I have been interested in DMT for some time now. When I first started taking mushrooms last summer it especially peaked my interest because I started listening to enough Terrance McKenna that it was impossible to not be at least a little curious about the molecule. Before then even, I'd heard of DMT on an old comedy podcast that I used to listen to. On it, one of the cohorts recounted a story of when he was offered DMT by a friend. The person telling the story had never tried the drug before and sounded especially unprepared for its effects. What he described was exactly as crazy and outlandish as I've come to learn everyone finds in high enough doses of DMT. I was fascinated by his story, but I'd never heard of the drug before. He talked about everything in the room being ripped away and a completely different reality replacing it. This isn't at all atypical, but for the unsuspecting, this would understandably be enough to jar the user.

Although this first account of a DMT experience caught my attention and I even researched the substance a bit after hearing it, my pursuit to actively obtain the molecule stopped there. This was several years ago at that point I'd never even tried marijuana--I had some work to do before I could take that step.

So fast forward a few years past my first toke of weed, my first trip on mushrooms, and about a hand full of acid tabs, and I came to where I was yesterday. I'd acquired two doses of DMT at a music festival about two months ago, but I wasn't in a hurry to try it. I had a number of reasons for this. Firstly, and perhaps foremost, I didn't want to cross the final threshold carelessly. I wanted time to acknowledge that this would probably be the deepest psychedelic experience of my life, and once it was done, a large part of me thought that it'd be done. I didn't want to jump off that cliff unless I knew I was ready, physically, mentally, and spiritually. So I sat on the small wad of yellow powder for almost the entire summer, during which time I took acid twice and mushrooms perhaps three times.

I did a lot of research though. Between the time that I acquired the DMT and when I took it, I exhausted all of the Terrance McKenna catalogs that I could find. I listened to literally hundreds of hours of McKenna talks, read many of his books, and finally read Rick Strussman's "DMT: The Spirit Molecule." Pretty much the only way that I felt that I could be prepared for the trip was to immerse myself in all the information I could find, and acknowledge that no matter what, I wouldn't be able to be prepared.

Way back before I'd even smoked marijuana I did have several deep experiences with Salvia. I smoked salvia on an almost weekly basis for a couple months, and continued to use it for awhile after that when I was in college. It was a legal drug, so I didn't have any worry of getting in trouble for my use of it. I had some experiences on salvia that scared the shit out of me, so I figured that those trips would perhaps be my best preparation for DMT, although I did not smoke any of it in preparation; in fact, I hadn't smoked salvia since discovering mushrooms and LSD--those drugs just seemed to be a smoother ride into the spirit realm, although the trips were a bit long for my liking most of the time.

As McKenna said, "there are old psychadelisists, and there are bold psychadelisists, but there are no old, bold psychadelisists." I went into this experience with as much respect for the psychedelic experience as I could muster.

I have not had a tremendous amount of time to myself this summer. I picked up a bar tending gig, and worked almost every day. On my few days off however, I've spent almost all of my time at this spot out on a lake near town. I would kayak across the lake to where it's difficult to reach without a boat, and I started building a shrine. It's hard to explain in words, but I took elements from around in nature--sticks, logs, rocks, bones, shells, a snake skin, and the like and laid them out following the instruction of sacred geometry. I spent over 90 hours on it over the course of the summer. The product then, as it was yesterday was an outer circle of 220 feet in diameter, and about two dozen other circles situated within that larger outer diameter. Scattered throughout the shrine were about a hundred elk bones that I'd found around the lake, glass bits, fishing lures that I'd found along shore, shells from the lake's non-native, invasive species of clam. It was a beautiful sight.

I had little intention of turning this massive shrine of rock, log, and bone into a DMT blastoff station, but the thought was in the back of my head somewhere. Mostly I built it because it brought me peace to do so, but then yesterday it occurred to me that it was time to take DMT.

I'd "finished" the shrine two days prior, and left it to come back into town and take care of business. I was out walking my dog yesterday morning, thinking that it'd be my last day off work before the rains started, and then the summer would soon thereafter be at an end. The weather was beautiful, the forecast promising, the shrine completed, and my psyche in the place where I needed it. I tried to deny the fact, but couldn't: it was time. I decided in the course of walking my dog that that would be the day I'd trip. That night at sunset. One day after I'd finished reading "DMT: The Spirit Molecule."

I texted my girlfriend and gave her the bad news. Even though she'd be working all day, I didn't want to go out into the woods and smoke a drug that I'd never had before by myself. Although I knew that the likelihood of anything going "wrong" was quite minimal, it made me feel safer to have someone there. My last deep psychedelic trip was on five dried grams of mushrooms in silent darkness. I'd had a "sitter" the first time that I'd tried doing this, and it seemed to be unnecessary, so my last mushroom trip I didn't feel like a sitter was necessary, but I was very wrong. My fear consumed me, and without someone there who could just look around from a sober perspective and say that everything was cool, I nearly lost my mind. It was beautiful, but terrifying. So coming out from that trip, I knew it would be best to take my own advise and have someone else there. Even if I never needed them, having someone there who could help if I needed would ease my anxieties and make the trip more pleasant. So I asked my girlfriend if she'd be willing, after a full day of work, to come out to the lake with me for my first trip. She's agreed.

At 6:30 I had the kayaks loaded up along with my buffalo drum, a couple joints, some incense, a bottle of water, a blanket, a pillow, and the necessary components to consume my DMT. I was scared shitless. We departed as soon as she got home. Immediately things almost took a turn for the worse. As soon as I turned onto the main road, I saw a cop heading in the opposite direction. We made eye contact, and he glanced up at the kayaks on top of my car. Then, immediately as we passed one another, he turned on his lights to pull me over. I nearly shit myself. I have an innate fear of police officers, although I've never had any direct negative experience with them. Rather, my fear is a product of the cultural role that police play. I identify them as enemies rather than friends, although I feel it important to acknowledge that I know exceptions to this "rule" exist.

My girlfriend was stoned and became extremely anxious. I had smoked a bowl several hours prior, but felt completely down by that point. I did have weed on me though, and even though I carry a state medical marijuana card, I nearly shit my pants knowing my intention for the upcoming hour and knowing that I was about to get pulled over. Even if the cop had never heard of DMT--if he found the mysterious powder and crack pipe in my car, there's no way that he'd let me go freely.

So that panic set in for about 15 seconds before I realized that he wasn't turning around--he was pulling over the person he was following. It had merely been a coincidence that he turned on his lights at the exact instant when our vehicles passed. I thought about it for a moment and wondered if this was a "bad omen" and that I shouldn't go on with the plan, but the factors that said I should still outweighed a coincidence with police lights.

It was still an hour before sunset, so we stopped for dinner at a local borito place. There we ran into an old friend with whom we used to talk psychedelia often. It wouldn't have been appropriate to tell him our intentions at that moment due to the setting, but I took that as an omen to counter act the anxiety that I gained from the incident with the cop.

After dinner we went straight out to the lake. I became slightly anxious because it was getting to be later than I thought and I realized that we were going to miss the sunset, but just barely. Largely this anxiety came from the fact that the sky turned to one of the most beautiful orange-reds that I've ever seen, and this was before I even took drugs. It had just been a bit overcast that day, so the sunset started about an hour before the sun actually went past the horizon. So that in its own way was a blessing too, because as we carried our kayaks down to the lake and paddled across, we were bathed in one of the most beautiful sunsets that I've ever seen, and I knew that it'd be about another hour before it was completely dark.

When we got across the lake, we carried everything over to the rock circle/shrine. I was a nervous wreck--scared in a way that only psychedelic drugs can scare me. It was a fear from respect. I found it hard to be prepared for something that I couldn't prepare for. All I knew was that I needed to know that it'd be more than I expected.

I beat my buffalo drum for a few minutes, but could feel that it was starting to get dark, so I set it down and loaded up the pipe. I'd forgotten to bring a razor blade, so it was difficult to scrape the entire dose into the bowl, but I managed okay. I was probably shaking from anxiety by that point. After the trip, my girlfriend remarked that I was very perceptibly nervous after we got the blanket and pillow set up and I started loading the pipe.

I set the pipe down after loading it and tried to meditate and become calm for a minute. It helped slightly, but there was no denying what I had to do, so I did it. As I waited before smoking, my girlfriend pointed out that a group of about six or eight elk had emerged from the wood line by the beach about 150 yards away. They often come down to the water after sunset, but normally not that early. We watched them for a moment and then I decided that it was time to go.

I brought the pipe up to my mouth and, using a torch lighter, I started to heat the bowl. The DMT melted fairly quickly, and I was grateful for having just watched videos on the proper technique for vaporizing DMT in this way. There was certainly an art to vaporizing the DMT without burning it, but for a first-timer, I think that I did a pretty good job. I had turned away from the elk at this point, but my girlfriend reported that as soon as I hit the pipe the elk retreated back into the woods, and as soon as I settled down and laid back with my eyes closed, they reemerged and walked down to the water line to drink.

My first hit was big. I pride myself as being a leather-lunged veteran to smoking marijuana, but I was still worried that I might cough. This however turned out to not be much of an issue for me. Although the DMT tasted terrible, like burned plastic, it didn't really burn my throat, and I found it quite easy, if not natural, to hold it in for a very long time. It's also a much slower hit than marijuana, so the inhale and the time that I held the hit in was probably between 40 seconds and a minute. My girlfriend reached over to assist in grabbing the pipe, as I'd instructed I may need, but at that point I still felt no effects.

It wasn't until right before I exhaled the first hit that I started feeling any effects at all. I slowly felt it in my head and then in my body as a slight anesthesia--a calming feeling, but I didn't have anything visual until I went for the second hit. As soon as I held the pipe up to my mouth for a second time I could see and feel the effects, and I knew that it might be difficult to finish the second hit. As all the light concentrated into the bowl and drained out from the surrounding environment, so to did sound do the same. All sound in the world around me concentrated into a stark ringing in my ears, but it wasn't what I would consider unpleasant. Rather, it was a way for me to know that everything in the universe existed in this sacred space simultaneously. I'd caused the energy of the universe to concentrate onto the back side of this lake where I sat with my girlfriend, a pipe, and some DMT

All of the light around seemed to concentrate in the center of the bowl as the rest of the world around me started to go dark. All I could really see before finishing that last hit was the bowl itself, and I know that I had to stop the hit midway through the second because I was losing my ability to function. I handed the bowl to my girlfriend after the second hit, I closed my eyes, and I laid back on the blanket and pillows at the center of my shrine.

At first I didn't see anything other than the phosphenes that you see when you close your eyes together tightly in a sober state. Very quickly however--probably within five to ten seconds, those phosfemes coalesced into distinct shapes. For perhaps five seconds there were spinning mandalas of pastel colors, but they weren't especially bright as I'd expected going into the trip.

Within fifteen seconds of closing my eyes, I found myself within the "Godless" paintings of Alex Grey. What I saw wasn't exactly what he'd painted, but there was no denying it's profound resemblance. Everything was a black and red checkerboard pattern, but although it was clear in my vision, it wasn't especially "brightly colored" as I anticipated going into the trip. Within the first chamber that I landed were these morphing walls of checkerboard black and red. The shapes were similar as "Godless," but I didn't recognize any "entities." Rather, this felt like a constantly morphine, but non-inhabited space.

I stayed in this first chamber for perhaps a minute before, just like the trip reports had prepared me for, I was clearly sucked into a tunnel. The tunnel too, and I should add that this was true for everything that I saw within the trip, was black and red checkered and morphing from and into itself constantly. I don't think that anything within the trip was stationary.

I traveled through the tunnel at a very high rate of speed for perhaps thirty seconds, but I should admit that at this point it was pretty difficult for me to judge the passage of time. At the end of the tunnel, I landed in a chamber that was not unlike the "Godspell" room that I landed at first, but this room was very clearly occupied. There was only one distinguishable entity there, but it was definitely a sentient creature. The creature, like the walls was a red and black checkerboard that morphed into and out of itself. The best way that I can describe it was like the fat budah figure sitting cross legged, and slowly beating a drum, just like the buffalo drum that I'd been ceremoniously beating prior to going into my trip. The entity beat the drum with two drum sticks at a very slow and regular pace. Thump, thump, thump, but I don't remember hearing the drum. Also, I should not that the drumsticks and drum, although they were separate from the budah entity, they were also a part of the budah entity. Almost like he/she/it had drumstick appendages.

The entity never spoke to me or said anything, and I thought throughout the experience to not lose myself in amazement, but to try and go through each layer to the next. Although I didn't expect to reach level 5 on my first trip, I still wanted to go as deep as I could and not just stop at the first level. I think that I made it to level three or four. I was clearly and undeniably in another realm, but I didn't lose contact with myself--through the whole trip I knew who I was, what I was doing, and where I was. I never lost contact with "ego," but I was deep as fuck into the psychedelic experience.

That's about all that happened with my eyes closed. It was very easy for me to perceive my journey "up," and just as perceptibly, I could feel when it started to fade. I didn't want it to fade though. Once I was at a point where I was certain that I was "coming down," I opened my eyes. The world was unbelievably beautiful. It had been beautiful before I went into the trip, but within the trip, it was far, far, far beyond words! I could see the dome of the universe in the sky, and how the atmosphere wrapped around the earth. The afterglow from the sunset to my left was obviously remarkable, but I didn't really spend a lot of time with it when I first opened my eyes. Rather, I just wanted to look straight above me to the spattering of clouds. They were simpler than the sunset and more easy for my brain to comprehend. It was so, so, so beautiful.

Then I noticed that my girlfriend wasn't watching the sunset afterglow; she was faced in the opposite direction. I was hesitant to look at her when I first opened my eyes because sometimes faces trip me out when I'm tripping. When I did look however, she looked mostly normal. But it was strange that she was faced away from the sunset. She saw that I was looking at her, and she pointed to the waterline in front of her. The elk were all in the water and watching us. Saying that the experience was "magical" or "surreal" would be a way to just scratch the surface of what I really felt. It was so far beyond words.

I was still really high, but I asked, "how much liquid was left in the pipe." I didn't want to waste DMT, so there being a little bit left still, I decided to smoke the rest of it. I got about one big hit in and maybe a quarter of a hit after that--then there wasn't any left. That said however, the second session launched me right back up just like the first. I decided on this one to keep my eyes open, and holy shit, was that an experience. Right after I let out my quarter hit, the last of the DMT, two cormeran-like birds flew immediately overhead, perhaps 15 feet above us. We could hear the flapping of their wings clearly, and my jaw dropped. It was so far beyond breathtaking. As they flew by, they left tracers, and when I turned back to see from where they came, I could still see their trail--like that of a jet plane.

When I turned and looked at the elk in the lake again, one of them caught my attention especially. They were kind of far away to see great detail, but I could still see detail very well all the same. The elk that caught my attention was the biggest of the group, a buck, and he faced towards us, standing in the water right above the height of his legs. He stared at me, and we stared at him. In my perception however, he morphed into a two-headed elk. He was split at the chest like a rorkshire test, and looked at me in his bisected form. There was a great deal of power that he portrayed.

The rest of the trip was me sitting there with my jaw and eyes as wide open as they could be until I came down after another five or six minutes. In total, both of the trips lasted about 20 minutes. At 30 minutes I was pretty much down. I felt like I'd been riding roller coasters all day long, but in terms of my perception, I felt normal. I was completely down and entirely sober by an hour and was able to drive home with absolutely no difficulty whatsoever, which was good because my girlfriend was still stoned when we paddled back across the lake in near darkness.

The only thing that I have to say that I "brought back" from the trip is the following: "Love." "God." And "Wow."

And that's what happened during my first trip on DMT. To that realm I will return.

Thank you for your report, I enjoyed a lot reading it. Love how the nature is present on your experience
About the DMT taste, if it gets burned it will taste terrible, like burnt plastic as you said. And lose a lot of power in the process. Properly vaporised DMT only has a very slight flowery taste in it, it's almost like just warm air, and the effect hits really hard. The difference is huge!
Have a nice day

Thanks for that info; it meshes with my own findings well. I recently added the GVG to my tool lot and it seems to help a lot. All of my journeys have been out in nature, and where I live it's kind of windy, so the bulb was a chore. GVG seems to be the fix. I'll be picking up a lighter specifically for this purpose today.