Hey nexus! What a huge pleasure to finally take the time to dive into your community and culture.

I'm in my 30s, living in Canada. I used to be a very heavy psychonaut in my late teens and early 20's, mixed with a lot of casual drug use. All in all, probably not a healthy time BUT near the end of this stint is when I first tried DMT. At the time I blasted off four times and it was a relatively straight forward experience.

This time it has very much not been straight forward, but I'll explain further down in this introduction essay.

Shortly after, the next decade of my life was spent not focused on drugs but instead on a couple of things. There was the typical side of life: career, family, business, hobbies. I run my own company, started off in tech/software, I love running even though I often don't have the time for months at a time...

On the other hand I spent an extensive amount of time studying and practicing Western esoteric/occult and Tibetan Buddhism. It started off with the western classics, peaking with Thelema as my chosen flavour for the deepest of dives, and eventually somehow lead me towards Vajrayana. The last seven years have been spent studying sutra and tantra translations, practicing different meditative and tantric practices, etc...

I'm much more passionate about these "weird" interests than I am about the typical stuff people like to talk about lol. I guess spice fits perfect.

About a month ago I felt a pull, and while I've always been fascinated to explore hyperspace, it felt proper to action this time. I must say I was expecting this time to be rather straightforward, same as when I was younger... However it has been everything but straightforward.

I'm looking forward to sharing in a bit more detail in a report-type post, but essentially I've been playing around with smaller doses (~10mg) with what, to me, seems like remarkable results. At the same time I've tried breaking through on 30mg twice, both times ending up in the "not-quite-there" territory. Both times felt extremely heavy. So I'm in a mixed bag feeling where the smaller doses are yielding great insights and positive shifts, but I am now rather anxious to try and breakthrough.

Putting that aside for now... I am SO impressed with everything the nexus has put together. Reading through the posts, the FAQs, the OHT, and even the questionnaire... Wow! It is a blessing for this place to exist and I am so deeply excited to hopefully contribute something cool myself

For smoked DMT, you really can't go wrong with Changa imo/ime, it's the better way to go. What i like to do is smoke on some Changa, usually Harmala-heavy Changa, until i start getting the intense DMT come up, and then i'll sit the pipe down for a couple or so minutes until the come up passes which is rather quick, and then i'll continue smoking on the Changa, doing it this way is so much smoother aside from that initial come up intensity, and you can work your way into deep territory with ease, it's so warm and relaxing and inviting and ime easy to break through and easy to work with lower dosages. I highly recommend it.

I’ve never heard of changa until reading through the nexus. It does sound absolutely wonderful though. Considering we’re just moving into winter and I can’t smoke indoors my house, changa will have to be a summer time treat. Already excited for that.