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First 3 sessions

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psychophagus

Rising Star
Greetings.
I didn't quite care for the template, so pardon my freestyling.
I was an unusual candidate for hyperspace, to say the least. Previous experience with any mind-altering substances was one mushroom trip 15 years ago, 30-odd tries at getting something worthwhile out of weed (most of these a long time ago), and a few years of increasingly heavy drinking followed by 14 years of sobriety. I have been very comfortable with sobriety for a long time. The one mini-regret was not ever trying LSD, but by the time I seriously considered it I was too old to be excited about signing up for an 8 or 10 hour odyssey with no abort option. Early this year, a trusted friend and very experienced (think: Phish tour) head offered me the DMT experience. The key selling point with me was high intensity, short duration.
FIRST SESSION
Setting, in retrospect, left much to be desired: 7 dudes, music blaring, lights out except for one naked green bulb. But it was a secure room and all personnel were trusted friends. I watched two of them go in succession, listened to odd reports, then took the pipe. It was a glass pipe with carb and we were applying direct lighter flame to the spice - wasteful, I know now. That mothball smell filled the room. I took one huge, long hit and held it at least thirty seconds. My friend/sitter took hold of the pipe and lighter and set me up with a second hit, of which I barely got any due to the sudden launch. My eyesockets were attacked by silver and burgundy minarets and I left my body. Quite frankly my memories of this trip are now very poor; impressions were of the violent blastoff, the suspicion that I had OD'd/died, the incredible colors and geometries of the visuals, the loss of all five senses (save that mothball smell and the visuals, which had nothing to do with what my open eyes were looking toward). At some point I realized I was in a greenish room (the real one) and I had hands, though no arms - the hands simply floated in green smoke. At this point I regained confidence I would be OK and signaled such to my sitter. A few minutes later, still afterglowing, I heard my Phish friend say "Pretty profound, huh?" and I leaned forward, held my palm an inch off the floor, and said "That's a word ants would use." That was my still fuddled brain's attempt to assert the inadequacy of words to describe the experience. I suddenly recalled Alex Grey's artwork from Tool's 10,000 Days album and said to myself, "I know what THAT guy was smoking!"
Next: second and third sessions, as separate posts; kindly hold replies.
 
SECOND SESSION
Jarred by my first trip into an awareness of a wealth of possibilities, I ran out and read Rick Strassman's Spirit Molecule cover to cover, right in the bookstore, and then sat for two weeks digesting the experience and information. I was immediately in tune with improving the setting for future launches, as well as respecting the seriousness of the endeavor and choosing to build in long gaps between trips for reflection and cogitation.
I chose to go solo the second time, in my locked studio, with dim lighting and no music. To combat the general scariness of jumping on the Mothball Express I chose a touchstone, a large (8' tall) painting I made years ago of a supermodel in a green bikini, with a serious expression and level gaze directed at the viewer. This was mounted on the wall opposite my futon. My intent was to test some lower doses, but this did not go as planned. I began simply lighting up the residue in the pipe from weeks earlier, took one big hit, and was surprised to feel the same onset intensity; my last thought was a high-pitched "I better put the pipe down" and I just managed to do this in an orderly fashion before launching in spectacular fashion. I stared into the eyes of my touchstone as she dissolved digitally in a blocky, large-pixel way that was delightfully reminiscent of the old Atari 2600 video games. On the heels of that was a much more intense transformation; the geometric patterns rushed in and redefined the eyescape, and my supermodel became a shimmering goddess in her crystalline alcove at the back of a roomlike space, white in foundation but overlaid with tight shimmering patterns, too diverse and fleeting to nail down their color schemes. I doubt at this point that I was seeing anything in my own studio, yet the goddess persisted.
Here I can no longer give a chronological account of what occurred, only a sampling of fascinating impressions. Once back to almost baseline I launched again, and then a third time, in a span covering 90 minutes or so. I remember the air became quilted; or rather, the air seemed comprised of large cubic cells, nearly invisible except at the interstices, the overall impression similar to looking at slides of plant tissue under a microscope. Red, yellow and cyan helices hung in the air in this seemingly extradimensional space; parts of the real room came back into being behind this field. I suddenly perceived the supermodel's bra as two alien eyes, her belly button a tiny puckered mouth; as I stared, I realized I was not sure whether I was breathing, and attempted to concentrate on this activity. I managed to perform mechanically what felt like breathing; I felt nothing in my body, but heard a small "fssht" sound with each exhalation and was reassured. I felt as if my body had been divided in two on a vertical plane such that the back of my head, back, buttocks, calf muscles and heels were discarded, and the remaining front half, presumably oozing, had sunk that much deeper into the futon. Directly in front of me, a formerly gray desk was a blinding chartreuse, the cardboard box next to it a hot pink beyond hot pink, both fried to a crisp at the edges.
 
THIRD SESSION
I waited a week and set the same table as I had for the second: locked studio, late night, supermodel touchstone.
Because I wrote most of my impressions down in the week after the third session, I can no longer separate some things that occurred between 2 and 3; again, a sampling of impressions is all I can muster, with chronology lacking.
Two very big things happened across sessions 2 and 3 that made indelible impressions.
The first was having what felt like a telepathic conversation with some sort of presence, in a white room lined with curves and shelves, sleek, an apartment of the gods. The first presence was either androgynous, female, or two presences of opposite gender, but not exclusively male. In session 3 the presence was indubitably female. I believe in session 2 I had the first pseudo-conversation with the presence. The overall feeling was of having a guest pass in a waiting room for souls who were without a corporeal body and awaited processing. The presence/s were generally kindly in feel but also not paying me too much attention. I tried to send some thoughts in English, and it felt like dropping pebbles in a bottomless well, making no splash. At one point I remember my intellect being dwarfed by the magnitude of what was happening in this other realm, and of saying/sending the phrase "good and evil" into that warm void, almost laughing at how puny these human concepts were, and feeling the equivalent of an assenting smile, though at this time I saw no visage. At the end of session 3 - which, like #2, was three consecutive launches in less than two hours - I felt like I was having a conversation with the female presence. I was having trouble thinking straight and of even being coherent, and to try to get some focus I asked her her name. She laughed and seemed to send back the idea that either she had none, or more likely that it wasn't important to have one. But I persisted, and on the third try she sent back "Pamela Ubixbigami" and I laughed, I think hard, and with an enormous effort turned and wrote this down on a piece of paper next to the futon. Obviously this shows an overlap with the afterglow, which turned very strange and fun: "Pamela" sent me on some kind of ride I later dubbed the "Thrum". She seemed amused with me and it felt like she was granting me this trifling (to her) mini-thrill ride just for the heck of it. It began as a thrumming sensation through my head/soul, initially accompanied by one of the few sounds I have heard in hyperspace: a cliched, high-pitched weem I've heard in campy science fiction movies when they throw levers or adjust dials on unknown electronic machinery. The "thrum" progressed in ways I can't describe; I was maybe inquiring, without words, if something sexual could happen in this realm, and the response seemed to be that the "ride" would be every kind of pleasurable EXCEPT that way. I did not argue or care; it was more of an informational inquiry than a come-on, and at any rate I did not have enough feeling in my real body to be able to stir sexually. The Thrum was an absolute blast anyway; I recall a moment of lucidity where I was laughing, hands in the air, tears streaming down my face, feeling on some sort of 4-D roller coaster, knowing full well I was sitting on the futon. The ending was the strangest part: almost completely down from the trip, wobbling in and out of the afterglow, the Thrum continued to bump and weave; I felt like a cartoon character driving a cartoon car where all of the wheels and fenders and everything else is falling off but I'm still going, until there's virtually nothing left of the car and I'm bumping through the weeds in the driver's seat holding a steering wheel that's not attached to anything.
The second big realization was maybe coming down off of session 2: as the dimensionality faded, and reality began to seep back in, I realized that memories of the trip could not be stored properly in the human brain, because they have extra parameters that the non-spiced brain can't compute...like trying to record a high-def broadcast on Betamax or something. There was also in my mind a new metaphor for the DMT experience: all your life, all your thoughts and ideas and memories and experiences, are your brain tuned to one radio station, and you were unaware there were other stations; DMT turns the knob and you are suddenly tuning in a frequency utterly alien and difficult to process. (A few friends who have done LSD but not DMT found that metaphor resonated with them.) That led to a final thought: that all the top physicists and cosmologists, people at the top of their field looking into the Big Bang and string theory, should (if their cardiac is up to it) try some spice, for they would certainly come back with new insights on the nature of the universe/multiverse...
 
Feedback is welcome, and I have other insights to add but I'm out of wakefulness and coffee.
My computer access is limited so I may not see your feedback for some time, apologies in advance if I go dormant in mid-conversation.
 
Thanks for that. I very much enjoyed the read. It was worded well and the sensations are familiar.

Do stick around! I look forward to more of your reports.
 
Really interesting experiences... It's curious that up until DMT your only psychedelic experience was one shroom trip!

I've often thought it plausible that the human brain in its natural/emergent state is completely incapable of storing memories relating to altered states. The electrochemical signals that fire in the brain during psychedelic experience differ so greatly from our daily neural patterns... we're poorly adapted to encoding this information because we're just not used to processing it, and initial experiences completely lack context.

Having said that, neuro-plasticity is an amazing quality; These days I can integrate and rewire far more effectively than I used to be able to, simply thanks to practice, mostly on acid. Great HD/betamax analogy, though I reckon it's our software that needs updating, not our hardware ;P

Thanks for a great read!
 
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