's always good parts and bad parts, but this one just felt 90% bad aside from the visuals. I also thought I was experienced enough with psychedelics and playing it safe by slowly upping my dosage each time that I would be able to handle anything bad that the drug would "show" me. Looking back, it was probably arrogant of me to think that. I'm probably going to stay away from psychedelics for a while, but I will definitely be back, but I also want to understand what I did wrong so that this doesn't happen again. Here is a list:

1. Proper respect for the drug - I though I did have this going in, I extracted everything myself and used the highest quality ingredients and tools I could find. It is going into my body, I don't want any unnecessary chemicals hitching a ride. But that wasn't enough respect. Unfortunately I think this kind of respect can only be taught by having a similar experience, no amount of warning could have helped me learn this lesson, I've read about people's bad trips and could empathize, but nothing is the same as just experiencing "eternity".

2. Trying to hard to get something out of the drug - I think if I had stopped before that final inhalation, I might have been fine, maybe the trip would have transformed into something more meaningful, but my haste to get somewhere faster was definitely the wrong thing to do. In my normal state of mind, this is kind of obvious - don't force the drug to do anything, just ride it out. But for some reason this time, I forgot that.

3. PROPER setting - right before you start, if you think something is going to bother you while you are high, it will probably bother you more. I think the guitar playing outside (and other small distractions) was the first crack in my mental state, I think that's what set me down my spiral. I also should have used an eye mask, even the natural light in the room was too bright.

There's definitely more that just those 3 but I'm still trying to piece things together and figure out how to move on from this. My mood afterwards was fine, pretty much back to normal, but with a newfound appreciation for the comfort of my life. I know there's the belief that ayahuasca only shows you what you need to see, but I don't think I needed that (or at least to be taught in that way), the lessons and insights I had after felt like a salvage mission, it did not feel like that was the main point of the trip, I think my in-the-moment anxieties got the best of me and that just bulldozed all the other stuff I was supposed to experience.

Any recommendations on how what else I could have learned from this?

Also how should I move forward with future trips? Does this mean 30mg DMT and 135mg harmalas is my limit? Despite the uncomfortable body load, I didn't throw up, so I wonder if there's an objective scale of how intense my trip was compared to someone doing ayahuasca in the jungle. But of course that could be chalked up to people's bodes being different.

Sounds like a rough experience.

There are some things that do stand out to me.

One is this "not enough" feeling:
The experience felt fleeting, I was annoyed at the lack of depth.
"that made the experience more upsetting - why was I feeling these things yet seeing nothing relevant?"

Non presence:
- "this did stoke my fears a little bit since it was pretty intense, but at the same time I was able to sort of ignore it for the rest of my trip".
What were you scared of?
- "feeling like "eternity" and I couldn't escape".
Why do you need to scape?
- "my in-the-moment anxieties got the best of me and that just bulldozed all the other stuff I was supposed to experience".
What were you supposed to experience?

I need something different from what is being given to me.

Self blame and control:
"also want to understand what I did wrong so that this doesn't happen again."
Also point 1 in your list. I thought I did everything right, but I guess it wasnt enough.


Sometimes we are just not ready for what happens to us, and thats completely fine, its just going to take a little bit longer to process and understand.
The feeling of trappedness/stuckness is not an easy one to deal with, specially if you know its for all eternity
And, this is a bit of shot in the dark, but specially if you try to control that which is outside of your control and blame yourself for not being able to control it.

So lets contemplate another possibility, what If you did nothing wrong?
What if you got what you were asking for?
A lack of fleetingness, depth. It gets darked the deeper we go.
A catharsis in potential.
Eternity itself.

Thanks for the response, I guess my main worry if I didn't do anything wrong, then aren't future trips subject to the same experience?

At this point I'm a little stuck because I don't want to give up ayahuasca, but also don't know how I should approach a future trip. Does that make sense?

I'm also looking for other people with similar experiences where they had a bad trip but then subsequently good ones, just to know it is possible

Jarring visuals, annoying sensations, disjointed and meaningless content... sounds like you hit a wrongun.

Sometimes you can do everything right, but when you hit a wrongun the experience just sucks and there are no two ways about it.

It's not always a backhanded learning experience warranting deep poetic reflection, and often there's no psychospiritual 'knot' you could've untied to transform the wrongun into a goodun.

For the last 12 months I have had a difficult relationship with DMT. In fact I would say most of my dmt trips have been challenging in one way or another. Very rarely are they just beautiful and fun.

I've also been stuck in that endless loop where you forget that a substance got you there. Eternity of claustrophobic and overly complex visuals. Intense vibrations all around. Feels like this sudden psychedelic reality is all there ever has been and all I will ever know. Coming back is slow and murky. I'm not sure if it is ego death or something else but that feeling of never having existed anywhere but in the current trip is very disconcerting.


I'm still working through it. Trying to find a solution to whatever is being told to me. I'm so far too dumb to work it out. But that is my intention. I'm learning to ask questions to the trip and ask question to myself when sober again. Leaning to navigate through the maze with conscious breathing.

I'm fairly confident that challenging trips mean only that there is work to be done. If the next trip is also hard then I didn't do enough, or the right, work.

That's very accurate to my feelings! Overall what makes you come back to DMT? Also are you consuming it with MAOIs or just on its own? Why do you feel the desire to come back to the drug, during the bad trips, do you get the feeling of never doing psychedelics ever again?

I love the trips, even the most challenging of them. I will definitely smoalk DMT until I am no longer capable of doing so. I long for altered states but I am too lazy to dedicate 1000 hours a year to yoga and meditation. If its truly uncomfortable I will happily take months away from drugs altogether but I know my curiosity will always bring me back.

I see, yeah weirdly I have a feeling to try again already after just a few days. I want to go back and see if I can handle it a bit better. Can't quite put my finger on it, but something is weirdly calling me back

My experience is that going into the DMT mindspace with a "wanting" intention; i.e. I want this depth, these visuals, this type of xp, etc., has a very high bad trip potential. All these wants are ego labels/definitions which translate into expectations which are the very thing the DMT space just looooves to shatter to pieces.

I still remember my 3rd DMT trip like no other, and it was the scariest trip of my life. I also went in with a lot of wants and got a diabolic Jester toying me around repeating for eternity: "this is what you wanted right?, this is what you wanted!".

Took me years to get over that xp and get back to trying. Needless to say that the respect I feel for this substance now translates in a knowing that if I feel will not be able to go into a surrender mode, i.e. Knowing I have no clue what will happen but all is fine, then I just dont even grab the gvg for starters.

Change your mindset and the xp changes with it.