Thanks for the encouraging words, JacksonMetaller and to every one who has chimed in. Since that first post, I have elected to go with Changa to work my way up. The reason being that the physical effects like the cannon-shot \ carrier wave aren't this screaming, rip-the-top-off-my-skull type of thing. I almost gave up on it all-together, when I put 15mg of freebase on top of a solid changa hit, for a total of around 30mg. Wasn't ready for *that* lol. I don't know if anything can make you ready.
With that hit, my CEVs became intense rolling cylinders covered with glyphs. So intense I opened my eyes. When the CEVs remained with my eyes opened is when I broke the two fundamental rules of psychedelic use: Don't panic, and let go. Instead, as my apartment opened into a new dimension heretofore unseen: infinity - and flashing blue and red overlapping fractals overlay every angle of the walls, doors and insets, I sat straight up and yelled "Stop it"! For 13 minutes, pounding my fist onto the floor for emphasis, I kept my ego intact, which felt like a bubble or shell with a hurricane blowing over and around it. I could not let go into the experience, the feeling of loss of control, of surrendering the Self; despite all I had read, it was unexpected, unprepared for, and unwelcome. The funny thing is it worked: My Ego stayed intact in that little shell, while all around me was screaming Chaos - entering into full immersion CEVs with eyes wide open. After this, I proceeded to throw everything I had into the dumpster (which was a lot) and swore off psychedelics forever. That lasted 3 weeks

Up until that point, I had been using just Changa up to around 20mg dmt, and they were basically like super-dose shroom trips. With eyes closed, the experience was very much like lucid dreaming: full immersion 3D visuals. In one experience, I was flying though an endless self-replicating series of bright, multi-colored tubing. A deep, masculine voice told me "you must surrender to the molecule". I replied in defiance: "I will not surrender - I am myself!". I then experienced an ontological shift in perspective, seeing my life in terms of my selfishness and how I have harmed others, and cried out in grief at the pain I have been responsible for in others.
After my near freak-out "this is what infinity looks like" experience, I thought I was done for good. But Dmt is evidently not done with me. I have a fair amount of experience with other entheogens - shrooms, lsd, cactus, some of the synthetic tryptamines and phenylethylamines. I am 45, and am coming off a 10 year break in the use of psychedelics, primarily to help in the process of understanding and dealing with major life transitions. I love going to that deep inner space of pure eidetic imagination and cognition. Prior to my resumed psychedelic use, I had began a fairly serious samadhi, or concentration meditation practice. After learning of the jhanas, advanced states of consciousness one can achieve in samadhi, my practice intensified, and I had many experiences of sublime stillness, peace, and bliss. I have years of practice ahead of me, however, before attaining the immaterial jhanas, one of which takes for its object of concentration "the base of infinite consciousness". Gotta like that, and you don't need to extract anything

Just commit 1 to 2 hours a day to sitting for a very, very long, time. And I think in the end it will definitely be worth it. It's already worth it, and I am nowhere close to what is possible by samadhi meditation adepts.
However, my adventure\curiosity streak is very strong - I want to know what lies behind the curtain. I want to take the red pill, and don't want to wait for 10 more years of insight and concentration meditation to peer behind the veil. A very unbuddhist thing, to want.

But I have changed many things in my life: lost 65 pounds, eat less and eat healthy, exercise daily, a good meditation practice, leaving a city I hated for a job I loathed to do something I love in a place I love living. Experiencing a complete paradigm shift in my worldview. All of this before resuming entheogens. But the biggest changes are most likely still in front of me.
The biggest challenge I have now is deciding what to do about my (estranged and separated) marriage: I am an ex-Catholic as of a couple of years ago, my wife is devout ultra-Orthodox. It's pointless to even bring up my psychedelic use with her; when I've tried, it's turned into one long fight. So I had to hide my use. I can't be myself with her. And we are now separated; not so that I can use entheogens, but so that I can be myself and not be condemned for it.
Obviously some heavy shit to deal with, but I feel mushrooms and empathogenic phenyls like 25i especially have helped to process it all a lot quicker, and to have empathy and compassion for my spouse, and to figure out if we are supposed to be a couple, or even if that is possible, since I can't be me without our marriage being nothing but fighting.
So that's my set - that, and the fact that I am happier living apart from her, in the setting of my own residence, in addition to the one I provide for her and our kids, whom I see on the weekends (and that isn't enough). But the funny thing is, I'm starting to feel I've gotten all I can out of other psychedelics, except maybe high-dose cactus and lsd thumbprints lol, and I have no desire to trip for 2 days. DMT is different. I don't feel like I am taking DMT. I feel like DMT is taking me.
At 24mg (dmt weight, 1/3 of changa weight) I am at the point where I almost freaked - it hit me and I was like, oh shit, I've taken too much! I then saw how following that sequence of thought would and could lead to a bad dmt experience - that I really did need to just relax and let go. And I did. The CEVs were spectacular - I beheld a spectacular green vortex leading into a tunnel, and then I was flying through tunnels filled with impossible, unimaginable objects. There was the most incredible sense of deja vu I have ever experienced - I ended up in a room, and knew I had been here before; it was like home in some transcendent sense. My inner eyes looked around, at this alien room, with alien objects morphing on the walls. There were no entities in this experience, though I have heard them and seen shadows of them in many of my 20mg experiences.
I felt the beginnings of ego-fragmentation, as part of my consciousness tripped on one thing, part on another, and a third observing the first two parts. It was the most intense and psychedelic experience I have ever had, and I came out of it filled with utter awe - and I know I have only scratched the surface. These are sub-breakthrough trips. I find for me that the dose-response curve is about 3mg for every doubling in intensity. 14mg is mild. 17 is like a medium-strong shroom trip. 20 mg is like a very strong shroom trip, with some stuff thrown in that I can't even explicate; it's pure insanity. Self-replicating candy bars and fields of waving gumdrops? Lol. 24 mg is the point where I have to let go of the self or experience a panic-reaction in response to the Ego feeling threatened (because, well, it is).
I do think bumping it up to 27, then 30, are next on my list. I hear that breakthroughs are a whole different category to sub-breakthrough doses, and I believe it. It does give me some apprehension, and I think before I attempt 30 or higher, I will want a sitter. My main concern is that I'll try to hold on to my Ego, my Self, instead of letting go, and experience a panic reaction as a result. I think having an experienced sitter with me when I do go for it will help me relax into it.
As for now, though, I am actually getting a lot out of the 20-24mg dose range, especially with the harmalas in the Changa softening the hurricane-scream of the carrier wave I felt with pure freebase and enhancing, coloring, lengthening and slowing down the experience somewhat. And since every experience is either enjoyable or worthwhile, even ones in which my flaws are brought into view and I see myself from a perspective outside of myself (or maybe especially those ones, though how is that even possible) I think my motives are good. I also don't dive in very often. It is with awe and trepidation that I approach this tool.
I don't care if I end up with more questions, as long as some of the ones I have now are answered.

But I would like to see if Hyperspace is "Real" or "More Real", or just entering so deeply into the virtual reality machine we call the brain that it "seems" Real. I just have to see and judge for myself. Exploration is one of the motives, but not the strongest. After the 30mg experience in which I spent 13 minutes holding on to my ego for dear life, I don't think I'd be doing this if I wasn't in some sense being called to.
Thanks Everyone. I appreciate all the feedback.
RealAwareness
Turn off your mind, relax and float down stream
It is not dying...It is not dying
Lay down all thought; Surrender to the void
It is shining...It is shining...
RealAwareness