Okay: I'm one of those people for whom it is difficult to break through. But tonight is the full moon, and I did a whole ritual. I made my own candles and lit them. I put a song that is significant to me on in headphones, set to repeat. I sat down on the floor facing a painting that I use as a portal. I smoked some caapi cause it helps. I had a healthy issue of spice in the pipe, and I fired it up.

Suddenly, the song was ending -- I don't know how many times it had played through, but I had a feeling like the song and the experience were finished, so I took the earbuds out.

"Wait a minute," I said, "what happened? And why am I standing up?"

The pipe was on the floor. I was standing up a few steps away from where I had been sitting. I had a defiite feeling that I had been somewhere, and was back.

And this happens fairly often. Either I can't break through; or I do, and I don't remember a thing. This is enormously frustrating. Does anyone have any insight into why this could possibly be? I almost get the feeling that I am not permitted to consciously access hyperspace for some kind of reason that feels vaguely like "that would be cheating" - - but that's silly, right?

hello TimePantry, hows it goin?

what is your vaping method?

I've had some instant memory loss of parts of the experience, but usually there's plenty that is still accessible. That does sound frustrating.

Weird. That has never happened to me.

Have you tried DMT on LSD?
Or a cup of ayahuasca?

Vaping may be too shocking for you or something.

I've come out of the experience in a different location on salvia, but never with DMT.

I agree with the brew suggestion. It's a much longer experience with a more gentle onset..

How long have you been using DMT?

Are you weighing out your dosage?

Thus is IME, but during the first stages of larger doses some people can't seem to process the experience. As if there's too much information or too much going on. So it may seem like a million things happening at once or even slight blackout. Maybe this is happening to you? This was fixed by working up in dose over a period of time. Getting accustomed to each dose size before moving up.

If you ingest enough DMT you will blackout. If your not properly weighing your doses you could be jumping dose size a ton and possibly that's your issue. Again this is fixed by slowly working up in dose. Using a mg scale.

Well, for vaping method I have tried nearly everything except a VG. Actually, I did see some excellent instructions here for making one with a vanilla bottle. (my advice: use a phillips-head screwdriver. makes a perfect small hole.) So I tried that.

The first thing I tried was a standard glass pipe; I found that they are typically too thin and overheat the spice, so I switched to the thicker, bent kind that are made for water pipes. (I use it sideways)

Then it seemed to me that changa is considered almost foolproof, so I tried
a) smearing melted spice on the leaves and smoking in a pot pipe
b) smoking the caapi first, and then the spice, and
c) the sandwich method.

I have also tried swallowing large capsules of powdered rue first, but that stuff makes me feel really ill.

It is possible that I simply have a tolerance, and I am using fairly large doses. I have been using spice for 4 or 5 years.

One more thing: Can I make ayahuasca with bark and dried caapi leaves, or regular spice and caapi?

If rue makes you feel ill caapi may fair better for you. Maybe start with 50g see if that works. 75, or 100 if you need more. I would add 100mg DMT freebase to the brew per dose and stir it in well. This is my favorite method I have used.

Yeah I would go for ayahuasca, or a high dose of mushrooms (it gets VERY similar to breakthroughs on DMT, but approach it carefully). I would start with less than 100mg DMT orally though. You might need that much, but there are some who need much less, and the amount you need also depends heavily on the amount of harmalas or caapi in your system.

I think some of these longer experiences may end up changing how you experience smoked DMT to

I would recommend changa. ...what you've tried above is not really changa.

So, Shadow, I just went and read much further into the Changa section here. I am still a little confused. When you say "real" changa, do you mean the kind where you dissolve the spice in alcohol and then infuse the leaves? Or what? It seems that there are many ways to go. And I personally know absolutely nobody who is into any of this at all, so I never get any chance to talk to people about it. Thanks.

Yeah, just makes it easier to smoke for some.

I appear to have the beginnings of a theory.

I found this on a general-purpose message board:

"Q: What is the neurochemical necessary for memory formation? I'm recalling a TV show of some kind where they deprived test animals of this chemical (blocked it or whatever) and the animals could not remember a maze.

A: Glutamate in parts of the hippocampus, probably, disrupting long term potentiation. You can't really deprive animals of that without killing them, but chemicals can block it in some way."

Then I found this on the Wiki page on glutamate:

"The drug phencyclidine (more commonly known as PCP) antagonizes glutamic acid non-competitively at the NMDA receptor. For the same reasons, dextromethorphan and ketamine also have strong dissociative and hallucinogenic effects."

DMT is also classed as a dissociative, although of course it's chemically very different from the drugs listed above.

Perhaps these broadly different drugs all act on more or less the same subsystem in your brain. So, I'm guessing that massive doses possibly interfere with the glutamine process, so I can't form long-term memory.

Hey TimePantry , so when you dissolve spice and infuse leaves, this is called "DMT enhanced leaf". Now, when you dissolve MAOI (harmalas) as well into the leaf, this is now "changa" (actually, you don't necessarily have to dissolve the harmalas, it can be mixed as freebase onto the leaf, it's personal preference)

The difference between "DMT enhanced leaf" and "Changa", is that Changa will allow a longer administrative window, and longer duration of the experience, making it easier to navigate.

Thanks, Shadow. So I can't do that with caapi leaves, I'd have to get some harmaline, right?

I have had similar experiences. Sometimes its like that, like total mind f*&k and here you are and there you were. Sometimes I go through spells where the breakthrough and great trip experience just doesn't happen. Other times the breakthrough and the trip is amazing. I would say roll with it without too many expectations and take what it gives you. I also go through spells when all the trips are great. I think its just the human mind and the human experience that rules. In such short time with smoked spice, I think we just need to prepare as you are already doing, let it do its bidding, and bless the experience on the comedown.
For me, I find that if I think of it as a normal experience that I want to do, and I roll with it and don't expect too much that if the trip isn't amazing its no big deal as there will be more trips, and I can always smoke 420 or something. When it is an amazing breakthrough there is nothing like it!

Caapi leaves work great on their own or you can brew 10g of leaves and evaporate it onto 1g of leaf for a 10x extract.

Well, I have things happen like this: I will be sitting in my chair, head on my chest just like when I have been sitting going through a long involved train of thought, and as I come to, I will be thinking "--but that won't work because we... we... what?"

Or "--so we have to get the <blank> to <blankey blank> ... uhhh"

Or, just as I come back to full consciousness, I will utter what I know is my latest response in a long conversation, and as my mind pours back into my body I will get that feeling of "uh oh, I'm not going to remember this" and immediately I begin to fight to hang onto the memory but it is already too late.

As an experiment, I am going to try ingesting a fair amount of glutamate via soy sauce in water (I have already begun) and see if it has any effect. Although, if I understand the science correctly, an antagonist blocks a given substance by messing with its receptors; so it may not work.

I'll let you know.