Hey everyone. 
I came here hoping to learn a little more about the DMT experience, basically to read trip reports and discuss things. I thought I'd give you some background information on myself just so I can show you guys where I'm coming from. Some of this may seem random at first, but it all ties together in the end. I apologize for the length as well, but I want to get my story out.
Since a very young age I've been completely obsessed with patterns. OCD runs in my mother's side of the family and I've known I had it since I was old enough to understand it, it's blatantly obvious. My father on the other hand used to be a big psychonaut starting back in the '60s and always wanted to make sure I was as educated as he could get me, so he found ways to start introducing these pattern concepts into my mind as early as possible. Basically, I was doomed from the start. As for my OCD, the most intrusive thoughts I get are a strong obsession with physical perfectionism and very bizarre and persistent sexual fantasies. However, I have many other symptoms as well. For a long time these fantasies weighed on me heavily and I felt sickened by the things I would think, but then I just started giving into the thought that I was crazy and sort of gave up hope, but as as a result of not worrying about them anymore I started getting over my anxiety about them. The fantasies were also very often extremely trippy and psychedelic, even before I'd really been introduced to anything in relation to psychedelia. The perfectionism tore me apart mentally, but luckily never reached the physical domain. For much of my life I fought the desire to become anorexic. I felt that I had the proper mindset for it, but I was fortunate enough to think of seeking help from my friends before making any drastic decisions. So I was able to keep my symptoms under control to a degree, but they still nagged at me. I felt psychotic, all the time.
Fast forward a bit to when I was 18 and I used cannabis for the first time. That was the beginning of my very rapid progression into the drug scene, and I quickly noticed that all highs tend to hit me very strongly, far more than any of my friends. I could be rolling around in pure ecstasy just from smoking a bowl with a couple friends. Soon I tried a psychedelic for the first time, and I was completely hooked. I started tripping a LOT, over a wide range of hallucinogens, but none of them felt to me like psychedelics do. I also quickly noticed that I reacted differently to psychedelics than all of my friends. When they would trip they would think about a million different things, roll through a sea of emotion reactions, describe hallucinations that simply built upon themselves and were uncontrollable, and that sort of thing. When I trip, I think about sex, guaranteed. It ramps up my sex drive so high that either I'll spend the whole trip just sitting there feeling uncomfortable and wishing I was alone (if I'm with someone I don't want to be in that state of mind around) or I'll get totally lost in my libido and go insane. The trips are also completely within my control, but in a hands-off way. That is to say, if I tried to control the trip consciously in any way then it would be blunted, but if I just sit back and let it happen then it always unfolds exactly how I would've wanted it to, but even better than I could've conjured up myself. As you may expect, my trips were basically like astral orgies. :roll: My concept of physical perfectionism was reflected heavily in my trips as well, particularly in the entities (which I get on essentially any psychedelic) who are thus far exclusively female and beautiful beyond words. Interestingly, I'm a straight female... but I do feel emotional and certain physical attractions to other women, just not to female genitalia. In a case such as this (like I said, astral orgies) such things were of little concern. Often times, my own body would even begin to morph to match this ideal image.
Now this would be all well and good if it weren't for the fact that I was tripping to escape my life and pretend that this was my reality rather than to enhance my life and just be happy to be able to experience something so wonderful whatsoever. Eventually my drug use and depression caught up with me and I had a nasty case of HPPD and depersonalization, and it got to the point that psychedelics would be nothing but uncomfortable stimulation until they ended, and barely any hallucinations at all other than potentiated HPPD patterns. Eventually, I gave them up along with everything else except cannabis. It tends to hit me like a psychedelic anyway, sometimes up to significant (but not total) ego dissolution just from smoking a regular amount. Over time I was able to overcome my HPPD symptoms (for the most part, there are still mild sensory effects but not really any cognitive ones) and at the same time I was working to make my life better in general. I'm still on the road to recovery, but I'm in a much better place in life and generally just a much happier person than I ever used to be. These days I still research the brain a lot just out of curiosity but I never had much desire to get fully back into the tripping scene.
So now where this all ties in.... I've been researching my conditions and various receptors and I came across a series of articles linking a polymorphism of 5-HT2A with OCD, and anorexia. It was proposed to be at the least a part of their overlap in the area of perfectionism (through distortions of sensory perceptions like body image) and many other obsessive symptoms. This blew my mind! I looked into it more, and the more I found the more it made perfect sense. If altered and hyperactive 5-HT2A receptors are the cause of OCD, it obviously explains how SSRIs and psychedelics can attenuate the symptoms (and they really do) by downregulating 5-HT2A. It explains why all highs hit me so hard, as 5-HT2A receptors are responsible for a lot of dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens, including that from many recreational drugs. Cannabinoids also enhance 5-HT2A signalling, so it doesn't surprise me that cannabis is very psychedelic for me. Furthermore, if my normally psychotic-feeling mindsets that I'm so accustomed to are caused by 5-HT2A receptors, it's no wonder that psychedelics simply enhance it to the point of bringing it into reality, and why they work so differently for me than my friends. Obviously, I can't confirm what my receptors are like without testing, but I now believe as much as I possibly can from subjective experience that this is the case, it just makes total sense and everything fits, even medically.
And here's where I am now. I'm still not totally sure if I'm going to return to the world of psychedelics yet, but I'm definitely interested again. If so it still won't be for a while as I'm still recovering from my previous misuse, but if I do, DMT will likely be one of the only, if not the only, psychedelic that I intend to use. Rather than thinking of all these altered 5-HT2A symptoms as a disorder like I have before, I'm trying to think of it as a blessing instead. As my mood has gone from depressed to euphoric over time my life has even changed just like a bad trip to a good trip, and I honestly feel like I'm in a psychedelic state of mind at pretty much all times. In addition, I enjoy the way psychedelics effect me, and I enjoy my sex drive so there's certainly nothing wrong with it being boosted so heavily when I trip. The main reason I want to stick with DMT is because it's intense, it's fast, and it's safe. Before I always figured that my psychedelic sexuality had something to do with too much dopamine, which I guess it mainly does, but through that I figured it had some origin with dopamine receptors. I never suspected that the feelings might actually be coming from 5-HT2A itself. With this in mind, I want to explore the most powerful 5-HT2A agonist possible... and that leads me here. I've used DMT before, but it's occurred to me that the only times I used it by myself were in combination with something like MDMA (which blunts both the deepness and the libido for me, but does make for a powerful euphoria) or at very low doses, so I've never really gotten to fully explore it the right way. I have broken through by myself, but again, it was on MDMA, and I barely remember anything about it. I don't expect it to be controllable in the way the other psychedelics are for me, I'm just really starting to think I'm ready to push the psychedelic limits of my mind. I consider myself to be a very spiritual person, and I embrace the uniqueness of my trips and am very interested in what DMT might bring to the table.
I guess that's about all I have to say about myself right now. It pretty much sums up how and why I got here. (At least, everything I'm willing to publicly share.) If you made it this far, thank you very much for taking the time to read.
I came here hoping to learn a little more about the DMT experience, basically to read trip reports and discuss things. I thought I'd give you some background information on myself just so I can show you guys where I'm coming from. Some of this may seem random at first, but it all ties together in the end. I apologize for the length as well, but I want to get my story out.Since a very young age I've been completely obsessed with patterns. OCD runs in my mother's side of the family and I've known I had it since I was old enough to understand it, it's blatantly obvious. My father on the other hand used to be a big psychonaut starting back in the '60s and always wanted to make sure I was as educated as he could get me, so he found ways to start introducing these pattern concepts into my mind as early as possible. Basically, I was doomed from the start. As for my OCD, the most intrusive thoughts I get are a strong obsession with physical perfectionism and very bizarre and persistent sexual fantasies. However, I have many other symptoms as well. For a long time these fantasies weighed on me heavily and I felt sickened by the things I would think, but then I just started giving into the thought that I was crazy and sort of gave up hope, but as as a result of not worrying about them anymore I started getting over my anxiety about them. The fantasies were also very often extremely trippy and psychedelic, even before I'd really been introduced to anything in relation to psychedelia. The perfectionism tore me apart mentally, but luckily never reached the physical domain. For much of my life I fought the desire to become anorexic. I felt that I had the proper mindset for it, but I was fortunate enough to think of seeking help from my friends before making any drastic decisions. So I was able to keep my symptoms under control to a degree, but they still nagged at me. I felt psychotic, all the time.
Fast forward a bit to when I was 18 and I used cannabis for the first time. That was the beginning of my very rapid progression into the drug scene, and I quickly noticed that all highs tend to hit me very strongly, far more than any of my friends. I could be rolling around in pure ecstasy just from smoking a bowl with a couple friends. Soon I tried a psychedelic for the first time, and I was completely hooked. I started tripping a LOT, over a wide range of hallucinogens, but none of them felt to me like psychedelics do. I also quickly noticed that I reacted differently to psychedelics than all of my friends. When they would trip they would think about a million different things, roll through a sea of emotion reactions, describe hallucinations that simply built upon themselves and were uncontrollable, and that sort of thing. When I trip, I think about sex, guaranteed. It ramps up my sex drive so high that either I'll spend the whole trip just sitting there feeling uncomfortable and wishing I was alone (if I'm with someone I don't want to be in that state of mind around) or I'll get totally lost in my libido and go insane. The trips are also completely within my control, but in a hands-off way. That is to say, if I tried to control the trip consciously in any way then it would be blunted, but if I just sit back and let it happen then it always unfolds exactly how I would've wanted it to, but even better than I could've conjured up myself. As you may expect, my trips were basically like astral orgies. :roll: My concept of physical perfectionism was reflected heavily in my trips as well, particularly in the entities (which I get on essentially any psychedelic) who are thus far exclusively female and beautiful beyond words. Interestingly, I'm a straight female... but I do feel emotional and certain physical attractions to other women, just not to female genitalia. In a case such as this (like I said, astral orgies) such things were of little concern. Often times, my own body would even begin to morph to match this ideal image.
Now this would be all well and good if it weren't for the fact that I was tripping to escape my life and pretend that this was my reality rather than to enhance my life and just be happy to be able to experience something so wonderful whatsoever. Eventually my drug use and depression caught up with me and I had a nasty case of HPPD and depersonalization, and it got to the point that psychedelics would be nothing but uncomfortable stimulation until they ended, and barely any hallucinations at all other than potentiated HPPD patterns. Eventually, I gave them up along with everything else except cannabis. It tends to hit me like a psychedelic anyway, sometimes up to significant (but not total) ego dissolution just from smoking a regular amount. Over time I was able to overcome my HPPD symptoms (for the most part, there are still mild sensory effects but not really any cognitive ones) and at the same time I was working to make my life better in general. I'm still on the road to recovery, but I'm in a much better place in life and generally just a much happier person than I ever used to be. These days I still research the brain a lot just out of curiosity but I never had much desire to get fully back into the tripping scene.
So now where this all ties in.... I've been researching my conditions and various receptors and I came across a series of articles linking a polymorphism of 5-HT2A with OCD, and anorexia. It was proposed to be at the least a part of their overlap in the area of perfectionism (through distortions of sensory perceptions like body image) and many other obsessive symptoms. This blew my mind! I looked into it more, and the more I found the more it made perfect sense. If altered and hyperactive 5-HT2A receptors are the cause of OCD, it obviously explains how SSRIs and psychedelics can attenuate the symptoms (and they really do) by downregulating 5-HT2A. It explains why all highs hit me so hard, as 5-HT2A receptors are responsible for a lot of dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens, including that from many recreational drugs. Cannabinoids also enhance 5-HT2A signalling, so it doesn't surprise me that cannabis is very psychedelic for me. Furthermore, if my normally psychotic-feeling mindsets that I'm so accustomed to are caused by 5-HT2A receptors, it's no wonder that psychedelics simply enhance it to the point of bringing it into reality, and why they work so differently for me than my friends. Obviously, I can't confirm what my receptors are like without testing, but I now believe as much as I possibly can from subjective experience that this is the case, it just makes total sense and everything fits, even medically.
And here's where I am now. I'm still not totally sure if I'm going to return to the world of psychedelics yet, but I'm definitely interested again. If so it still won't be for a while as I'm still recovering from my previous misuse, but if I do, DMT will likely be one of the only, if not the only, psychedelic that I intend to use. Rather than thinking of all these altered 5-HT2A symptoms as a disorder like I have before, I'm trying to think of it as a blessing instead. As my mood has gone from depressed to euphoric over time my life has even changed just like a bad trip to a good trip, and I honestly feel like I'm in a psychedelic state of mind at pretty much all times. In addition, I enjoy the way psychedelics effect me, and I enjoy my sex drive so there's certainly nothing wrong with it being boosted so heavily when I trip. The main reason I want to stick with DMT is because it's intense, it's fast, and it's safe. Before I always figured that my psychedelic sexuality had something to do with too much dopamine, which I guess it mainly does, but through that I figured it had some origin with dopamine receptors. I never suspected that the feelings might actually be coming from 5-HT2A itself. With this in mind, I want to explore the most powerful 5-HT2A agonist possible... and that leads me here. I've used DMT before, but it's occurred to me that the only times I used it by myself were in combination with something like MDMA (which blunts both the deepness and the libido for me, but does make for a powerful euphoria) or at very low doses, so I've never really gotten to fully explore it the right way. I have broken through by myself, but again, it was on MDMA, and I barely remember anything about it. I don't expect it to be controllable in the way the other psychedelics are for me, I'm just really starting to think I'm ready to push the psychedelic limits of my mind. I consider myself to be a very spiritual person, and I embrace the uniqueness of my trips and am very interested in what DMT might bring to the table.
I guess that's about all I have to say about myself right now. It pretty much sums up how and why I got here. (At least, everything I'm willing to publicly share.) If you made it this far, thank you very much for taking the time to read.
