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First Breakthrough, terrifying...a lesson learned

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owsley

owsley

Rising Star
Unsatisfied with my first few doses of 30-50mg, I decided to dose 70mg. I loaded the spice up in my bong in a mullein/spice/mullein configuration. I then started inhaling, I managed 4 hits completely clearing the dose from the bowl. From then on things got intense. The familiar ringing sound was not there, nothing audible to ease me into the trip was there at all and I was completely blown out of this reality.

I remember being blasted through a corridor full of windows and being spun around, memories of childhood and faces I'd not thought about in years suddenly flashed in front of me. I thought I couldn't breathe so I opened my eyes expecting to be able to anchor myself back in the room....nothing was visible.

A clown dropped down on the left side of my vision and exploded like a ripple, sending mirrored images of himself out behind him like a camera facing a monitor of its own output. He was laughing playfully, it seemed too real to be drug-induced. Suddenly I thought "DMT" but I forgot all meaning of the word and shouted for my roommate.

He tried to open my door which was locked. I somehow got up off my bed and unlocked the door expecting to be able to feel safe and embrace the safety a familiar presence would offer, only he shouted back that the door was still locked. I panicked, the clown was no longer visible but the confusion of not knowing why he couldn't open the door led me into a spiral of anxiety which manifested itself as a black hole sucking the few parts of reality that I could see into it. I realised that I'd forgot to unlock the second lock, as I did I grabbed my roommate and tried to speak, I forgot all language.

Thankfully he knew how to handle the situation and explained to me that I was on DMT and that it would be over very soon. These words brought on a wave of relaxation and I regained the ability to form calm thoughts so I thought "embrace it". For the remainder of the trip I lay on the floor basking in the beauty constantly reminding myself that I was on a drug.

The outcome of this experience? I've realised that a breakthrough is intensely powerful enough to make you forget everything you thought you could take with you into the trip. The fear of not knowing what drug I was on and the feeling of isolation from not having a sitter led to a recursive series of bad thoughts each more unsettling that the last. The thing I like about LSD is the come up is spread out and it's a few hours before you peak so you have plenty of time to remind yourself that you're on a drug thus making it easier to handle. The sheer speed at which DMT peaks doesn't afford you that ability. Proper mental preperation and a comforting sitter are a must, for me at least. DMT is a teacher and this was a difficult lesson.

Edit: I've come to realize after the replies this thread received that this was a sub-breakthrough dose, hence the fear was a result of not being complety stripped of ego.
 
I’m sorry to hear that you had such a terrifying experience, but if you were able to voluntarily open your eyes, shout for your roommate, get off your bed, unlock your door, unlock your door again, grab your roommate and try to talk to him during your experience, then it wasn’t a very deep breakthrough.

I’m not saying this to minimize your experience, but rather to help prepare you for what may lie ahead. In my experience with deep breakthroughs, there is no body – so there are no eyes to open or voice to shout with. There is full immersion in another realm – another place – so there is no locked door, no roommate.

You learned lesson #1 – “that a breakthrough is intensely powerful enough to make you forget everything you thought you could take with you into the trip”, but there are many more lessons to be learned. DMT is more powerful than you can imagine. Be safe.
 
Thanks for the reassuring words. It was so intense, anything stronger this early in my journey with DMT would be too much for me. It was so vivid...I could observe everything in the space but not move around in it, maybe a "deep breakthrough" will offer more. For now though I need to work my way up with being able to handle the small breakthrough I had before moving onto anything deeper.
 
Damn. Sounds soul shaking, alright. I can definitely empathize.

I concur completely with gibran, however - and I actually feel that complete ego dissolution can be (in a way) a liberating line to cross, as the concept of "you" is so completely obliterated that "you" are no longer there to be fearful. I mean that in no way to minimize either your experience or that of ego death - which is a horrifically intimidating concept to embrace (yet ironically freeing when it occurs).

I think the most difficult experiences I've had, in fact, have been the ones in which I was very close yet fell just short of completely shedding the ego.

owsley said:
A clown dropped down on the left side of my vision and exploded like a ripple, sending mirrored images of himself out behind him like a camera facing a monitor of its own output.
Click to expand...

I like it!
 
Uncle Knucles said:
I think the most difficult experiences I've had, in fact, have been the ones in which I was very close yet fell just short of completely shedding the ego.
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That's exactly what I think made this trip so difficult, I was still clinging to reality. I could feel my entire essence fall away and it scared me so I fought it. I should have just let go.
 
Easier said than done, my friend. Don't beat yourself up over that.

This is probably my biggest hurdle, in fact: judging my own experiences. It's a struggle to turn off the inner voice. And perhaps this is one of the reasons that DMT fascinates me so. I've never experienced ANYTHING else in life which has the power to instantly rip that out of me and stomp it to goo as I watch.
 
What I'm wondering is how do you tell yourself to surrender when you're so far gone you forget you're on a drug?
 
This is why preparation and set and setting are so crucial. By the time you get that 4th hit in you, it doesn't much matter if you're ready. You're going where the fuck you're going. You can breathe into it and find yourself immersed in the eternal I AM, experiencing more love and (over)self-realization than you imagined could ever be possible, OR... you can fight it and find yourself ripped limb from limb, on and on throughout an eternity.

Turn off your mind, relax
and float down stream
It is not dying
It is not dying

The Beatles had a better handle on it than I do.
 
Ego doesn't want to die and it will fight for dear life and I agree it can be absolutely terrifying.. it can be hard to tell yourself to let go because ego is going to fight it unconsciously regardless

Best of luck in your journey
 
A good mental model of the psychedelic process is the one Stanislav Grof built upon the 5000+ experiences of his LSD subjects.

He dosed people with a relatively low dose (100-200 micrograms) of LSD, but did this for a large number (10-100) of consecutive sessions (every two sessions separated by at least a week). What he found was that the psychedelic experience through these sessions followed a quite common pattern: first the subjects would experience and vividly relive certain episodes from their personal life histories - this he called the "psychodynamic" level of the psychedelic process. When these were properly worked through, a special kind of "gateway experience" appeared, in which patients relived traumatic events where their bodily integrity was endangered (suffocation, injuries, accidents, serious illnesses, operations and other near-death situations). These led into a second experiential realm called the "perinatal" world, where the subject had to face and work through situations whose common theme was the death and rebirth of the individual. He found four common experiential patterns in the perinatal process: 1.) old-world peace 2) disturbance of old-world peace 3) bloody struggle for being born (the crossing from the old to the new) 4) death of the old and being born again as the new (the ego-death experience). Grof later also related these experiences to various phases of the biological birth process.

When the subjects successfully worked through the perinatal level and completed the ego-death experience in the fullest possible way (which meant a complete letting go of all previous reference points and an acceptance of their total annihilation on all possible levels) - this required 10+ sessions for even the most "normal" subjects btw - then perinatal elements didn't appear any more, and the subjects entered into what Grof called the "transpersonal" realm.

This is the realm where the "aliens" hide, where subjects could contact the Gaian mind, have access to the memories of their ancestors or their previous incarnations, get general insights into the workings of the mind and the Universe and meet God or the Void or some other symbolic manifestation of the ultimate creative principle.

My current hypothesis is that DMT propels the user right through these various levels straight to the transpersonal, or ego-less realm. This means that with DMT, the user doesn't necessarily work through the contents of the psychodynamic or perinatal levels in a slow and meticulous way, but has instant access to the transpersonal realm. Psychedelic psychotherapists have long ago recognized the extreme healing potential of transpersonal states, so they didn't even try to work through the psychodynamic and perinatal stuff: they gave their patients 1000 micrograms of LSD, in the hope that this will propel them straight into the God-mind and that will - hopefully - also heal their outer layers through some not-yet-understood mechanism. This "hit and miss" approach (practiced mainly or exclusively by therapists in the US) was quite much disliked by the European school which thought that the step-by-step uncovering approach brings much better - and more lasting - results.

One could argue that by using a lower dose of DMT, one may get stuck on the psychodynamic, or - more likely - on the perinatal level, the later meaning that one spends the entire trip in the death-rebirth struggle (fighting for the survival of the ego). By taking a dose that is large enough, the ego is irresistibly dissolved by the power of the drug and that's what most people here call a "breakthrough."
 
Hi,

Setting is ALL.
As you wrote: terrifying...but lesson learned:d I personally enjoy higher doses of spice. Intensity of it is what attracts me. I learned by trial - mistake what is perfect setting for me. I have been through similar experiences like you, uncomfortable subbreakthroughs when I tried to get control by walking around and stuff. I know I'm repeating myself, but this is way to go with setting for starters:

DMT - Erowid Exp - 'DMT 423'

An Experience with DMT. 'DMT 423' by Flotsam
www.erowid.org
and just change what is closer to your character.

DMT is powerful teacher, but it's nothing sinister or evil about it, it's all in our heads. I feel deep respect to plant, but I'm not scared of it. I ritualize each experience. For example I talk to plant before launch like 'Jurema show me your full power, please...I'm ready' or 'Jurema take me where I haven't been yet' or whatever: 'Jurema, destroy this reality for me, please:d ' One can set room, lights, wear special clothes and so on to get right body and mind setting.

Anyway I wish you courage and many mind blowing flights into realms of ancient Jurema God.



Regards,
 
Interesting stuff Cellux, I've made a note to read up on Stanislav Grof's studies. The first few times I did LSD I had extreme recollections of childhood memories I thought I'd lost forever so I've been through the "psychodynamic" level before and feel comfortable with it. Whenever I do acid now though I'm always stuck in a purely visual aspect, nothing deeply interrospective...maybe that will change.

Your hypothesis seems sound to me, I wonder though if it's possible to complete the other stages on another psychedelic to prepare oneself for being blasted straight to the transpersonal stage on DMT.

I do agree zubidlo that setting is everything, my setting was almost perfect the only thing lacking was a focal point in the form of a sitter. I'm going to try a few weeks of ~50mg doses before I try a 70mg dose again, I'll make sure I have a sitter this time.

I do plan on trying Aya at some point gobalswg, for some reason the month April seems to be the time I think it's right and will try it then, hopefully by then I've managed to go beyond the sub-breakthrough anxiety and give in to a complete breakthrough by then.
 
One could argue that by using a lower dose of DMT, one may get stuck on the psychodynamic, or - more likely - on the perinatal level, the later meaning that one spends the entire trip in the death-rebirth struggle (fighting for the survival of the ego). By taking a dose that is large enough, the ego is irresistibly dissolved by the power of the drug and that's what most people here call a "breakthrough."
Click to expand...

I wanted to mention that a larger dose could get you past this in my previous post but I didn't because I know you had enough trouble this last time.

I was in a similar position to you.. I had smoked DMT about a half dozen times at doses of up to 50mg and I wasn't really getting much from it, it just seemed to be a standard tryptamine and wasn't even that interesting.

I decided low doses were my problem and eyeballed ~80mg and decided to smoke that and see what breaking through was all about.

Here is a quote from that experience..

My body continued to rip apart. I remember becoming confused and scared, and was fighting extremely hard to hold on to reality, I told myself to give in but I was unconsciously fighting it. Fighting it was no use however, and my body completely dissipated.
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Even though the time leading up to ego dissolution can be extremely frightening once you lose ego you are free of all these negative feelings (or any feelings really)

I've only had one ego death experience so I'm not sure if it gets any easier if you continue doing it.. I think part of the reason I had such a difficult time was I didn't know what the fuck was happening and I thought I broke the universe or something. It turns out this process is normal and I can see how knowing that would make it a bit easier.
 
I decided low doses were my problem and eyeballed ~80mg and decided to smoke that and see what breaking through was all about.
Click to expand...

That was exactly my reasoning, to be honest I didn't expect it to be so intense. There was nothing at all "scary" in the trip, just intensely vivid and real. If I had dosed just enough more to completely remove me from this reality I would have been fine. It was the shock of being in between two realities that was my problem...I'm sure of that now. When I was being comforted by my roommate I apparently said that I'd never touch DMT again that's how terrified I was.

Do you have a link to your trip report from that experience aloneits?
 
owsley said:
What I'm wondering is how do you tell yourself to surrender when you're so far gone you forget you're on a drug?
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You can't. You have to surrender before you take DMT. Longer lasting psychs are different, but DMT is so quick that you have to be in the right frame of mind up front.

Surrender to the fact that you won't be able to move before you smoke it again. In fact try surrendering with the smaller doses again. Surrender all the way into the experience and you might find that you need less than 70mgs to get as far as you got this time.

Ultimately though...there is nothing that can really prepare you for the first large dose of DMT. It happened to me unexpectedly and it was terrifying...then liberating...much like your story. On the plus side you won't be caught as of guard if you decided to do it again.

Good Luck and Stay Safe
 
Due to what some would call "baby lungs" it is very hard for me to get a full on breakthrough, it happens, but I mostly end up in a world similar to the one you described. I have defiantly felt a deep fear while in this place, however, through trial and error, I have found a way to minimize and even completely transform this fear into bliss. I first tried a steady drum beat coming from my computer. just kind of like a metronome.

However, while this removed the fear, I found that this often stunts my experiences and makes them less profound. I thought i was onto something with a "rhythmic anchor", so, after one experience, where, as I was coming up, I happened to glance at the Bhagadvad Gita, and the first thing that popped in my head was the quite by Krishna where he says "as long as you focus on me at the time of your death, you will find me" (paraphrase). I immediately, in my head started to repeat the word "krishna" over and over again. This actually caused the experience to get more intense, completely catapulting me through the chrysanthemum into a different realm. I am not religious in any conventional way, but i think the main key here is not the religious aspect of this mantra, but rather the internal and repetitive nature of it.

I understand this may not work for everyone, and sometimes it is easier said than done. In anycase, I wish you luck on your future internal voyages.
 
autophagia said:
Due to what some would call "baby lungs" it is very hard for me to get a full on breakthrough
Click to expand...

If smoking DMT is uncomfortable at all, you're doing it wrong. I have sensitive lungs and throat as well, but I can still breakthrough without any discomfort. The key is 1) not to burn the DMT, and 2) carb often, or inhale through your nose as well, or some similar means of mixing the hot smoke with cool air as it enters your lungs.

Also, you really don't have to smoke your dose in one or two giant lungfuls. You can still breakthrough on four or five moderate hits.
 
TheAppleCore,

I don't want to derail this thread too much, let me just say that I have heard this many times, and through years of experimentation I have found ways to minimize, but never fully remove the slight burn I get smoking. I have heard similar statements many times, and while I respect that opinion, my personal experience so far has proved otherwise. What kind of smoking method do you use? it sounds like you are using either a normal pipe or a bong due to mentioning the carb. Right now I am using the Machine, and it takes about four of my sized hits to breakthrough. Have you found the machine to be a ineffective smoking technique for people with sensitive lungs? I must admit I have never tried to smoke out of a normal pipe with a carb, so I am eagerly curious to know if you find that method to be superior to the machine.
 
I do plan on trying Aya at some point gobalswg, for some reason the month April seems to be the time I think it's right and will try it then, hopefully by then I've managed to go beyond the sub-breakthrough anxiety and give in to a complete breakthrough by then.
Click to expand...

I think I know what you mean. Anxiety is an obstacle. I learned that is the best to do more than one attempt on row. First launch is not the best, because of anxiety, but second one and next is great. First launch is just to get familiar with spice powers again and then the real work starts:d First I just launch 30 mg to get rid of anxiety. It puts me in calm state of mind (I drink caapi 15g before I bother Jurema). Then ritual starts. Later attempts are much deeper. I surely recommend to do at least 2 attempts.

I'm reading your post and think I can identify with your experience. I've been there too. One of lessons Jurema teach is that for fear is an answer : courage. At least I learned that myself. What you experienced was not spice fault. More like combination of wrong set of mind and fear which multiplied. Happened to me too. Once I bothered Jurema out of boredom in noon in full sun light and it was disaster. I wasn't able to touch it for next 6 weeks because of the horror I been through. The fear I experienced. I thought that's it, I'll never touch DMT any more. But to process that experience was once again lesson from plant. Nexus is great help too. Keep in touch with you explorations and treat Jurema spice with respect and everything gonna be great:d



Regards,
 
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