It was August 2014. I had been visiting some very good friends (Let's call him B and his wife, J) of mine for the weekend attending a small psytrance party. After the party had ended, we found ourselves back at their house and B disappears upstairs for a bit and brings back a large biscuit tin. Jokingly, I ask if we're going to be eating cookies now and he responds "You could say that."
B sits down, makes himself comfortable and opens up his tin. Inside is a small box with a plastic bag in it and a glass smoking pipe wrapped in bubble wrap. "We're going to smoke some changa" he says. I immediately get butterflies in my stomach and become a bit nervous. I had read about DMT and Changa before and I was always curious about it but never found myself in the possession of some nor been in a situation where I could smoke it. Until now.
B hands me the packet of changa and says I should give it a good sniff. I'm quite experienced with smoking weed so opening up a small bag to smell the product wasn't alien to me. However, the scent of this was. The herb almost looked black it was so saturated, the scent was incredibly pungent and almost curled my nose hairs. "Phew!". I hand it back to B as he chuckles to himself. He opens the bag, loads up the pipe and hands it to me with a lighter. "You first."
I take a deep breath to clear my lungs and my head. Ignite the lighter, bring the flame close enough to the cone to just touch the herb to light it up and slowly inhale the herb until the entire chamber of the pipe is fill of smoke. Once the herb is pulled through the pipe, I release the clutch and take the whole hit in a single take. I hold my breath as long as possible and exhale a somewhat clear smoke that tastes a bit like plastic. B asks me if I feel anything. I look at my hand and it begins to turn grey as I feel my heart rate increase. "I think so..." B says "OK," takes the pipe and lighter from me and says "Lie back and close your eyes."
I lay back, close my eyes and I have this immediate sensation of being propelled forward at an intense speed. An explosion of light occurs behind my closed eyes and the most beautifully detailed kaleidoscopic geometric fractals form in the centre of my vision that get more enormous the closer I move to them. Patterns and tapestries of metallic blues, greens, oranges and yellows all begin to hurtle towards me as I weightlessly fly through this space. I tilt my head left and right, and the direction of these patterns change bearing and orientation. I raise my hands and the air beneath my palms has sentience and weight which I can feel and manipulate.
What I hear... is just beautiful. I hear the wind slowly breezing in from the window behind me. However, this wind is female. It is singing to me in whispering hushes. Cool. Calming. Reassuring. Enveloping me in comfort. I breathe deeply and the sensation of my lungs filling with air changes the visuals I see to a blue circular pattern that enlarges and takes up my entire field of view. As I draw closer to the centre of this circular pattern, I hear a voice giggling. It isn't a single voice though, it sounds like a choir of voices all giggling in unison but coming from a single source. This is the wind. It's happy for me to be here. So happy. Giggling from excitement. Giddy.
After what seems like forever, I open my eyes and two great columns of light dissect my vision in each eye. Every single thing I see is reduced to basic colours and shapes. I can make out the basic outline and shape of the couch across from me where J is sitting. I look at her in awe and fascination as her warm smile just glows at me. She gives me a wink and the light catching her eye make-up explodes into a trillion beautiful fractals. Her golden hair is glowing and forms a halo around her.
I look to my left where the room is dimmer and I can clearly see the line that divides the bright light from the dim. I'm trying to comprehend this concept being presented before me but the one thing that stands out to me the most is this clear and distinct dissection of light. This division. The light begins to have an effect on my skin and it feels as if I'm being sunburnt - this becomes too intense so I close my eyes again.
This time, I see what looks like an orgy of rainbow coloured slinkies merging into each other and congealing into an amorphous mass and then just exploding into a chaotic eruption of colour and then merging in on itself to repeat this process again and again. After a while, the ball separates into this pillar-like structure that I travel in parallel to at hyper-speed. The patterns begin to slowly decrease in form, colour and intensity.
I open my eyes and B is sitting next to J. He says "And? How was that?". I begin to shed tears. "I have never.... I..." B says "It's OK. You don't need to try and make sense of it." He then begins to explain to me what DMT is, why it's called the spirit molecule, what it's supposed to mean for many different cultures and how Changa is the smokeable form of it. My mind was like a computer, downloading all this information at break-neck speed and I feel I was short-circuiting with all the questions I had.
I spent the rest of the evening feeling very introspective, happy and content but also trying to make sense of what I just experienced. I was glowing and I could feel it.
A few of my friends who had never smoked Changa before had joined us later and did it for the first time that night as well. We all shared our experiences after our journeys. It was a bonding experience of the nth degree. I am so grateful and humbled by it.
The one thing I took away from it was how compelled I felt to share this experience with everyone I knew...