Maybe it isn't DMT related, because there is nothing visual about the experience.  Even bad trip reports mention intense visuals.

I think I remember a passage in the Joyous Cosmology by Alan Watts, where he relates being able to regress backward into his ancestry, even into other species.  Eventually he became lost in a maze and started to panic somewhat.

I wonder if the mind has some how gotten lost in this maze, then panics.  There is only one way out of the maze - forward.