Olá amigos!
I am new to this community and as my first contribution here, I would like to report a (very hard) experience I had recently and the lesson I (hopefully) learnt from that.
Before that, it is important to make it clear that I am not new to the DMT world. I’ve been taking ayahuaska for more than five years in religious ceremonies at least twice a month. I decided to quit participating the ceremonies because my spiritual beliefs are not aligned with the doctrines of that religion, although I respect it. But, despite of that, I still wanted to get the great insight ayahuaska has always given me. So I decided to study the material in this community and I learnt several techniques for extracting and purifying both the harmalas and DMT.
My first two experiences with these extracts were comparable to the best ayahuaska has offered me in the past. I felt very confident that I mastered it and very quickly, without even noticing, I became unconsciously arrogant, thinking that I was on the control of the experience. In a certain way, looking back to my attitude at that time, I can now see that my purpose of knowing myself better and being a better person were put aside, whereas curiosity and the desire to be my own master became my main motivation for studying and taking DMT.
This slip, lead me to that:
About two months ago, I had a beautifully pure DMT freebase (from MHRB) and harmala (from Syrian Rue). I decided to jump from the usual 60-80mg of DMT freebase (taken orally) to 130mg, together with 120mg of freebase harmala. After informing my wife that I would take DMT that night, I took both the DMT and the harmala at about 20h00, while she went to sleep as she was pregnant and could not accompany me in that journey.
The first two hours were as usual, with some very good insights, strong visuals, meditation on my life, and so on. I remember of being completely astonished when I looked to my watch at 22h00 and realized that only 2 hours have passed in what seemed to be ages! Anyway, I (ingenuously) felt like the experience was reaching its end, so I took a shower and went to bed to sleep. At that moment, my wife woke up and commented some trivial thing (maybe about the pillow height) and all of a sudden the trip went bad. . . terribly bad. I started to hear echoes in my head. Although completely confused, I managed to get up again without letting my wife know how bad I felt. I went outside to the field (I live in the countryside) and started to pray. Then I started to sing a song for the Lord in the hope that He would me take me away from the insanity I was immersed. But I think I was left alone to get through that because there was an important message in that experience to me. I can’t remember what happened immediately after that, but my wife suspected something was happening and she went out to look for me. She found me unconscious (literally) in the mud under a strong storm (a physical one). Had I stayed there for longer, I would possibly have drown from the runoff, as the rain was intense that night. She managed to bring me back to consciousness and helped me to get inside again. She put me in the couch and went out to get some water to me. I could not understand who I was, where I was. I completely lost the boundaries between myself and the world, my identity. After a while, I got a glimpse of self-consciousness and felt that I was about to die. A strong feeling of guilt took me over because of what would happen to my wife. I could not forgive myself for dying that way and let her alone to raise our children. I felt that there was a tenue line between life and death and I could not know on what side I would be a minute from there. When she went back, I stood up, embraced her, started to cry, and said that I loved her so much. My legs started to shake and I quickly lost consciousness again. She told me (in the next day) that I had a seizure while unconscious. When I woke up, I was really scared with that hellish state. Fortunately, I remembered Psalm 91 and asked my wife to read it to me. After hearing it for ten or more consecutive times, I started to calm down and regain my trust in the Lord. You know, I usually don’t allow myself to fear for my wife and children because I know that they are infinitely more loved by Our Father than by me and if someday I die before them, they will be in His good hands. But while in that terrible time, I completely lost my trust in God and this was the most terrible thing I felt in my entire life. It was a terror beyond what I could have imagined. People talk about a hell with an eternal fire, the demon in it and stuff like that. I don’t believe this stuff and they don’t scare me. But I cannot express how terrible it is to, even momentarily, completely loose the consciousness of God’s Unconditional Love.
After hearing psalm 91, I calmed down and I started to feel that it was not my time to go. I was so glad that I would survive that thing that I said to my wife that I would never take DMT again. I went to the kitchen and threw away all the extracted DMT I had stored together with an incomplete extraction. I also decided to break all the lab glassware and reagents that I’ve acquired for the extraction, but my wife stopped me, saying that if I really wanted to do that, I would have to wait until the morning. I reluctantly agreed. We went to sleep and she told me in the next morning that while sleeping I kept saying all the night: “Thanks God, Thanks God!”. I do remember that my first thought when I woke up the next morning was “Thanks God! I am alive!”. All the following week I lived as if it was the first day in my life, enjoying every little (previously boring) detail of my routine. It took me a week to decide that I would not quit taking DMT, but I would do my best to completely change my attitude. I do not think that DMT should be praised as some sacred thing (I don’t even like the word sacred), but I do know that the process of extracting, purifying, and taking DMT and harmala should be done with profound respect for the purpose it is being done, with a humble spirit. If there is one statement I could choose to describe the main lesson I’ve learnt from this experience, it is “BE HUMBLE”.
This experience was necessary, but avoidable if I have had more attention to the gradual contamination of my attitude. Quoting Lao-Tse:
"Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small."
A few weeks ago, I decided to start over with the support of my wife and had one the best, delightful DMT experience I can remember.
I hope this can be of any use for you.