Anybody tried DMT

Where did you get the drug?

Yes, OP, where can we get it?

Wtf is dmt?

I will never try it (too chicken), but I love to read about other peoples' experience with it.

DMT is either the psychedelic N,N-Dimethyltryptamine, or a biking shoe.

No. Never tried it, though I had an opportunity to.

From what a former close friend explained, the experience only lasts for a matter of seconds to MAYBE a few minutes, & I never thought it was worth it, as a result.

I did try Ahuyasca tea, & nothing happened. I was pissed. OK, not pissed but sorely disappointed. Then I went to rehab and that was that.

I would if I knew where to get some. 😄

R7, - Same,? 😁

A friend of a friend makes it. In my experience it lasts about 30 minutes but only about 15 mins are intense. The short time commitment was a major for me. It's worth it. At the risk of sounding corny, whacko, or new agey weird, it's changed me in some profound ways. If you get an opportunity, try it.

Whats dmt ?

[quote] It was the closest I'll ever get to experiencing an ego death.

Fortunately, my ego died years ago. I am now ego-free.

And if you were the kind of man I'd deign to fuck, you'd be willing to admit it.

R10 it's a naturally occurring form of tryptamine that can be found in plants and animals, including humans. It can be ingested in brewed form as ayahuasca, which has a long history of ritual/ceremonial use.

[Quote]DMT is either the psychedelic N,N-Dimethyltryptamine, or a biking shoe.

I've tried both.

R46 I'm not normally into taking drugs though I've tried mushroom and acid in high school. I only experienced a fleeting sense of fear at the start but it disappeared quickly. It wasn't fear as much as a sense of I don't want to go, but there was no turning back.

OP

Described to me as small blue people greet you as your head explodes into space.

It's the Abbreviation Queen. I think AOL dial-up charges her by the letter.

I experienced rather simple almost pixelated like and primary colored "people" and points but also totally normal people too. Strangely, some of them left a clear sense of having been real, like I couldn't get over the sense I'd seen them and what they said before. Unfortunately, much of what happens doesn't make it back with you, though at the time I recall thinking I can't wait to tell so and so about this but when it's over I can't.

Under normal circumstances, my mind could never work this quickly because it's an insane amount of information and processing that occurs. Weird things like mathematical equations take shape and an alternate explanation of reality was the overriding theme for me.

I'm not religious and don't believe in God but after DMT, I believe something. At times I've wondered if everything is the creation of a lone entity that conjured up everything to pass time which is infinite. I was left with a feeling that I didn't need to worry, coincidences we're more that that and that there's nothing to fear about death.

I wish I knew a reliable online source…anyone?

who the fuck calls it DMT?

Uh…most people?

Well, what is it called, R19?

ayahuasca

I'd like to know where to get it too.

And it is called DMT. It's produced in the pineal gland. Ayuhausca is another name/form.

I know i spelled that wrong so save the pointless bitchery.

I've taken ayahuasca five times. I've written about it at length here so I will not prattle on too much.

Ayahuasca has two effects: the vine and the DMT-containing leaves. The vine is honestly the more life-changing part. It takes you deep into your psyche and your memories and helps you to navigate traumas. It is indeed medicine.

The DMT aspect only strongly affected me the last time I took it. It was a whopper. Basically, I went elsewhere, certainly outside of/beyond my body in a sort of classic near-death experience followed by a mind-exploding experience of geometric entities that changed form by the time I registered they were looking at me, and then ultimately I was dragged into a cold void where I was certain I had died and was there for what felt like months. It was the most horrific feeling imaginable, being all alone with no sense of identity and no accompaniment. I demanded my life back to finish it and I ultimately came back and I have never been happier to be alive. I came back with more gratitude than I have ever felt in my life, colors are more vibrant and I get excited more easily like when I was a child, and I have not once considered suicide since then—and I contemplated it all the time from anout age 12 until 35.

Ayahuasca is different than straight DMT, but the 'ego death' aspect that can be attributed to DMT made me positive I want to be here to live out my life's story until its natural end.

It also convinced me that 1) life feels overwhelming but it is actually SO SIMPLE compared with other versions of reality, which are totally overwhelming and overstimulatinng, and this reality is like a sleepy dreamland by comparison; and 2) the ultimate reality is that everything that exists is one thing and all of us fragmented aspects of it are created to save it from terminal loneliness.

^^^^

And btw, smoked DMT last only 10-20 minutes in most cases, while ayahuasca lasts about six hours for most people, with one spectacular DMT phase and one "10 years of therapy in one night" phase attributed to the ayahuasca/Banisteriopsis caapi vine.

Ayahuasca means vine of the dead/soul/spirit. The vine is the soulful part of the experience and the DMT-containing leaves add visual fireworks and potentially a breakthrough psychdelic experience that involves ego death. (Look that up to understand what it means; it's a term commonly used to explain a common phenomenon from strong psychedelic experiences.)

r24 - that's what i've always believed - what your last paragraph said. We are all pieces of a whole...your description of "fragmented aspects" is a good one as well.

And I've never taken DMT/ayahuasca. But I want to.

I do, too. I'm a little afraid of the dark part, tho -- even though I know it's part of the light.

Where can one go to have this experience with a guide or nurse? I do not do well with out-of-control experiences.

R27 The feeling of loneliness only set in when I realized that "I," as everything in one, had no company. I realized everyone I have ever known or known of is basically one tiny drop of the same entity, and there is no other entity. I realized that as comforting as it is to feel (as one does with psychedelics) that "everything is one," there is a terror of a flip side to that realization. It's like, ultimately, we are an entity in solitary confinement that out of desperation became schizophrenic to keep itself company. That was really horrifying to me and it definitely makes me want to stay plugged into this dreamy reality for as long as I can.

^p.s. I am the last person on earth to want a psychedelic experience but this sounds helpful.

R29 You need to identify what you want to experience.

There are many ayahuasca centers in Latin America where shamans will administer it and should protect you. It is considered medicine, not a recreational drug. It is not "fun" by most measures, although ecstatic experiences are common.

Smoked DMT is strictly recreational, done for personal entertainment purposes. It is not considered therapeutic and you'd need to find a local recreational drug culture to do it.

If the doors of perception were cleansed ...

Thank you, R32

I also watched a docu where they do ayahuasca retreats in FL. However, in watching that docu, somebody either ended up being transferred to the hospital or dying. I can't recall the name of the docu (it wasn't the Chelsea Handler special), but I'm pretty sure it was on Netflix. Not sure if still on there.

Is ayahuasca the same thing? If so, several times.

I think the shaman is there to pull you back if you start having a really bad trip. Anyone who's ever had a bad trip know how important that is.

Yeah, i'd never do this unguided, similarly I'd never do LSD unguided (and never have done LSD at this point). Knowing me and my bad luck, i'd end up having a heart attack (even though i have no heart conditions that i know of).

I did LSD once R38 and had a great trip until I looked in the mirror like 5 hours into it. I became a werewolf before my own eyes.

Don't look in mirrors when you're tripping.

R39 Mama Ayahuasca made me look at myself in the mirror and the experience was transformative.

r39 thanks for the tip. And that actually makes sense lol.

Don't you love metaphors, R40?

Mirrors are not good on acid but huge windows are fascinating.

Shamans are not just 'trip sitters.' We may not understand or even respect their ways of life, but legitimate shamans are healers and they spend literally decades of their lives preparing to guide people through ayahuasca ceremonies.

They are spiritual doctors. They prepare the ayahuasca and they use other herbal medicines in ways meant to be beneficial. For example, they usually will blow tonacco smoke around the person who takes ayahuasca to clear away negative spirits that may try to enter the person's psyche once the ayahuasca opens them up to be receptive.

A primary part of an ayahuasca ceremony is the shaman singing icaros, improvised songs whose frequencies are meant to guide a person's spirit as it enters other realms and to communicate with other entities to keep the person using ayahuasca safe.

This may sound like silliness to westerners, which is a shame. I think it should be respected. They have been doing this for at least hundreds and possibly thousands of years and they know what they are doing and dedicate their lives to it.

There are also some 'brujas,' or witches/shamans with nefarious intentions who can harm people. Some people have been robbed and some women have been raped at tourism-y ayahuasca retreats. That's obviously a life-changing nightmare and it is contrary to the role of real shamans.

Legitimate shamans have taken ayahuasca hundreds or possibly more than 1,000 times and they know that world intimately and, however you think about it, they know how to navigate it in a way that is safe for the psyche.

Whether you use a shaman or do it on your own, the thing a person has to know about ayahuasca (not sure if this applies to smoked DMT but I don't think so) is that the experience itself is life changing, but the months that come afterward involve what is called 'integration,' as your mind processes everything you experienced and reforms itself into a healthier but very different way of seeing the world. This is regarded by most people as a greater ultimate effect than the experiences themselves, and certainly greater than the visions. Your life and perceptions can change profoundly and it's important to process healthfully because there's some potential if you are too closed minded or freaked out that you could repress what you experienced and lock it in as trauma. You do have to accept very dark aspects of reality. When you do, it frees you and life kind of blossoms around you. But if you are too afraid to 'make friends' with past traumas, reexperiencing them and not processing them can add trauma to your life. The thing about the spirit of ayahuasca, though, is that it supports you emotionally and makes you feel secure, sort of like a loving grandmother type of spirit, and that makes you open to the experiences in a healthy way.

r44 - according to the docu i watched, it used to be JUST the shamans that partook of it, not the person seeking enlightenment. the show made it sound like that's changed with the event of the tourism surrounding ayahuasca. Don't know if that's true, but the show was set in Peru with real shamans.

How do you know which Shamans are sincere and which are scammers?

[quote]Shamans are not just 'trip sitters.' We may not understand or even respect their ways of life, but legitimate shamans are healers and they spend literally decades of their lives preparing to guide people through ayahuasca ceremonies. They are spiritual doctors. They prepare the ayahuasca and they use other herbal medicines in ways meant to be beneficial. For example, they usually will blow tonacco smoke around the person who takes ayahuasca to clear away negative spirits that may try to enter the person's psyche once the ayahuasca opens them up to be receptive. A primary part of an ayahuasca ceremony is the shaman singing icaros, improvised songs whose frequencies are meant to guide a person's spirit as it enters other realms and to communicate with other entities to keep the person using ayahuasca safe. This may sound like silliness to westerners, which is a shame. I think it should be respected. They have been doing this for at least hundreds and possibly thousands of years and they know what they are doing and dedicate their lives to it. There are also some 'brujas,' or witches/shamans with nefarious intentions who can harm people. Some people have been robbed and some women have been raped at tourism-y ayahuasca retreats. That's obviously a life-changing nightmare and it is contrary to the role of real shamans. Legitimate shamans have taken ayahuasca hundreds or possibly more than 1,000 times and they know that world intimately and, however you think about it, they know how to navigate it in a way that is safe for the psyche. Whether you use a shaman or do it on your own, the thing a person has to know about ayahuasca (not sure if this applies to smoked DMT but I don't think so) is that the experience itself is life changing, but the months that come afterward involve what is called 'integration,' as your mind processes everything you experienced and reforms itself into a healthier but very different way of seeing the world. This is regarded by most people as a greater ultimate effect than the experiences themselves, and certainly greater than the visions. Your life and perceptions can change profoundly and it's important to process healthfully because there's some potential if you are too closed minded or freaked out that you could repress what you experienced and lock it in as trauma. You do have to accept very dark aspects of reality. When you do, it frees you and life kind of blossoms around you. But if you are too afraid to 'make friends' with past traumas, reexperiencing them and not processing them can add trauma to your life. The thing about the spirit of ayahuasca, though, is that it supports you emotionally and makes you feel secure, sort of like a loving grandmother type of spirit, and that makes you open to the experiences in a healthy way.

Weed is SO much easier!

r47 - I've tried it and don't like to smoke. When i take edibles, I don't get the high and the feeling I've heard described. Probably because I had gastric bypass in 2003 and don't absorb as much as others.

R42 I do, actually.

But I was speaking seriously. One important experience I had on ayahuasca was when it made me look in the mirror. I saw myself but I was depersonalized and even though I knew the face was my face, it felt like I was looking at a stranger.

We entered an internal dialogue, and the ayahuasca (which was like a thought inside my head, but not my own thought—strange but strangely not alarming, and no voice attached to it) kept telling me to say out loud to myself so that I could hear my own voice what I was looking at.

It felt crazy and I resisted but the ayahuasca insisted and so I did it.

In short, I observed this person who I knew was me in an objective way, the way I would observe a stranger. Plain, average-looking 35 year old, nothing really remarkable, nice blue eyes, etc.

And the ayahuasca told me to say the things about the person in the mirror that I say inside my mind about myself. I was confused for a minute but realized it wanted me to say that my reflection was ugly, pockmarked, with crooked teeth, bad skin, aging, all the stuff I dwell on. I couldn't say it because that would have been painful and because it really wasn't true, not about the person I saw in the mirror. Again, I knew it was me but it seemed like the face was a stranger's somehow.

I said (in my mind) that I felt like the person in the mirror was a stranger and I would absolutely never say such things about someone.

The ayahuasca told me that I am the person in the mirror and that those sorts of things are the only things I say to myself. Pure abuse. Cruelty without end. No different than an abusive husband on cops or a 90s daytime talk show.

It told me "You think you are a good person. You're not. You have a monster inside of you who hurts people, and you hide it from the world by acting nice to everyone while you tear apart this one person privately, where no one can hear you. You are grinding this person into nothing. He feels like nothing because of your words. You are a cruel person. You are destroying a life."

It was astonishing. I started bawling and I knew it was true. I couldn't believe it.

After that, I have not once condemned myself in my mind. I lost the inclination altogether. And, interestingly, I have found myself caring much less what others think of me and I get more easily angered by other people. I don't hold in the anger as I alwyas have, and I think that the reason I was so vicious to myself was because I had so much anger inside and it had to go somewhere.

I have told all of this to my psychiatrist and she thinks it's all great and has said she has noticed major changes in my personality since this experience and that she likes me better now. 🤷🏻‍♂️

r49 thank you for sharing this experience! most illuminating.

R47 Weed is for fun. Ayahuasca is not fun.

And weed and alcohol are both for tuning out.

Ayahuasca is for tuning in. It is A LOT of emotional work. It really is work. It's not fun. It's worth it.

One thing, by the way, people are usually surprised about is that they expect to feel intoxicated and loopy/foggy/disoriented when they take ayahuasca and DMT because that's what most drugs do.

Ayahuasca is tuning in and diving down. You are acutely aware of everything and you remember every moment of your experience. You still have your mental faculties and clarity.

I think DMT is the same except that when people smoke DMT, they report that they are ejected within a few seconds from their bodies and they end up in another universe, disembodied but fully aware. They remember every detail, too, after they "come down to Earth."

It's not a dreamlike experience. In fact, several of my ayahuasca experiences made me feel that this world is akin to a dream experience and that world is undeniably real. This is a very commonly reported perception.

So the world is a dream and real?

There have been theories, r52, that this whole life we are experiencing is actually hologram. Lots of vids and articles if you Google.

I want to see The Machine Elves!

R52 The very clear sense I got while "away" in ayahuascaland was "wow, everything here seems so sharp and clearly defined and...so much realer than reality!" and while coming back into myself, I thought, "oh, wow, yep, descending back into the dream world I call reality...thank God, this place is so simple and I need a rest from that more-real reality!"

Maybe this place is like a heroin daze that we escape to from a more hectic life in a more hyperreal reality?

I went to this place in Orlando twice. Wonderful experience.

All of the experiences detailed here really tie in with reincarnation for me, which I've always thought were true since I was around 10 years old. We weren't religious at all (never went to church, not baptized, etc.) but my parents had several books about several religions and reincarnation always rang true to me. i feel like we are a splinter of a whole and we keep coming back again to experience things that the whole wants us to.

I don't know, this was never a discussion in our house; it's just something I came to on my own at a very early age. Although I was a voracious reader from the time I could read (3) through college. My parents had to kick me out of my room during summer to go outside because all I wanted to do was read all day and I wanted to write all night.

When you say hectic, you mean ayahuascaland is more stressful than here, R55?

^^which I always thought WAS true

Sometimes I want to return, other times I don’t.

A lot of these images are very similar to what I saw with ayahuasca during the visual phase. But there's one huge difference, which is that when you have DMT in your system, you are sort of absorbed into these visuals and moving with them, and you frequently feel that they are alive and watching and sometimes communicating with you. So it's a whole different experience. But pure visuals-wise, this is very close.

r56, feel free to share any excerpts or experiences with us if you'd like. Sounds like there's a lot of interest in this thread.

[quote] When you say hectic, you mean ayahuascaland is more stressful than here, [R55]?

Yes, the ayahuasca purge can be quite forceful and illuminating.

R58 I would say "overwhelming," not stressful. Your senses are absolutely overloaded.

You know how scientists have discovered other animals can see many more colors than we can, and some have altogether different senses we can't imagine? It's like that—unimaginable sensory inputs. Like, our brain is only made to process a certain limited type and amount of info and this opens the floodgates and makes you feel like you are going to be consumed by all the visual and auditory information. It is SO fast and SO colorful and there are SO many shapes that come into being and then morph into something else, and it is impossible to close your eyes and tune out. You have to experience it while the floodgates are open and it kind of feels like you are going to drown with all the sensory info but you don't drown, you just go down the waterfall in a barrel and get batted around.

It sounds so awesome but I'm still scared to try it.

^^ Yes, there is a point of no return, but that is what the Shaman is for. If we are talking ayahuasca, you can guage the medicine so you are not overwhelmed... too much. I did five or six trips and all were different. It depends on what you need to work on and Momma Aya knows all.

does it transform intimacy and sex

Thank you for your insight, R49.

How can you get a hold of some in Texas?

What R66 says is true. I also have done it five times, and I completely understand that it doesn't make any sense at all to people who believe it's just a drug that makes you hallucinate—but Mama Ayahuasca is a nurturing and caring tough-love teacher. The theory among shamans and experienced users is that "ayahuasca may give you more than you want to handle, but she never gives you more than you can handle and she always gives you exactly what you need."

The thing is, though, that it's not a one-off. Or rather it's not best as a one-off. Every experience's lessons build oj prior lessons, like a series of courses. You grow and are introduced to new experiences and sometimes new worlds with every event. It's kind of like being a sorcerer's apprentice. It's real magic.

Again, I know it sounds crazy. It really helps to read about ayahuasca from scientific, anthropolitical and shamanic perspectives to wrap your brain around how to make sense of it. When you read and listen to dozens of people's experiences, you learn that the experience of ayahuasca as a living, intelligent, loving plant spirit is very common and that makes it easier to accept. But you can also rationalize if you have to that it's just your unconscious psyche navigating you through important life experiences. That works just as well.

R67 Honey, that is the last thing on your mind. You are just trying to maintain living in your own body. Nobody else matters at that point.

it really sounds a bit like peyote, from what i read as a teen growing up from the Don Juan books. Did any of you who have experienced Mama experience peyote and have a basis for comparison? Maybe they are completely different though. I'd love anyone to weigh in who is in the know.

I mean afterward. Does it transform one's intimate and sexual life.

r73 Who knows? Even if you go into it with intention, it probably won't happen. Momma Aya takes you where you need to go, not where you think you need to go. You just have to relax with it, or it can be unpleasant. The purge is a real process.

I have not taken peyote, R72. And I don't think I would after learning about cultural implications of it. Certain American Indian tribes regard peyote as a deity of sorts and they believe taking it in a non-sacramental way is an offront and it's very upsetting to them. This is discussed at length in the Michael Pollan psychedelics documentary on Netflix.

I'm sure it's a worthwhile experience but I wouldn't want to violate something like that.

[quote] It was the closest I'll ever get to experiencing an ego death.

I don't need to try it because I killed my ego years ago by crying every night. That's how I reached my current enlightened state.

It can be unpleasant or even extremely upsetting but it's always for a greater purpose.

That's why the integration period is *more* important than the spectacular experiences. As time passes, you process and make sense of what you saw and felt and learned. Most people are in a kind of shock afterward. It may be a thrill or a sense of wonder or a feeling of terror. As months go by, you start to slowly unravel the significant implications of the different experiences. There's nothing that is just a horror show with no greater point, and that point is ALWAYS beneficial. It's just that sometimes we need terrors to break through our mind's defense mechanisms and make us deal with realities.

Parts of your whole worldview may change, too, and that takes time to make sense of. I came away from my second experience feeling freaked out that plants not onky are sentient but some may be super-intelligent and wise and witty and mischievous and frankly evolved as beings superior to us. That was...strange. To say the least. I had always seen plants as objects that grow. It took a lot of time to integrate this into my worldview and now I still feel that way (I know that) but I also am not confounded by it because I have had time to get used to the idea. Plants are like animals to me now. They don't need to be revered. They do need to be respected.

I had five, maybe six trips. My last one, I stopped it just as I was about to go up. Momma Aya told me I was done and I purged, immediately.. She was right. Haven't done it since and that was ten years ago.

Your post made me cry, R49. Thank you for sharing your experience. I want to try this and have been thinking about it for ~5 years now. I am a cowardly and afraid-of-everything (also emotionally repressed) type of person and am scared shitless but have had this underlying 'you have to do this' feeling since I heard about ayahuasca.

I also stopped after number five. It was a whopper. It really rattled the foundation of my reality and I also had a couple of scary premonitions and I just didn't want to put myself through that again.

It's not a drug. It's self-limiting and it's not "fun"; it's a healing and spiritual life experience.

R79 Thanks for your kind words. I had never taken a single recreational drug in my life when I took ayahuasca. I was severely ill with unbearable nerve pain and I thought (and my family thought) I was probably on the road toward death. I read everything I could about ayahuasca for a year and a half and then I went into it with some fear but mostly confident that I understood it. Had I not known what to expect, I think I would have gone crazy and thought it was just a horrible poisoning or something. The first time I took it, the only effects I had were purging, a panic attack that made me feel certain I was going to die, and a feeling of some being crawling through me. I swore I would never do it again. I did it again the next night with greater will to get something out of it and it was probably my most healing experience overall. No visuals at all, either, just a trance state and reliving a lot of painful and blissful life events, and all of it was beautiful.

r80 - i appreciate your experience. I need to do this. I need to blaze this individual persona to the ground and realize I'm actually an okay person (no, I haven't committed murders, robberies, etc) but I still feel like I'm a horrible, unworthy person. I know it's rooted in childhood where we were told over and over again what pieces of shit we were. By parents that were so wrapped up in themselves, who grew their pot (not a problem at this stage of the game) but would have parties where I'd watch them snort down lines of cocaine. I didn't feel very safe growing up. They didn't help.

I'm sorry, R81. :( I can't relate to that experience at all. My parents are/were all love and support. But a lot of viciousness in my youth stemming from my sexuality destroyed my whole sense of self and I always, always thought about killing myself from about age 12. The thought never left my mind...until I was in my 30s and took ayahuasca, about 10 years ago. It shut that off entirely. And little by little with each experience, it changed me to be a saner person. I think the bottom-line lesson is a simple one: I am no worse than anyone and I am no better than anyone. We are all ultimately the same essentially but we are in a world of countervaling forces. They feel good or bad but they are really just opposing forces that are both needed in equal measures to give life its momentum. It helps to re-witness your traumas with a guiding spirit to let you know you are fine, and as you cry through feeling the pain, you also digest what you missed about it. With ayahusca, a common refrain in my mind was, "Oh, they weren't BAD. They just didn't know how to express themselves and so it caused pain." That sort of thing. But explaining it doesn't have at all the same effect as experiencing it.

You are not a bad person or unworthy (of love?). Just worrying that you might be is evidence that you are not.

You are just like me. You are fine. You're as normal as people get. You're messy and that's how everyone is, just in different ways. If you are abusing the person inside of you, realize that that makes you an abusive person, too. You can choose to stop that by commiting to be exactly as kind to yourself as you are to the people you care about, or at least as kind to yourself as you would to any stranger on the street. Would you look at any passerby and see them as "unworthy"? If not, then don't allow your mind to say it about you. It's not a sane or decent way to see anyone. You're just an average, normal, everyday person, nothing special, and you shouldn't think of yourself as a god and you shouldn't think of yourself as a monster. Accomplish that and you will be fine.

I've never read anything like this and I'm getting a little teary eyed. Is it possible...?

I dropped acid every week from late '69 through most of '70. I've had sufficient.

There's some more discussion here.

r82 thank you. i'm going to go off and sob in the corner now for a little bit.

[quote]There have been theories, [R52], that this whole life we are experiencing is actually hologram.

That's absurd and falls to Occam's Razor. It's one thing to say that we don't perceive the world in its 'is-ness' or absoluteness -- pretty much any serious thinker would agree; it's another to say that the actual worlds we experience is a fiction.

world, singular

R87 I am not the person who wrote the hologram comment, but I will mention for what it's worth that the holographic principle theory is based in mathematics, not a woo-woo New Age philosophy. It's an outgrowth of string theory. It's substantiated by math, and I think a lot of quantum physics kind of defies the Occam's Razor principle. The discovery of quantum entanglement, for example, in which twin subatomic particles can be divided over practically long and theoretically endless distances and yet always behave in tandem seems to defy Occam's Razor, but it is proved both by math and by repeated laboratory experimentation.

The basic idea of the holographic principle isn't really that radical now that we have computers: it simply states that all energy and all matter are simply data, and that those data are projected or subjectively interpreted by us as matter and energy, but fundamentally, it's all just data and we are the processors that convert the data into something meaningful to us so that we can work within it.

It doesn't practically change anything at all for our lives; it only poses philosophical changes if we want to consider them.

We don't have any answers at all about the fundamental nature of consciousness, and so consciousness is an endless void of space that can be explored through any avenue and in any direction. Matter doesn't matter to us on an existential level as long as consciousness persists, and so I think we should be more concerned with investigating its nature and not at all worried about whether or not matter exists physically as we experience it or if it could just be a projection. We experience it as physical and so subjectively it is physical. Even if we are just part of a computer algorithm, that is part of our operating system and it always has been and always will be, so there's no point in being worried about that changing because of mathematical theorems.

thank you, r89, for explaining this. It's not just some weird, existential new-agey theory...it's based on science and mathematics and has been pretty much embraced by the scientific community (for the most part).

I mean, I think all of quantum physics is weird and challenges our basic understanding of many things in life. At the quantum level, reality is twisted into sci-fi/fantasy types of explanations. I find it really fascinating because the ancient saying "as above, so below" seems to play into it, with the galactic and the subatomic both being super weird and more like one another in some ways than they are like the rules of the world we live in, and yet the world we live in is made out of them, within them, and it contains them. It's pretty trippy and it ties into Gnostic philosophy and some Jewish mystical beliefs very closely.

And why is this relevant here?

I honestly think that psychedelics may be a gateway into a world that helped ancient visionaries understand some basic truths, and they are currently popular, VERY interestingly, with high-level scientists and not with any religious leaders. In a real way, physicists are the metaphysical philosophers of today and the religious people are closed minded and too stuck to religious organizations' dogma to embrace any spiritual insights beyond the physical. That's a really fascinating flip.

Math/physics is at least as trippy as DMT once it goes down to the quantum level, once gravity and black holes enter into the equations that define what is real.

R58, can you tell us more about your experience at the place in Orlando? Do you go on this journey alone or do people do it together?

One thing that hasn't been mentioned much is the purge. Ayahuasca is a vile potion. It tastes like dirt, tree bark and bitter plants crushed up, boiled in water and reduced to: what looks like a cup of hot chocolate. My first sip made me gag and I had to force it down without throwing up. I found out if I ate a crushed peppermint after my gagging stopped and I could hold it down.

All of my trips were in two phases: pre-purge and post-purge. Two completely different experiences. Let me explain the difference.

After ingesting aya, it takes about 30-45 minutes for the medicine to work. All the time my stomach was growling and I knew at some point I was gonna purge, but one needs to hold the Aya in as long as possible before releasing it.

Pre-purge, the earthy part of the vine experience was happening. I saw plants, animals and people as colors, ideas and sounds. Nothing had an individual identity. This is where the self-work happened, as others explained previously. I learned about myself, in the many lives I had on earth. I worked with organic ideas and found a path for my life I didn't know existed. After another hour, came time for the purge.

For me, the purge was not just throwing up the Aya. It was more than that. I was eliminating toxins and toxic behavior from my being. Each barf provided a different release from certain anxieties ~ ie, one focused on greed, another hate, another anxiety, another fear, etc. After the purge, hopefully in a bucket or toilet, the body system is cleaner than ever before and feeling pretty good. Ready for the next session of DMT.

With the vine out of my system, my trip went more psychedelic. I saw geometric figures, colors, all moving very fast, like looking in a kaleidoscope. Mathematics was in everything. In the background, I had the distinct feeling a huge download of information was happening which was to be sorted out later. This is where the universal love came in. I felt my spiritual being lifted out of my body and flying around the universe. A different dimension of being. I had different frequencies of sound coming in and my hands were used antennas to focus everything and anything. I saw old friends relatives, movie stars, politicians and seemed to talk to them in a silent unknown language. The focus was on individual beings all within one existence. The entire memory remains of One being, One Life, ONE.

My trips lasted about 5-7 hours. Coming down is rough on the body. I felt completely exhausted physically, mentally and spiritually. While I wasn't sure what happened, I knew something incredible did happen. It took be about two days before I felt my new normal. Meaning, I had a different outlook on many things in life. Not too dramatic, but I felt the seeds to be planted.

I took several months between taking the medicine, as the thought of that taste and choking down the medicine I had to prepare myself for each time. And, the last time, I purged myself before I really got going. It was an amazing experience that I don't need to repeat. I am not sure I could go through that physical experience again at age 70.

[quote] [R58], can you tell us more about your experience at the place in Orlando? Do you go on this journey alone or do people do it together?

R93. Yes, I also posted at r94, so that was my experience in Orlando the first time. However, you asked about Soul Quest Ayahuasca Church of Mother Earth.

It is a lovely, peaceful place in south Orlando. There were approx 40 people taking the medicine there times during my four-day weekend. They had onsite medical staff, which wasn't needed, and they screen people very well. No one had any problems that weren't resolved and the food was basic vegetarian fare, all delicious. All ages were there, and both men and women from 20's-80's. Most were 30's or 40's. All walks of life. Most flew in from other parts of the country and diversity was never an issue. There were bedrooms with bathrooms and also mattresses outside on the ground, for a cheaper price.

At no time did I not feel safe or cared for, or felt like I was doing anything illegal. It was a positive experience for me and everyone I talked with.

My devil's-advocate take: The purge is no big deal.

Ayahuasca tastes to me like cigarette ashes and rotting leaves from the forest floor mixed with tar. And the texture may be even worse than the taste. I feel the putrid effect in my sinuses every time I think about it and my mouth waters and I feel like I might gag. All that is true.

It tastes gross, and then it makes you vomit, have explosive diarrhea or both. I had diarrhea every time and only vomited a bit one time even though I did gag and produce a lot of mucus every time.

It is very uncomfortable, like getting sick to your stomach is always uncomfortable. And then you empty out and feel relieved and lighter.

And then the magic begins to move through you.

I never think about the purging part when I think about ayahuasca. I only think about the journey unless I am reminded of the taste or the purge part. That tells me the purging is not traumatic and it doesn't leave a strong lasting impression.

People who have never taken it fixate on it, which is understandable, but, like, if you had to throw up before rocketing off to see another galaxy from outer space, you would remember the trip into space and not so much the barfing.

Which is not to suggest the purging is unimportant. You know when you 'lighten up' that you've released bad stuff that has been weighing you down, and you feel the lightness acutely.

And after two or three experiences, you also realize the discrete phases of the experience. Mine: First, you purge. Then, you feel 'someone' snaking its way through your physical body and your mind, like a mechanic doing a thorough inspection. To me it has always felt like a friendly and beneficent possession. Next, you are taken to the otherworld, sometimes with exciting and mind-twisting visuals and sometimes not. This part is the psychedelic part that includes aspects that cannot be represented by words or pictures. It's alien. And then, finally, is the therapeutic part.

So it's phases of preparing space in your body, inviting a visitor inside and giving her space and time to orient herself, rocketing off to other dimensions and then being taken into a deep dive into the story of you life across time and understanding why events happened as they did and why you never made a mistake and why you actually consented to live exactly the kind of life you've got. That's how it works for me. So a little pooping and barfing is not a barrier.

[quote] In the background, I had the distinct feeling a huge download of information was happening which was to be sorted out later.

THIS is interesting to me. My fifth/last time was the only time I had open-eyed visuals and they overwhelmed me and made me panic. Eventually I was able to calm down and I lay back and this stream of data that was in 100 times more colors than we can usually see downloaded into my forehead. I could actually feel it pulsating and pounding into my head and I found that fascinating, but then all of a sudden I panicked and thought "what if I am giving access to my mind to someone with nefarious intentions?! How do I know? What are your intentions? Stop!!!" and I threw myself into a classic 'bad trip' for quite a while because I lost trust and resisted.

But the download. Wow. It was just out of this world

And I have never thought about it in the way you described, but as I came back to myself after the empty void, I crashed through glassy shards that showed me flashes of moments from my life, including both past AND present. It was like a chaotic end-of-life review scenario, except honestly presented a lot like Dorothy sees the witch and other things fly by outside her window while in the tornado. It was really a lot like that. Now you make me wonder whether those shards of my life story may have been part of the data download.

Yeah, sometimes trips aren't really that good.

I had a bad trip that felt like hell. It made me appreciate my mundane life a little more. I don't even want answers to my life questions anymore. Whatever my brain up while on that drug was oddly terrifying.

The bad trip made me appreciate life more.

R98 What medicine were you on? Did Ayahuasca make you feel that way?

R99 yes. If you're the Tori Amos fan from previous thread, I was the one that did it in my living room. It was great at first until I wanted it to stop and couldn't escape.

I don't know what it is, so that's a "no" for me.

Yes, that is a major payoff of psychedelics in my opinion.

Again, alcohol tunes people out of their problems in reality and it's a trap. It lures people in because it makes the pain of life duller and it feels good.

I see psychedelics or at least ayahuasca as the opposite. You tune in, not out. Your whole being is focused on your senses, your perceptions and your memory. There is no escape while it is happening. You are held captive. It can be blissful but even if it is blissful, it's overwhelming and not somewhere you are tempted to escape into. It can be the greatest horror of your life, more terrifying than you can imagine in part because it is so real, and that can be a godsend if you are unhappy in your life. Because your life will feel like a blessing compared to that, and it will motivate you to enjoy what you have here and stop sweating the small stuff.

I don't see it as a problem R98 that you lost all interest in taking psychedelics and it made you appreciate life more. That is basically the goal, the best-case scenario. That's a cure rather than a treatment.

R99 I still micro dose a little caapi and homebrew mimosa root extract. I love caapi on it's own. It's a great aid to get helpful, introspective answers. I only need the mild strength of a coffee.

But I don't think I could ever aya trip again unless I did the whole routine of fasting, meditation, and had a shaman guiding trip sitter. So probably never but I'm ok with it

You know what though? Taking Aya reminded me of Sam-e when I had this serotonin forced into me but I wasn't happy and felt even crazier. Like the Black Hole Sun video everyone was smiling big but you're like wait a sec I don't want to smile at all. Then it started to just get weird with the visuals.

I think you need to be in the right mood to make major breakthroughs.

First trip: I am a mote of dust in a beam of light. I have no power to move or change, all I can DO is BE.

Utterly terrifying when it happened (age 35) now at 65 it's oddly comforting.

R105 I forgot, my second trip involved no colorful visuals but it did involve a vision that became me. I was lying down with my eyes closed and I had flashes of visions of moving slowly through something dark. After a while I felt the resistance of moving through something dark and suddenly thought, "where am I? Is this underground? How am I breathing?" and I just kept on ploughing through steadily and then all of a sudden I realized I was some kind of worm and I had the most explosive feeling of astonishment. I kept moving forward and around, just exploring and thinking am I seriously a fucking earthworm right now?! How am I thinking like me? Can an earthworm think? Do earthworms think? Are they like me?? What makes us different?? Are we any different? Are we just in different vehicles moving through the world because we were curious about different experiences? What if a bird eats me? Will it be like waking up from a dream in which I was an earthworm?

And then my eyes popped open and my heart was pounding, and I was stunned as I tried to parse out whether that was a dream or not. It seemed like it could have been but it was hyperreal and I didn't forget it immediately or as time passed by.

And I thought, "THAT was weird. I thought this stuff was going to make me see glowing neon snakes, not turn me into a worm and show me dirt."

She didn't show me any of that flashing neon stuff until the fifth time.

[quote]It's substantiated by math, and I think a lot of quantum physics kind of defies the Occam's Razor principle.

This would be the same quantum mathematics that some interpret as postulating an infinity of actual universes, one for each quantum fluctuation?

Sorry, that's absurd. As is the notion of the universe as a hologram. It's nonsensical speculation that flies in the face of everyone's everyday experience.

"I refute it thus'" *kicks stone*

Attention, scientists of the world:

Anonymous DataLounge poster number 107 has declared quantum physics to be absurd. Immediately abandon all scientific investigation! Anonymous DataLounge poster number 107 has spoken! Repeat, abandon stations and destroy all data. It is absurd. Go get jobs at McDonald's.

I didn't know what it is....so I googled it. It's found naturally in rat's brains. Lovely...

it's in our brains as well, lol

@ R108 -- no, fool

I declare certain *interpretations* of the mathematics of quantum physics to be absurd. And I am hardly alone.

Macro physics (of large bodies like mountains and planets and stars etc.), is NOT compatible with quantum physics. They have base tenets that contradict each other -- such as, that the speed of light is a limiting condition, and strict determinism. The mistake is to universalize quantum mechanics (which only governs subatomic particles) and to try to apply it to macro objects, such as planets and stars. That's when the stories -- such as the infinity of universes or the universe as a hologram -- become absurd.

It's all about San Pedro cactus.

R109 What a weird way to frame it. DMT is found in both animals and plants.

It's found in human beings in trace amounts post mortem, and because of that, scientists speculate that it may be released into the system just before or at the time of death.

Many DMT experiences parallel near-death experiences, and that could be because they may both be DMT experiences.

It's thought that the pineal gland inside the brain, named so because it looks like a little pine nut, releases DMT. If DMT usually is released at the time of death but may on occasion be released spontaneously, this would fairly well explain many visionary religious experiences, when saints and prophets out of nowhere were overcome by life-changing visions. People who have serious injuries that could cause death also may be under the influence of DMT even though they don't end up dying, and that would bring about near-death experiences.

If DMT is released when we die, that begs major questions about our biology and DMT's purpose. Why would a dying creature be spontaneously sent into an otherworldly dimension under the influence of a drug created by the body? Is that some kind of merciful biological agent to make the very end of life a wondrous experience? There seems to be no biological explanation for the brain to do that, to conserve a resource solely to novelly introduce it to a being that is about to die. That's pretty contrary to our understanding of biology conserving energy to be as efficient as possible. If the body does release DMT at the time of death, then that suggests there is some biological/physiological significance to dying and not just a spiritual one. It is a really fascinating mystery.

So...when people who were clinically dead, then came back to life....experienced DMT? This is due to a resuscitation from severe injury or on an operation table? Maybe it's the white light some say they saw?

R113...It was a quick scan about it, when I googled it. The first thing I saw was rat's brain, in bold print. I just went with it...lol.

One part of the Netflix doc talked about the Indigenous people and how they traditionally used it through spiritual healers and the healers took the medicine, not the person looking to be healed. They feel that this new "tourism" centered around the use of Aya is bad news and is going to end badly.

I want to try it but the way they framed it seemed like maybe we shouldn't fuck with it.

R111 you need to stop calling other posters "fool" at once. Your 2 comments on this thread are dumb enough to put in the 'dumb people' thread going on right now elsewhere on DL. And like all dumb people, I can tell you don't understand why what you've said is dumb.

[quote]understanding why events happened as they did and why you never made a mistake

Can you explain what you mean by this, R96? Specifically the "never made a mistake" part? I'm not challenging you, I'm genuinely interested in the answer as I'm having a difficult time imagining that it's possible that anyone has lived a mistake-free life. But I've also never done psychedelics and am pretty sure the answer may be something I can't currently grasp. Help.

Scared, but i want and need to lose myself.

@ R117

R118 I guess what I mean is that a major lesson I learned about myself and my own life is that yes, of course, I have made mistakes and I have dumb done things and hurtful things. In reliving them, though, I was able to witness myself and other people from the outside. I wasn't in the position I was in the first time around and so I wasn't reactive. I was just a witness. And I felt bad for everyone who made any mistake that hurt anyone and I felt bad for everyone who was hurt during those re-living experiences. I realized, with help, that in almost all cases of causing hurt to others, we are mostly all innocent and almost no one wants to actually hurt someone.

And in the case of making mistakes that didn't involve anyone being hurt—what's the problem with that? That is how we grow in this life. We are here to learn and we learn by making mistakes primarily. That is not a flaw. It's a means by which to advance as people.

The bottom line for me as I re-emerged into this world is that I realized we're all innocent and (belive it or not) blissfully ignorant. We are kids who are older and have more experiences but we are still in this life that is by its nature an experiential, experimental laboratory and the point is to interact and see what happens. It's the doing and the being that matters, not the end goal.

Mistakes that cause hurt often can be repaired or resolved. Forgiveness is not valuable just for the sake of letting go and moving on, either. I think the basis of forgiveness should be "that person doesn't know any better and was coping with a situation in the only way they were able to do at the time."

Some people are negarious and malicious intentionally. I don't have any idea how someone who intentionally hurts people would process one of these experiences. That would be something I'd like to witness. But I and I believe most people always intend to do what's good for themselves and others and intend NOT to hurt people, and that makes most mistakes forgivable.

Put another way, I kind of now see people like I see dogs. They can be dangerous and they can hurt people, but unless they are sick or programmed to hurt people, then they almost always hurt people by mistake when they have good intentions. They think someone they love was threatened or they are playing and accidentally hurt someone. We're like that, too. Who wouldn't be able to forgive a labrador retriever for its mistakes, even if it bit someone?

Mike Tyson, of all people, is fond of it and claims it cured him of his anger issues.

I didn't understand for 20 years, until I took ayahuasca, that this song is explicitly about an ayahuasca ceremony.

I'm sharing it because Tori concisely conveys surreal aspects of the experience.

"I'm my mother/I'm my son/Nobody else/is slipping the blade in easy" captures how you can slide in and out of different people's experiences under this influence in ways you never could otherwise. You can become another person with whom you have had a lot of struggles and understand their motivations and therefore their actions. I think when she says "nobody else is slipping the blade in easy," that's an acknowledgment of self-accountability..,I have been blaming my mother, my son, and now I have been them, and I am responsible for myself.

The song depicts a magic ritual led by a shaman and it's wondrous and bizarre and therapeutic and mystical and transcendent, and in the end "...I think I could try this once again."

I thought it was gibberish for 20 or more years, and then I took the stuff and related completely to it.

And I think this song is about a DMT experience. (At least one.)

[quote]Mistakes that cause hurt often can be repaired or resolved. Forgiveness is not valuable just for the sake of letting go and moving on, either. I think the basis of forgiveness should be "that person doesn't know any better and was coping with a situation in the only way they were able to do at the time."

Thank you, R121. For your whole post. I've thought about this general topic - forgiveness, why other people do what they do etc. I think you're correct (and have also reached that conclusion myself on a purely theoretical/intellectual level) that most of the time when one person hurts another it's not because they set out to hurt them but because they were protecting themselves or lashing out in defense or doing the only thing they knew how to do to keep themselves safe. But I've never been able to accept it - "believe" it is a better way to put it - emotionally. I know it's true. I know the person whose abuse marked my life (and before anyone MARYS me, I am talking about the kind of abuse that puts a 7 year old in the hospital with broken bones and a concussion etc.) actually didn't MEAN to do it. I know they did it because they are fucked up and because someone did it to them and because they didn't and don't know any other way to be.

But I cannot forgive them. I cannot feel, in my heart, any generosity or grace towards them. I want to. I want to be free of the anger and bitterness. But I don't know how to do it without something like this (ayahuasca) and that's why it's something I'm seriously considering, even as I'm fucking terrified of it in general.

Again thank you for your post.

R125 You don't need to worry about forgiving anyone. I am very sorry that that happened to you. That is heartbreaking.

I do think you would benefit from ayahuasca because you have really deep trauma from your earliest years and you need to access it in an emotionally protected way, process it and dislodge it and that is what this medicine does. I hope you also have been in therapy and are working through it.

Ayahuasca is called '10 years of therapy in one night' for good reason. I have been in monthly therapy for 12 years. Believe it or not, emotionally, the processing of talk therapy and of ayahuasca is very similar. The differences are the mystical and otherworldly aspect and the speed at which they work.

But psychotropic medications are Band-Aids and wounds that deep need to be probed into and cleaned up with therapy of one kind or another. I hope you will pursue some serious therapy to address your trauma. You deserve to make some kind of sense and peace with it before your life is over.

[quote] So...when people who were clinically dead, then came back to life....experienced DMT? This is due to a resuscitation from severe injury or on an operation table? Maybe it's the white light some say they saw?

Perhaps. But, you must remember that this lifetime is but "A Parenthesis in Eternity".

I just saw an article yesterday about DMT and how a large percentage of those who have taken it see beings or aliens or elves. I didn't see anyone above really mentioning this.

Someone didn't please the machine elves.

R114 The experiences are similar, practically identical.

I saw white light in the distance in one direction (always upper left) during several of my ayahuasca experiences and it gave me an ecstatic feeling. I consciously thought, "is it THAT white light? If I start moving toward it, am I dying?" but there was no sensation of panic or fear at all. I could feel a warm energy emanating from the light and it was just a totally ecstatic feeling. It didn't scare me when it occured to me that it could be *that* white light, but I also never during that phase felt I was in danger of dying.

When I was in the empty, cold void, I felt dead and it was...dreadful doesn't come close to describing it. "Abandon all hope ye who enter here" does. But at the same time, I did 'call out' and demand to come back and finish my life's story and I was absolutely shocked when I eventually started falling through imagery of my life and then felt my body return and opened my eyes. I do consider it a near-death experience. I literally jumped up and down for several days because I was thrilled to have gravity pulling me down, because free floating in that void with no mass was a horror. The heaviness of life on Earth was so comforting after that.

[quote] I just saw an article yesterday about DMT and how a large percentage of those who have taken it see beings or aliens or elves. I didn't see anyone above really mentioning this.

There are no such beings at this time on this dimension. Some humans live interdimentionally, as Christ may have done. You need not worry about them. Seek for yourself through meditation. It's the only way.

I see dead people.

Johns Hopkins University did a survey-based study of DMT-initiated entity, "alien" or "elf" encounters.

They did it because so many people who take the drug report similar encounters, even though they characterize the entities in different terms.

Conclusion:

[quote] N,N-dimethyltryptamine-occasioned entity encounter experiences have many similarities to non-drug entity encounter experiences such as those described in religious, alien abduction, and near-death contexts. Aspects of the experience and its interpretation produced profound and enduring ontological changes in worldview.

Ok, so you're suggesting alien abductions is real? Oy.

R134 What?

If you are asking me, all I did was link to and quote from a study conducted by Johns Hopkins researchers and published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology. I didn't claim anything. I quoted.

Heavy, man....really heavy...

No one has said 'heavy' in that context since 1962.

Oh lighten up, R137.

Heavy is dope.

A jester version of a 'machine elf.'

Good lord! Some of you druggies are real nut jobs. It's a drug, nothing more. You got high, had a trip, good for your. But "transformative" is your projection of the experience nothing more.

R140 Perception is entirely subjective. A person's reality is subjective. All experiences are subjective and open to interpretation. All memories are unreliable and subjective, and any given person's memory of an event will differ in many ways from someone else's memory of the same event.

There's no one version of reality. The things that you have lived through you believe to be 'real,' but the details of them are not real. Compare notes with others who lived through the exact same events and you will know that your mind interprets events as totally different experiences than other people's minds do.

People who experience DMT and ayahuasca have clear experiencea and memories of them.

They retain clear memories of them, and they very often become more content and even healthier afterward, discontinuing addictions, improving personal relationships, understanding themselves and their lives' goals more clearly, understanding what they value and do not value, and carrying on with life with a renewed ability to experience thrillkng childlike feelings of wonder and awe and curiosity.

What do you get out of wanting to take all the positive improvements and feelings away from people?

Positive improvements are a state of mind not tied to a drug you silly druggy. Anyone using any drug they love could make the same claim. DMT is not anymore special than any other drug unless you in your mind want to make it so.

OK, R142. Thank you for correcting my life experiences. :) I appreciate it! Now I know better than to believe what I know. I will instead always seek out anonymous people on the Internet to correct my worldview. This exchange has been most beneficial.

I'm sure everyone here also very much appreciates your contributions to a discussion about this topic. Who would want to read nearly 150 comments about profound effects and epiphanies and life improvements now that we all have learned that only you know what is real and true about others' lives.

This is an important life lesson to us all. Thank you for unilaterally dictating reality. ✨✨✨

I keep hearing about DMT from teenagers, there's a whole cast of characters that you supposedly interact with when you're tripping. Sounds a little cult-ish and bizarre, but it doesn't seem dangerous. The urban legends are very elaborate sometimes.

^^^ What cast of characters?

The hat man, some other grey man, and machine elves.

Different people have different perceptions of different entities. Subjective individual experiences are abundant on YouTube. Refer to the Johns Hopkins study for objective analyses of many people's subjective experiences.

Where are teenagers getting their hands on DMT? Are they paying $1,000 to go to Florida and attend a session?

R148 It's an ingredient in Benadryl and Dramamine. They usually overdose Benadryl, I think Dramamine might be dangerous. Idk I haven't done it.

R149 That is false. Where did you come up with that?

Benadryl is diphenhydramine . Dramamine is dimenhydrinate. Neither is anything like DMT.

DMT is dimethyltryptamine and it is generally derived from plant sources including acacia, mimosa and psychotria species.

Dramamine and Benadryl can produce mild dissociative effects in high doses, but the effects are nothing at all like the effects of DMT, which is one of the strongest psychedelic known substances.

R150 Well, the kids tell each other it's DMT. Don't know what to tell you. I have to say all the stories I've heard about the Hat Man sound like bullshit.

R151 Well...that's dumb kids being dumb. But I still think you are confusing Benadryl and Dramamine or possibly even confusing DXM (a cough syrup ingredient) with DMT. There's no confusing them. That's just like confusing Flintstones vitamins with LSD. They're not at all alike.

I have never heard of "the hat man." I'd say if your primary curiosity about DMT is to meet a man in a hat, that's a good enough reason not to experience DMT. Your hat will be blown off.

I never met any of those images either. However, I have heard of clinical studies where people took, or smoked, or somehow ingested DMT and the effects were immediate, powerful and didn't last long. No purge, cause no brew. Perhaps, it was Joe Rogan I heard talking about it. He purports to know everything about anything.

R153 He loves DMT and talks about it a lot on his podcast.

R153 Recreational DMT users smoke it for quick 'special effects' trips. It can also be injected, and that is how it has been administered for clinical research studies.

DMT alone, smoked or injected, is an immediate-hitting drug and it only lasts 10-15 minutes for most people. No, there is no nauseousness usually associated with it and no physical hangover effects.

I have never done it but I have read a lot about it and have watched a lot of personal videos and also all the documentaries I can find.

People generally say that they took two or three hits, heard a loud buzzing that became increasingly high pitched, saw bright geometric patterns and within seconds felt they has been launched out of their body like a rocket.

The nauseousness and purging is an aspect of ayahuasca, not of DMT. Ayahuasca includes DMT, a psychedlic from the leaves of chacruna/psychotria viridis (usually—sometimes bark of mimosa hostilis, acacia sp. or leaves of another plant called chaliponga), and the ayahuasca vine/banisteriopsis caapi, which is a hypnotic for lack of a better term.

The two plant ingredients in ayahuasca make the DMT work through digestion. Without the ayahuasca vine, tje DMT-containing plants will be digested and will not get into the bloodstream. Brewing with the vine makes it orally active. So, DMT has to be smoked or injected to get into the bloodstream in the absence of the ayahuasca that makes the DMT orally active.

Ayahuasca contains DMT but it is not a recreational drug. DMT alone is a recreational drug. Ayahuasca is a spiritual and psychological medicine, and in some circumstances a physical one.

If you are going in search of machine elves in a geometric alternate dimension, you want to smoke DMT. You may have fun and you may be freaked out beyond your imagination.

Smoked DMT lasts 10-15 minutes and its effects are literally within a few seconds. Some people feel like they are 'gone' for hours or days.

Ayahuasca is a tea that you would drink, and it takes close to an hour to begin to have an effect and the effects last five to six hours on average. Some people feel like the effects last five to six hours and some people feel as if they were elsewhere for months and many truly believe they went to a realm of death and returned.

If you are seeking personal healing or growth, then take ayahuasca. You will not have fun, you may be scared out of your mind, but you will benefit and you may experience ecstatic and profound spiritual awakening.

They are not the same thing at all.

Recap:

Dimenhydrinate and diphenhydramine are not the same as DMT. They are an anti-nauseousness drug and an antihistamine. If you think Benadryl shows you machine elves, then you probably have schizophrenia.

DXM is not DMT. DXM is a chemical in cough syrups. I believe it is a stimulant.

DMT, smoked, is a recreational drug.

Ayahuasca contains DMT but it is a medicine that puts users through an arduous, exhausting emotional process to make them come out better on the other side. It is not a recreational drug.

r155 - do you think taking Ayahuasca would be effective on someone who has had gastric bypass surgery (I'm 19 years post-op) and may potentially still have some absorption issues?

R156 I have no idea at all. I don't know anything about gastric absorption. The only thing I can think of though is that it makes you purge, and after you purge, you are able to drink more without purging, and more of that will be absorbed. So perhaps you could get more into your system by drinking a cup, purging and then slowing and steadily sipping to give smaller quantities time to pass through uour gut and coat the walls. Since you have less surface area (I imagine.), you probably need to pace and drink more and more slowly.

I do know a couple of important physiological considerations about ayahuasca, though. They are very important and the first is well known, the other two probably not as much.

Ayahuasca is very safe overall. It is after all medicinal. As a medicine, it can have adverse reactions with certain drugs and foods.

First, you CANNOT take ayahuasca while on antidepressants. It is not an option. Don't do it. Do not take it within six weeks of your last dose of an antidepressant to be safe. The reason is that it activates serotonin receptors as those medications do, and combining them can cause serotonin syndrome, which can be scary and painful and also potentially deadly.

Second, traditionally, a special restrictive diet is followed for several days prior to taking ayahuasca. In the Amazon, it is considered spiritually necessary. Some research suggests that it is also wise because some of the foods that are prohibited by the diet can cause discomfort when combined with ayahuasca and may even lead to a bad experience. Look up the ayahuasca diet and follow it as closely as you can for days before taking it.

Finally, least well known, I think, is that it's not a very high risk but there is some risk of ayahuasca in people who have blood vessel problems. It is a vasodilator and if you had aneurysms, for example, the increased blood pressure and the expansion of blood vessels could cause a rupture. It hasn't happened often at all but it has happened.

Overall, it is as safe as any drug (including safer than most prescriptions) goes, but you need to be mindful and understand what you take and what the associated risks and precautions are.

I have no idea if the blood pressure risks relate to straight DMT.

Thanks, r157!

You're making huge claims in your post, R142. The whole "is the experience real or not" discussion is basically the "does god exist or not" discussion, which is basically the "is there anything beyond this world/what our senses can perceive?" discussion. And nobody knows the answer to that. You can't know it. None of us can. That's why I'm agnostic. It's also the reason I understand that I am not in a position to tell anybody else whether or not what they perceive is "real," or to make any objective claims about reality at all.

Great info, R157, it sounds like you've done a lot of research. Is it weird that one of the main things that frightens me about this experience is the purging? I wouldn't say I'm an emetophobe but I'd say i'm edging close to it and man, that part sounds UNPLEASANT.

159 - I couldn't throw up in middle or high school, as much as I wish i could.

vomiting was very foreign to me because even though I knew as a teenager i could vomit shit up i ate, it didn't work for me until i got gastric bypass surgery until 1993. i couldn't make myself vomit, try as i could to get slimmer.

To that point, below is a partial summary of Johns Hopkins's research into users' experiences of having interacted with otherworldly beings under the influence of DMT and other strong psychedelics.

The bottom line is that the vast majority reported "supernatural encounters," and of the 21 percent who said they had been atheists before their experiences, only 8 percent said they were afterward.

This doesn't in any way suggest people "found religion," but that they went from believing there is nothing beyond their present lives to believing there is life beyond this here and now.

Famously smug atheist Christopher Dawkins likes to sneer at anyone who is not an atheist intent on converting people into believing our world is the only world, and Graham Hancock has publicly challenged him to take ayahuasca and report back afterward about whether he still believes that.

He might. Plenty do. But the point to me is that the experiences are subjective and each person has their own respective experiences and draw their own conclusions as a result.

From my vantage point, atheists like Dawkins are proselytizing activists whose mindsets are similar to Christian and Islamic fantatics: they're obsessed with making others believe what they believe.

I've never thought of myself as an atheist or as a person who believes in God. "God" is ultimately a political term and different people have greatly different connotations fo God.

I was agnostic before ayahuasca, not knowing everything there is to know, and I am agnostic now, not knowing all their is to know. I certainly have had experiences that feel "more real than reality" (every time on ayahuasca, and this perception cannot be conveyed in words), and I saw and encountered and experienced events I could not even have imagined in dreams. So I would say I came out an agnostic person who believes that being extends far beyond a life in a meaty human body on this weighty Earth. I do know that now and I have no doubt about it. Before ayahuasca, if I took a polygraph, my answers would all have been "how would I know" and now some questions (ex, "Is there life beyond life on Earth?") would have to be answered confidently "Yes."

[quote] Through anonymous online surveys, 3,476 people reported supernatural encounters that they had while on psilocybin (magic mushrooms), LSD, ayahuasca, or DMT. An additional 809 people reported they had non-drug encounters with supernatural or divine forces, but the survey did not gather information on what, if anything, apparently sparked their experiences.

[quote] One of the paper’s most striking findings is that people who identified as atheists dropped that identity after a psychedelic encounter with something that felt greater than themselves. Twenty-one percent of the psychedelic users reported being atheists before their experience, while only 8 percent reported being atheists after. The biggest absolute change in atheist status occurred after mystical encounters induced by DMT: 25 percent were atheists before their experience, versus only 7 percent after.

Wow, you druggies sure like to talk a lot. Half of these post look like a manifesto.

r162 - do you feel better about yourself now that you've contributed nothing but negativity to the thread? If you don't like the subject matter, why visit the thread? Nobody required you to read it.

I like druggies trippin R163. Convincing themselves getting high changed their life.

[quote]The biggest absolute change in atheist status occurred after mystical encounters induced by DMT: 25 percent were atheists before their experience, versus only 7 percent after.

That's fascinating, R161. Fewer than 1 in 3 atheists came out of a DMT experience as still-atheists. That's a huge number.

Richard Dawkins should do it. In good faith, too. He should do it the way they do it in the Amazon, more than once, the diet, the shamans, the whole shebang. Whether or not it changes his mind it would be interesting to hear what someone like that (and I agree with you, people like him are the same as religious fanatics to me - convinced they know things they can't know, and determined to recruit others) had to say about it.

Thank you for your whole post, I appreciate your efforts.

Oh and one more thing I wanted to point out, just something trivial I've noticed about guys like Joe Rogan - i.e. those internet manosphere types who seem to have taken to ayahuasca the way they previously took to MMA and light misogyny. So, all these guys talk rapturously about their experiences, how it changed them profoundly, made them see how ego-driven they are, how insignificant, how they haven't been giving their loved ones enough time etc. (I've specifically heard this from some of them). But none of them SEEM different. I understand I don't have access to their hearts or minds, but on the outside, it's noticeable that none of them appear different in their presentation, their conversations etc. Part of me has wondered if it's an experience that matches itself to the depth of the person going into it (depth might be the wrong word there, perhaps seriousness works better?), or if, after the trip, it's then up to the person to decide how - or if - to act on what they've learned. I.e. that it's not just passive, you don't just take the drug and emerge a changed person.

Anyway, sorry for the ramble.

As I know that psilocybin is DL's favorite substance after copious amount of pot, of course, I really need some kind of psychedelic therapy. When I have a better set and setting to do such things in.

Experiencing natural disasters, illness in the family, a breakup then finding out said person passed away months later, doesn't do many favours for the mind. I am currently building an interest in Ram Dass and eastern religion, with a desire to learn meditation. I have gone through some insane shit and my Catholic upbringing severely failed me. And as such, I really want to do psychedelics and look deeper inside the consciousness. I need to regain some peace.

DMT supposedly sends you for a short time 'to the love dimension'- a very similar room to where Jesus and Buddha both cohabitate, as Ram would say in the Netflix documentary. A friend of mine calls DMT 'the businessman's psych' because of the short duration. You could have a full-on trip in the same amount of time as a lunch break. Not sure how good you'd feel, though. But I am much more interested in magic mushrooms because of how our minds are made for them. 'Fantastic Fungi' opened my mind and heart to the beauty and nature of fungi.

I have some biases and others have biases, as well. We're creatures that can't not experience everything subjectively and so we can't live entirely according to objective experiences.

As I said above, I consider myself agnostic because...how could I know anything for sure? If there's any room for doubt, then what goes against my reasoning and my intuition may be true.

The self-labeling of many 'atheists' before psychedelics changing to 'not atheists' afterward does make me wonder how many of those people really believed through and through that there's nothing beyond our one life on Earth in this time. I'm sure many of them had some deeply buried doubt about that in their subconsciousnessses, and in some cases I would guess that even drove them to take psychedelics.

Asking people to identify themselves always runs risk of error. "Are you an atheist?" to one person may mean "Do you believe there's a gigantic old man sitting in a cloud above us who made the planet and light with his hands?" To another, it may mean, "Do you think there is any chance at all that consciousness could go on after death in some form?" Different connotations. I think to assess whether a person should be called an atheist, the person should answer a questionnaire about their beliefs—what they are and how resolute they are and how sincere they are.

Self-reported survey results are imbued with biases.

One bias I have, not necessarily for sound reason, is that I lean toward ayahuasca, psilocybin and other plant/fungal-material sources and away from DMT, MDMA and other chemical concentrates. This is actually because of my experience with ayahuasca as having a conscious spirit, though, and because I frankly am overwhelmed by DMT visions. I'm more in it for the healing and the insights than the special effects. Of course, MDMA can be healing to people and that healing can lead to greater insights and so I know that my bias isn't serving any useful purpose, but I still feel like ingesting natural material feels more sacramental or sincere or something than popping a pill with a cartoon imprinted on it or smoking crystals for a virtual reality experience. I'm not 'right.' I am just authentically biased.

My ever-loving, AA-uphelding wants to do a Smart Recovery thing with me today, i think i'm doing it. she also wants to intro to me a friend who does micro dosing on shrooms. i think the Universe wants me around for a bit.

LSD was one of the original 12 steps in Alcoholics Anonymous's 12-step program. The guy who came up with it credited his recovery and his worldview shift primarily to LSD use.

It is *so* crazy to me, having been indoctrinated with Just Say No and DARE as a kid in the 80s, that I was taught and believed that all drugs are equally dangerous, and especially crazy that some of the drugs they warned about primarily, psychedelics, are miracle medicines for some people that pose close to no physiological risk at all for most people.

I trusted that was I learned in school was true and found out decades later that what at the time was accepted to be true, factual and based in science, was none of those things. None of them! And yet policymakers, law enforcers, judges, teachers, parents, journalists and even scientists did not question the 'science' for decades when the 'science' was baseless propaganda. It is so scary.

I'd love to see the effect drugs like MDMA (that temporarily crank empathy up to 11) have on people with personality disorders. NPD, BPD etc. One of the hallmarks of these conditions is having no insight into one's own abnormality/lack of empathy. I wonder if a guided experience with MDMA could give some insight, and if so if that insight would carry through to real world changes for that person?

R170 I know a few people I'd like to experiment on.

How do I acquire mushrooms?

R172, where do you live?

....

Ohio.