sight_seeker said:
I know of people who used strong extracts the first few times and will never go back
Well you're right there, SWIM was smoking 40x extract in progressively larger doses. But his aim was to push it, and he's glad he did because the experiences were unbelievable.
It wasn't the dysphoric feeling or horrific enlightenments that scared him off. He had had good experiences- on one occasion he became filled by god, and actually his beliefs came about through his salvia experiences, and were merely corroborated by DMT. What put him off was that salvia planted a 'memory' in his head, a memory of every version of himself from every parallel universe being pulled into the same dimension and woven together on a horrific wheel of infinite hims. Or maybe this wasn't a memory, but a collective consciousness of some sort with other hims, or being in two places at the same time, because it felt so real that it was if it was happening elsewhere and he was conscious of it as much as of his usual reality. Whatever it was, he felt this was dangerous, too much, he was concerned that it might not be safe for his brain. Also the sheer strength of the belief that what is happening during the trip is REAL makes it potentially incredibly scary.
He would experiment again one day, but only when he had retired and didn't rely on his intellect anymore! DMT feels much safer so far, he trusts it.