Does anyone ever take DMT to deliberately face inner issues that may potentially induce a bad trip? Or do people venture into the realm with only intentions of positive experiences?
- and is DMT any use for facing problems or is the experience to abstact to be constructive?

My bad times with DMT tend to not be as constructive as say a bad trip on lsd.

thanks its hard for me to contextualise a bad trip to be honest. I took acid heavily about 15 years ago and never had a bad time until my friend did one time (he saw satan in the mirror as himself), even then it was not too frighting for me, only i had to work to keep it together because of the tense atmosphere. previously i had always enjoyed losing control on acid. a couple years ago i dropped acid at a party full of strangers and someone flipped out and i didnt have a bad trip exactly but i struggled to hold it together because of their bad trip. So i dont know the meaning of tripping 'terror' but i got close enough to imagine. Spiritually speaking, i always took more from the good trips even though i was not mature enough to appreciate the experience fully. I am wondering what i can take from a terrifying trip if i am unlucky/lucky(?) enough to have one.

How common are 'bad times' on DMT? Do people just accept them as part of the ride? do they happen to everyone?

(i am reading "DMT The spirit Molecule" - which is further rousing my curiosity.)

There is no such thing as a bad trip, only HARD ones.

interesting philosophy, , so you think we learn from all trips? what i learned from my 2 negative trips is that i had a fairly robust psychological state but i am influenced by my environment, its a shallow lesson but i was spiritually immature. I am now searching for deeper experiences, if i take on further psychedelic ventures.
What kind of things can one learn from 'hard' trips? in contrast with easy trips?

We are always learning, each and every minute, and i have learned the most from the hardest trip i ever had, specifically to RESPECT the substances i consume because each time you open the door to the infinite abyss, it can be pure bliss or pure terror or everything in between. The most important thing to remember when traversing the unknown is to always give in to the good AND the bad, to never fight the trip, it will just get worse; yet sometimes one must learn this the hard way as i did. That is why i offer this warning to nexians and friends of mine because i have been to hell and back, and once you go there you truly know what it means to be alive!

I agree, very well put.

bad trips on dmt can be so strange and creative you would never guess in a million years. not like lsd or mushrooms where its usually a bout of massive anxiety and terror, stuck in loops, paranoia, thoughts of dieing ext... things that aren't all that strange and can be described and explained to others.

then there's dmt.... indescribable how strange and terrifying the bad ones can be. its not like ayahuasca where you get a whole lot of healing from the real heavy ones... i wouldn't say i got much more than scared shitless. the bad dmt trips are just far to strange and incomprehensible to get much out of.
in my personal experience that is.

after haveing 2 really bad ones i would never see a sensible reason to seek one out. you would have to be nuts. if your looking for beneficial healing and learning from really difficult altered states try ayahusca or iboga, but not dmt.

I've learned a lot from my recent hard one. About reality constructs and definitions of self that I've been trying to leave behind but found only to return in a different guise. I learned about how I was deluding myself in believing I had changed. I learned about the judgement I was passing on my life (or was it the Gods that were passing judgement?), the harshness of this, almost unbearable. I learned more as soon as it was over and am still learning. I did not seek a 'bad' experience; but I did seek out confrontation. It depends on a lot of things IMO whether it turns out to be very hard on you or very easy. We are many faceted beings, our knots and twists come in different flavours and different intensities.
I've had a few experiences that I've found weird but seemed mostly meaningless and then there were some that seemed very meaningful. Both good and bad in both cases. I'm not an expert, but I think you can self-reflect through almost any experience and gain/learn something from it. I also think sometimes a really hard experience is just what you need, though you won't always know when that is. At least not consciously.

but then again its like terence mckenna says. "if you've never had a bad trip your not taking enough."
so true

In the last year I have worked with spice while in difficult circumstances a few times, two of the journeys I have taken during this time have been very hard.

Personally I have found I get a lot out of difficult journeys, one in particular a year ago taught me to overcome massive fear that was causing me a lot of issues.

That's the only reason I use psychadelics is to have a so called "bad" trip.

That's one of the most important things I learned first in zen meditation practice, but really anchored in my body with ayahuasca that there is no such thing as bad/good. Things just are what they are. I learned to give up good/bad value judgments on my experience and especially emotions. Labeling the pain or terror as negative and bad is just resistance to it and a way to create suffering.

Psychadelics open up the gates of the unconscious mind and can bring you into contact with repressed pain and emotions from childhood and birth. A lot of the experience may be a symbolic projection of these repressed emotions of fear, terror, impending doom, death, shame, rejection. Also you may experience the projection of early memories of selflessness, oneness and pure love(or hell) and merging with the mother, while you were in the womb of your mother before you had an ego.

Feeling and integrating these repressed emotions is very healing, but can be challenging. The more we feel them the less we need ego defenses and dysfunctional habits to avoid feeling these emotions.

One of my guides(a psychotherapist and shaman) once told me in ceremony, "Would you rather have a bad trip, or a bad life?" And therein lies the reason for using these substances. We let these energies and emotions play out in the dreamworld in one big concentrated dose, so they don't play out subtly for the rest of our lives.

Embrace whatever is happening. What you resist persists, what you feel, heals. There's a zen saying. Pain * resistance = suffering. You create your own suffering by resisting the pain. I have gotten so much liberation from surrendering to what I would have normally considered "horrible" experiences on ayahuasca. I live for it now, and it helps me embrace the pain of day to day living and dramatically helps my meditation practice.

I think it's important to stay in your body and pay attention to how you're feeling and just be OK with feeling that.

I have never done smoked DMT(aside from 5-meo), so I can't speak to that. I've only used ayahuasca. But ayahuasca contains DMT. One of my teachers, (that I mentioned earlier) told me that he's tried smoked DMT and he thinks it's a waste. He calls it psychadelic crack that's just confusing and unintegratable and says it does not have much healing properties and it's mainly just for thrill seekers and space cadets. I may try it one day to see for myself but I'm in this for psychotherapy and healing not for recreation or avoiding reality.

Here's a quote from Timothy Leary in his book The Psychadelic Experiences, an interpretation of the tibetan book of the dead. This is designed to be read by a guide to someone going who is facing their demons during an LSD trip.

I find the Tibetan Book of the Dead a great guide to the ayahuasca experience.




http://www.near-death.co...eriences/buddhism03.html - from the tibetan book of the dead: a guide to the death experience.

random321, most of what you said I find to be very true for myself. I especially liked the quote 'would you rather have a bad trip, or a bad life.' I will remember that! Thanks.

With this however -



- I definitely disagree. But I suppose it's for everyone to see for themselves. Smoked spice has changed me. I see no significant difference in its ability to do so than say mushrooms or the likes. Although the experience itself is significantly different. The integration is a slow process that happens long after the experience, unlike with trips that last, where parts can be integrated during the experience and thus seem to be more healing. The healing with smoked spice seems to come afterwards, without the direct influence of spice itself.

Deliberate and bad just isn't a combo worth investigating.

Interesting... That's the only part of my post I felt slightly uncomfortable posting because I have no direct experience. My policy is to always think and test for myself and thanks for pointing that out. I often find gold when I ignore advice from someone I respect and test for myself. I will definitely have to try smoked DMT for myself to see what it's about.

It's very healing for me. Definitely lets me take issues and hit them head on, but I guess that's what is supposed to happen when you take a rocket ship into the cosmos and leave yourself bare for the universe to have it's way with you.

although i dont fully agree with your friends ideas and i do have much love and respect for the smoked dmt experince i understand where your guide is coming from. i have learned quite a lot from dmt visionary states, probably more than any other substance to date. ive only begun working with ayahuasca this summer and i would agree that the healing is 10 fold over smoked dmt. dmt to me seems more about understanding and knowledge than it is about healing. however that doesnt make it waste by any means.

your friend must not have worked with dmt too many times because i cant imagine saying that dmt is flat out un-intergratable. confusing....yes, but not always. intergratable... most of the time when the journey reveals knowledge or points something out that needs to be looked at in your life. there are a decent percentage that are just to strange to comprehend or you cant recall anything but by and large i usually get quite a bit out of the experiences and some have changed me forever. ayahuasca is the logical next step in my quest for a healthier more balanced me. i doubt ill be smoking much dmt in the future. it just seems that for me there's so much more depth and love in the oral dmt experience.

p.s. i really like your thoughts about bad ones. i have been thinking hard for a few weeks about this very topic. great thread folks, thank you.

Agreed.

You find what you find on the other side.

I've had countless difficult experiences on DMT...did I learn anything...oh yes! I learned a lot about fear, letting go of my own selfish ego, and (arguably) death.

Though if you are looking for healing I believe that Aya is the way to go...I've had more healing with Aya than vaporized DMT, but I've had more ego shattering on DMT than on anything else. It's really about what you are looking for. Both are beneficial.

Personally, I would never go into an experience looking for trouble...I don't want the trouble DMT can dish out, but I'll accept it if that's what I'm given.

...a waste? no, nothing is a waste. A short experience yes, crack, never, nope, been there, done that, seen 1st and 2nd hand the destruction is causes.

Unintegratable??? Really? Strange and alien, absolutely, but I don't know how many times I've come back and wanted to start a religion.

It can take a while to integrate, and one has to WORK at it. It's not a freebie. Not much in life is. One has to A) remember the experience B) try and understand what was seen and experienced C) attempt to relate that to our minds and lives.

probably my favorite thing ive read all month !!

hmmm i dunno..
Any experience can be healing, sure... but i dont actually enjoy terror. So much for the romantic picture of a bad trip.
Carefully pushing it to see what comes next is best approach i think.
So one will have just enough of the really rough stuff.