When with psychedelics, you pass the threshold of what you're comfortable with or when you take them when you're in doubt about whether you realy want it, it can do bad things with you. I've seen people getting messed up for quite some time. I think there's a real risk to post-traumatic-stressdyndrome; PTSS. Just like with other things that cause intense experiences like climbing the mount everest or something. Nevertheless i think DMT is definately safer then climbing the mount everest and much more interresting.

I don't agree with litrium's view's on the spice and his/her posts can sometimes rub me the wrong way. However as long as litrium is respectful he has a right to voice his opinion.

It is wise to be open about the possible downsides of spice. I think if you take it when you're not sure about if you really want to take it, it CAN be risky and demanding. You've got to have some confidence to enter hyperspace, or it will be very intimidating.
I think everybody has his/her demons, but how you aproach them makes the difference between them being insignificant little ants or the great black hole, sucking you in. The last few months my lovelive has been quite exhausting, so even though i really wanted it sometimes, i didn't take spice, knowing i wasn't in the right frame of mind.
I think treating yourself and the spice wisely, with care and moderacy, is what you and the spice deserve.

Agreed! Using spice while under severe stress, depression, or mania can certianly lead to a traumatic experience. Being in the right space before launch can make the difference between enlightenment and terror.

Spice is not always fractels and flowers (and friendly entities). I have had many experience that have left me shaken and lead to a spice hiatus for a bit. No soul stealing or manipulation of DNA though.

Steve Beyer who has been using Ayahuasca with real shamans in the amazon for over 20 years has this to say:

"The dichotomy is also subverted among the Shuar. The tsentsak, magic darts, kept within the chest of a Shuar shaman, are living spirits, who can control the actions of a shaman who does not have sufficient self-control. The magic darts want to kill, and it requires hard work to keep them under control and use them for healing rather than attack. That is why it is considered to be much more difficult to be a healer than a sorcerer: it is difficult to resist the urges of the darts; as some Shuar say, “The tsentsak make you do bad things.” Thus, Shuar shamans are, in a real sense, possessed, but not by the soul of a deceased human person; they are possessed by their own shamanic power, with which they are in continuous interaction.

Aguaruna shamans, too, when they begin to heal, call pasuk to enter into their bodies. Pasuk are the spirits of formidable shamans who live in the forest, enter into the human shaman’s chest, and tell the shaman information about the sick person. While shamans are said to control their pasuk, the extent of this control appears to be variable. Similarly, the Parakanã of Eastern Amazonia believe that shamans possess pathogenic agents that cause sickness, called karowara. When animated by a shaman, karowara are tiny pointed objects; inside the victim’s body, they take the concrete form of monkey teeth, some species of beetle, stingray stings, and sharp-pointed bones. Karowara have no independent volition; but they have a compulsion to eat human flesh. Again, the relationship between shaman and pathogenic agent appears complex, and control is not easily defined."

And a bit more descriptive:

"Similarly, a significant part of the initiation process is for the new shaman to demonstrate the self-control which separates healers from sorcerers. Self-control is manifested in resisting the immediate urge to use newly acquired powers to cause harm. Among the Shuar, there is a general sentiment among the people that becoming a shaman — acquiring tsentsak, magic darts — creates an irresistible desire to do harm, that “the tsentsak make you do bad things.” Shuar shamans themselves dispute this. While the tsentsak indeed tempt one to harm, the desire can be resisted; those who “study with the aim to cure” become healers.

Shuar shaman Alejandro Tsakímp describes one of these temptations as the urge to try out the new darts on an animal — “a dog or a bird, anything that has blood.” Once one does that, once one “starts doing harm, killing animals, one cannot cure,” but becomes a maliciador, a sorcerer. Similarly, the Desana believe that sorcery is very dangerous, apt to rebound on its practitioner, and to be used only in narrowly defined circumstances — for revenge on a sorcerer who has killed a family member, for example. Thus it is the novice, the inexperienced, the untrained person who causes sickness — who lacks the self-control imposed by the shamanic initiation, who experiments with evil spells, who uses them carelessly and irresponsibly, just to see if they work.

This self-control is often expressed in terms of regurgitation and reingestion of shamanic power. Anong the Shuar, after a month of apprenticeship, a tsentsak comes out of the apprentice’s mouth. The apprentice must resist the temptation to use this dart to harm his enemies; in order to become a healing shaman, the apprentice must swallow what he himself has regurgitated. Among the Canelos Quichua, the master coughs up spirit helpers in the form of darts, which the apprentice swallows; here, too, the darts come out of the apprentice’s body and tempt him to use them against his enemies; again, the apprentice must avoid the temptation and reswallow the darts, for only in this way can he become a healer.

This self-control is sometimes also put in terms of turning down gifts from the spirits. The spirits of the plants may offer the apprentice great powers and gifts that can cause harm. If the apprentice is weak and accepts them, he will become a sorcerer. Such gifts might include phlegm which is red, or bones, or thorns, or razor blades. Only later will the spirits present the apprentice with other and greater gifts — the gifts of healing and of love magic.

Self-control is thus central. It is difficult to control lust and abstain from sorcery; even experienced shamans must work hard to maintain control over their powers, which are often conceptualized as having their own volitions.The pathogenic objects that are kept within the shaman’s body, often embedded in some phlegm- or saliva-like substance, are also in some sense autonomous, alive, spirits, sometimes with their own needs and desires, including a need for nourishment, often supplied by tobacco. If not fed properly, they can turn on their possessor, or seek their food elsewhere.

The magic darts kept within the chest of a Shuar shaman, for example, are living spirits, who can control the actions of a shaman who does not have sufficient self-control. The magic darts want to kill, and it requires hard work to keep them under control and use them for healing rather than attack. Similarly, the Parakanã of Eastern Amazonia believe that shamans possess pathogenic agents that cause sickness, called karowara. When animated by a shaman, karowara are tiny pointed objects; inside the victim’s body, they take the concrete form of monkey teeth, some species of beetle, stingray stings, and sharp-pointed bones. Karowara have no independent volition; but they have a compulsion to eat human flesh.

In this way, the pathogenic objects hidden within the shaman's body enact the Amazonian belief in innate human aggressiveness. To be a healer is to keep this powerful force in check by great effort."



Now Ayahuasca is just DMT with a MAO inhibitor so if you look closely at what this guy is saying even the love and light Shaman healers are possesed with bad shit, the just learn how to use there self control to fight the urge to kill things. And what about freebasing pure DMT then? Stuff that most Shamans don't even do. Do you really know what is happening or what you are inviting? Do you understand the spirit world, whats happening to you in these realms or how to navigate them in the slightest or what you come back with?

Some of you are still looking at this stuff from a 20th Century Freudian/Jungian angle or a purely scientific angle. "Oh it's ll in the mind, there is no evil or danger, good and evil don't exist, the spirits are just a part of you, you come back don't you?"

Why don't you take off the DMT rose tinted glasses and look at what experianced and knowledgable shamans have to say about it all.

The first thing i would have to say to this, as well as others participating on this forum is this;there is no certainty on the existence of god or otherdimensional realities. Never ever has the existence or non-existence of god been proved and never ever in recorded history, heve there been phenomena that could only be explained by unworldly realities such as the existence of god.
I, as well as others do not look at DMT through rose-tinted glasses. We are well aware of the fact DMT use is not entirely without risk, as mentioned in this single thread alone.
So it may be that 'evil' beings exist in other realities, but this may be completely untrue as well and the idea that such perceptions might be just created by the brain is in no way ridicule or even naïve. The fact that somebody else says this is not so is not a valid argument of the contrary and this fact remains if this somebody lives in the amazonian region and also, if this person lived a thousand years ago, does not make it a more valid argument.
Right and wrong are terms, i think denounced by nobody on this forum.
Yet the existence of develish creatures is disputed, wich is reasonable. And then, even if develish beings would indeed exist there is another point to be made. We human beings are never defenceless against any evil, let alone perceptions of evil. Whether they exist or not, there is no reason why you would have to let these phenomena enter your world. There is no obligation to let anything evil into your live and there is no reason why you wouldn't have any choice in these matters. If evil entities exist, they can only have power over you if you willingly allow them to, even if it may seem for you that this is not so. How could anything evil have power over you if you wouldn't want anything evil to happen and if your desires are desires for good things? Nobody and nothing can decide wich are the things you want and wich are the things you don't want, so the powers of anything evil to gain any control over your soul or to force any acces into your life are fairly limited.
Our souls are no prey to anything. We could be eaten by tigers and occasionally this happens. People can wish us harm and occasionally this happens too (although you would have to admit that in spite of everything humans are more tended toward loving and caring then towards hating and killing, seeing how we came this far, being with almost 7000.000.000 of us) but in order to wish harm to our very souls, our full coöperation would be needed. I have heard of men who would rather kill themselves, then to be forced killing others in a war and we all have heard of guys like Nelson Mandela, demonstrating this very same principle; You have the choice not to give in to any evil.

This is far from the truth.

Ayahuasca is a complex combination of MAOI's that are psychoactive in their own right as well as DMT, sometimes 5-meo-dmt, and DMT-N-Oxide, (DMT N-Oxide is never quantified in any analysis that I have seen which may be the reason for the low DMT content of Amazonian brews) and a myriad of other plant chemicals including any admixture plants (Toe for example)that are added. A Caapi only brew can be very intense, very healing, and can bring visions without any DMT component.

Try using a pharmaceutical MAOI with DMT. It will not bring you the feeling of the plant based brew and has been described by many as "empty".

Ayahuasca to many, is much, much more than orally active DMT. The vine is said to contain a spirit, and this I believe whole-heartedly. After quite a few strong ayahuasca dreams I believe that she guides and focuses the dream. Regardless if you believe the spirit side of ayahuasca, pharmalogically it is far from being just DMT with a MAO inhibitor.

Hyperspace is awkward for the human mind; though sometimes one may harmonize with it, this can easily be offset. The visits can always be rewarding if you maintain a healthy and open perception. I tend to look back on my worst trips as my best.

Not a one of you can say that you haven't learned anything from DMT. DMT isn't going to offer life-lessons or precognition or enlightenment, but it does allow you to perceive in ways that you are not otherwise able. It offers a huge amount of abstract information in a vivid form that you simply cannot ignore--attempting to do so may only result in trauma. Whether you've drawn meaning out of it or even vividly remember it is of little consequence; it still happened inside of your head, and you will always have that physical--perhaps subconscious--memory available. Perhaps it's better that it's so difficult to consciously access. Perhaps this is the best way to integrate the experience into your life--to actually learn from it.

In the short, these experiences will always be with you, but in what manner they manifest is entirely up to you.

this IS not normal anymore, i had my ass handed to me last night springboarding off of some cappi. the single most fearful experience of my life, not the imagery but just the feeling of fear. At one point, i forgot that i had even smoked spice and was what the hell, why am i in this space? This progressed to the feeling like i was destroying everything that was around where i was sitting, only to come back and find everything fine.

Now some may interpret that as a "bad trip" but it was still a learning experience. I dont know if i will ever feel that afraid again.

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DMT is like fire, it can warm you or it can burn you. Swim has had glowing positive experiences and had frightening negative ones. They have all brought about introspection and that is always good. Swim agrees that to much spice can leave one drained and foggy for a few days. But so can too much MJ for the unseasoned user. The lesson there is 'know how much is too much'. In swims' opinion daily use is way, way too much. Once or twice a week is plenty. It gives time to integrate the experience and for swims' chemistry to balance out. Yes, swim has read all about the mao and serotenergic systems that handle and breakdown the spice but swim just needs a while between blasts. To each there own.

Litrium, spicers fall into three distinct groups. The 'its all in your head' group, the 'it really real group' and those that are 'on the fence awaiting more information' group. I see by your posts(including a reply to one of mine) you are in the 'really real' group. That is fine. Just remember that the 'in your head' group are typically those who have chemistry background and have tried many different tryptamines and can subjectively weigh their respective effects on concsiousness. Swim is on the fence between logic and experience. One also finds that many positive experiences come from the 'real' camp while the negatives seem to elicit replies from the 'head' group.

These forums are a step towards a 'consensus' of spice reality. Unfortunately, language is all most of us currently have to describe what goes on there. Artists have a much broader medium but only a few do it justice; Grey, Brown and maybe a few others whose last names are also colors. Anyway, real, not real. Until it is sorted out(not any time soon, IMHO) it is subjective and personal.

Whew. Rant over.

SWIM agrees, he doesn't have a session more than once a week, often not for a couple of weeks. In a session he may go a few times, depending on how he's feeling. That feels right for him, and he personally feels that daily use could generate too much to think about.


My observations made me think the opposite- the 'all in your head' camp seem to have few negative trips, while some people who think it's real can start getting distressed about negative entities and being attacked etc. I would propose that a buddhist-esque attitude that 'nothing is real' seems to work to protect from negative experiences, whereas going down the road of 'cosmic darts' and similar superstitions is just asking for trouble. But whatever floats your boat.

I had the exact same experience. I fully believed I was god at the time, and the physical plane is the matrix I created to pass time, or for some form of amusement. Awe inspiring to say the least.

Rant on man!!

Well put!
And I'm with you, I understand the chemical side enough to base most of my opinions there, but have had way too many experiences that involved things/beings/entities that were interacting with me & just seemed too conscious to be chemical.

In the end I would guess both sides are correct.
Eventually either science will lead to explaining the spiritual/metaphysical.
Or the spiritual/metaphysical will explain itself & science won't have to..


WS

Nice ranting; complete agreement over here.

SWIM feels as though it is nearly impossible (for him, in any case) to approach this substance with any kind of abusive posture whatsoever (and he has a long past history and predisposition towards abusive/compulsive behavior). It's just too massive, too epiphanic, too capable of doling out thunderous psychic asskickings to be approached with any less respect than you'd give to, say, a sleeping tiger. The word "recreation" doesn't fit, as it's way too transformative and he's prone to some degree of fear and trembling each he picks up the pipe. "Escape" is even less applicable, as every emotion carried into the experience is amplified exponentially (albeit abstracted), NOT obliterated or softened in any way.

SWIM needs ample time between travels to "try" and put them into perspective. They're all instructional when approached in an appropriately curious and genuinely seeking manner - and the difficult ones often more so than the ecstatic, he seems to find. He is firmly in the "wait and see" camp - not prone to mystical thinking, religiosity or sci-fi leanings, yet lacking in sufficient scientific brainpower to completely debunk all the mysticism. All he knows is that what he's seen/where he's been defies his comprehension, and as there's just no way for him to explain it to himself (let alone to anyone else), he finds himself open to new ideas. This, in fact, if anything, is his greatest spice gift thus far - a newfound sense of total wonder, an appreciation for the utter mystery that is the brain and the universe, and awe in his own (and all) existence. So, he's currently open to new interpretions, living very much in the question. How that can be negative, SWIM doesn't know, though perhaps there's a price to be paid for it. More will certainly be revealed if SWIM continues swimming.

Anyway, it's always interesting to see the handful of people who maintain forum memberships here to scare the rest of the community straight. Everyone is entitled to their own point of view, but this strikes me as something akin to joining the Taliban to preach womens' rights (or a womens' rights advocacy group to recruit for the Taliban). To put it bluntly, if the answers you're getting are too much to take, stop asking scary questions. The whole possession and soul-stealing bit is embarrassing for all involved.

how much am i loving Mr. Van D'lay and his commanding grasp of written word???

....beautiful...eloquent....complete and spot-on. the only change i would make to this entire puddle of wisdom would be to make the sleeping tiger a sleeping jaguar. but that's just cuz i got a thing for the jaguars....

keep telling it like it is Art me ol' son. i gotta get back to my women's rights advocacy group now...is my turban on straight?

I like the way he put it, I say we stick with the DMT/Tiger and sleep analogy.

I to have seen universe destroyed and rebuilt many times all were different but for me this seems to be a preveiling theme in my experances. until I was all there was nothing remained. I understood all the text describing emptyness as liberation. thought with out ego or idenity. The Atman or god who has forgotten he is playing all the parts in this drama of dream. A brief Escape from Samsara.

M.V.