Painful DMT Experiences with Depression

[kactuskutter]

I am exploring DMT as a tool for addressing my depression. I've had depression since I was like 14. I did some work with other psychedelics like LSD and mushrooms and this helped a lot, but I don't feel like it addressed some of the deeper issues. I think most of what is causing my depression is existential issues, like feelings that the universe is an ugly, cold, evil place. I don't expect DMT to make me suddenly think everying is perfect, but I would at least like to experience a little bit of love, joy and beauty alongside the suffering.

I have done DMT probably around a dozen times so far. I am using e-mesh, which has been pretty consistent so long as I weigh the DMT right. For doses in the 8-13mg range, I found the experiences to be pretty light on emotions with tons of fascinating symbolism. Each of these trips has a "theme" where I get transported to another environment and see lots of entities. I really enjoy these experiences and find them fascinating.

I have had two experiences with 15mg and these have been dramatically different. A few seconds after the trip starts, I feel a surge of painful emotions coming up from deep in my soul. It feels like it has nothing to do with the visual content of the trip. I can't focus on or remember barely any of the visual content because the emotion is so intense. In my last 15mg experience, I was reminded of an extremely tragic event that happened with one of my closest loved ones. This is something I usually try not to think about too much, but has really deeply affected me.

On the one hand, I am very scared of going any further due to these painful emotions. I also recognize that probably the only way I can heal is to confront them and feel them fully. It's just that right now I don't see any light at the end of the tunnel. I have no idea what will happen if I take a higher dose, and that's scary. I'm wondering if anyone else has had an experience like this. I would greatly appreciate any advice or words of wisdom.

 

[Sakkadelic]

On the one hand, I am very scared of going any further due to these painful emotions. I also recognize that probably the only way I can heal is to confront them and feel them fully. It's just that right now I don't see any light at the end of the tunnel. I have no idea what will happen if I take a higher dose, and that's scary.

You're right to recognize that healing requires facing and confronting the painful emotions. Having pleasant, joyful and loving experiences with dmt is amazing and can help one feel better in their life. But as the dose go higher, it becomes more and more likely for things to go out of control and for dmt to show you what you need vs what you want.

Have you looked into harmalas? They are antidepressants and they help smooth out the intense emotions while allowing you to go even deeper.

 

[northape]

On the one hand, I am very scared of going any further due to these painful emotions. I also recognize that probably the only way I can heal is to confront them and feel them fully. It's just that right now I don't see any light at the end of the tunnel. I have no idea what will happen if I take a higher dose, and that's scary. I'm wondering if anyone else has had an experience like this. I would greatly appreciate any advice or words of wisdom.

That's it. If you start to feel fear, then you've connected to that painful stuff. Don't take a higher dose. Just use enough to connect to these painful emotions and sit with them.

Just marinate in it all without looking away or trying to solve it in any way. All you need to do is see it. High doses could push you beyond the human level into the transcendental. You may find what God is and see your problems as small in comparison, but it's not a given. DMT is not a magic pill that will solve everything for you; it's a tool that lets you see what you try so hard to hide. Slow and steady wins the race, as they say.

Mushrooms work better for emotional stuff. People just use them recreationally most of the time. You need to create a serious ceremony similar to how they do ayahuasca. Pose a question and go into the experience with a clear intent. These longer sessions work deeper and potentially create a bigger shift. The dosing strategy would be similar to DMT - just use enough to get in touch with your feelings.

Depression is a mix of a neurological condition and some events that triggered its development, ime. Introducing harmalas into your work could produce bigger changes. Harmalas both open you up emotionally and work on your neurological state, fixing it. Changa would be a much better medicine for healing depression. An oral brew would be similar to mushrooms in how deep it goes. You can even look at the sublingual use of harmalas freebase to start somewhere.

You don't need to see the light at the end; it's there. Just have faith and work toward your goal. The Universe will answer; that's the law of this place.

Much Love

 

[Transform]

I'll just add that writing down and/or otherwise [safely!] expressing the material that has resurfaced will allow you to process and release it, best while you remain mindful of moving on and how that pertains to deprogramming and reprogramming, in the sense that setting positive new mental habits are an important part of the goal.

 

[kactuskutter]

I'll just add that writing down and/or otherwise [safely!] expressing the material that has resurfaced will allow you to process and release it, best while you remain mindful of moving on and how that pertains to deprogramming and reprogramming, in the sense that setting positive new mental habits are an important part of the goal.

I am seeing an integration therapist and because of my last experience, I finally talked about the tragic event with my loved one. I haven't talked about it with a therapist before because it's painful and I'm also worried about being judged because of how I feel about it. I feel like the medicine was implicitly telling me I NEED to do this because it brought the issue up so strongly. Not sure if it will actually help but it's a small weight off my shoulders that I was finally able to bring it up and don't have to worry about when/how I'm going to bring it up anymore.

 

[Transform]

I am seeing an integration therapist and because of my last experience, I finally talked about the tragic event with my loved one. I haven't talked about it with a therapist before because it's painful and I'm also worried about being judged because of how I feel about it. I feel like the medicine was implicitly telling me I NEED to do this because it brought the issue up so strongly. Not sure if it will actually help but it's a small weight off my shoulders that I was finally able to bring it up and don't have to worry about when/how I'm going to bring it up anymore.

It takes time, but you will get there!

Glad to hear you're getting support, no therapist worth their salt will be judging you for your feelings regarding trauma. That itself sounds a metaprogram set up in response to the trauma and (while in no way being a psychological or medical professional, so please don't take this advice) I'd be willing to bet that cutting through that Gordian knot of emotion will help you in getting to where you'd like to be.

Love and best wishes!

 

[universecannon]

Some very good advice in here already. I want to emphasize that high doses or "breakthroughs" aren't necessarily required to work through the pain and heal. Movement such as yoga/Qi Gong/dance or whatever comes naturally, especially to some mellow music, can be a big help for working through stuff, even with lower amounts of dmt or changa. Vocalizing can help too. And of course everything tends to work better if you've been taking care of yourself physically and mentally leading up to the experience (clean diet, exercise, time in nature, social media breaks etc)

I once had a period of extremely difficult LSD/DMT trips with my partner following a bad immune system reaction to a mainstream medicine. The official diagnosis had left us traumatized and slowly picking up the pieces of where we thought our lives were headed. But we kept at it, since the experiences we were having drastically lowered the inflammation involved, despite the intense emotional and to some degree physical discomfort. Dealing with that was not easy but eventually the ability to accept the reality, feel the emotions and let them out, ran its course. Time helped a lot.

It got to the point where we recognized that although feeling our emotions is good, it was also easy to wallow in the pain. We wanted to ultimately move past whatever is holding us back once those emotions have been felt thoroughly enough, and recognize when they no longer served us. That was key for me. After all we couldn't wallow in fear and pain forever, so might as well recognize it, process, then learn to let it go and shift into gratitude and love. The pain still comes up at times, but we are processing it quicker and quicker, and often it doesn't emerge in any negative way at all nowadays. It's sometimes like watching it from a distance and gently acknowledging it as it passes by vs. being consumed by it.

Be gentle with yourself, healing is a lifelong journey

 

[blig-blug]

It got to the point where we recognized that although feeling our emotions is good, it was also easy to wallow in the pain

This is very important IME. I've been in a very bad mental situation mainly from trauma for some years, and at first I thought the way to improve was to dive head on in the worst of it, and make all surface. I did it in a very violent and forceful way, and it unbalanced me a lot. That was made much worse by the power of psychedelics, that enabled me to go much deeper in this reckless way than it would otherwise have been possible.

The mind has barriers and protection mechanisms, it's easy to think that they're entirely negative and to be torn down, but that's not the way. They serve the important purpose of allowing you to function to a certain degree despite all the pain and suffering that may be in your mind.

Imagine a street dog that was beaten up often before it was finally abandoned. You have no bad intentions towards that dog, and yet it's very scared. Part of its instincts lead it towards you, but ultimately he's too afraid to come too close. The way to make friends with such a dog is through a lot of patience, showing it that you're not dangerous, that you're not like the people in its past and he can trust you. You would need to not move abruptly, offer it food, talk to it in a warm and affectionate voice. If you were to try to overcome its fear and touch or grab it by force, it would be very scared and it may even bit you. It would make the process actually slower, and lose part or all of the progress that you've made.
With the traumatized parts of the mind it's exactly the same. You need patience, gentleness and persistence. Not force. I had to learn that the hard way.

This is all to recommend you to take it easy. You say

For doses in the 8-13mg range, I found the experiences to be pretty light on emotions with tons of fascinating symbolism. Each of these trips has a "theme" where I get transported to another environment and see lots of entities. I really enjoy these experiences and find them fascinating.

and

It's just that right now I don't see any light at the end of the tunnel

So it could be that right now, what you need is those lower doses, to let them work on you slowly. There will always be time for higher doses and to go deeper. I don't actually know if that's the best or not, that's something you need to decide by yourself, but consider this possibility.

All the best to you and I hope you start seeing some light, because I can assure you it's there

 

[doubledog]

My experience is that mescaline is in some aspects better than tryptamines for processing emotional issues, but it also needs active cooperation from the individual, it does not use "force" as is often case with DMT or psiloids. It's milder and provides some inbuild "protection" against too intense emotional content. So another potentialy useful psychedelic tool.

 

[kactuskutter]

This is very important IME. I've been in a very bad mental situation mainly from trauma for some years, and at first I thought the way to improve was to dive head on in the worst of it, and make all surface. I did it in a very violent and forceful way, and it unbalanced me a lot. That was made much worse by the power of psychedelics, that enabled me to go much deeper in this reckless way than it would otherwise have been possible.

The mind has barriers and protection mechanisms, it's easy to think that they're entirely negative and to be torn down, but that's not the way. They serve the important purpose of allowing you to function to a certain degree despite all the pain and suffering that may be in your mind.

Imagine a street dog that was beaten up often before it was finally abandoned. You have no bad intentions towards that dog, and yet it's very scared. Part of its instincts lead it towards you, but ultimately he's too afraid to come too close. The way to make friends with such a dog is through a lot of patience, showing it that you're not dangerous, that you're not like the people in its past and he can trust you. You would need to not move abruptly, offer it food, talk to it in a warm and affectionate voice. If you were to try to overcome its fear and touch or grab it by force, it would be very scared and it may even bit you. It would make the process actually slower, and lose part or all of the progress that you've made.
With the traumatized parts of the mind it's exactly the same. You need patience, gentleness and persistence. Not force. I had to learn that the hard way.

This is all to recommend you to take it easy. You say

and

So it could be that right now, what you need is those lower doses, to let them work on you slowly. There will always be time for higher doses and to go deeper. I don't actually know if that's the best or not, that's something you need to decide by yourself, but consider this possibility.

All the best to you and I hope you start seeing some light, because I can assure you it's there

I have taken a lot of other psychedelics, especially LSD, in quite high doses. These experiences helped a lot in pulling me out of very bad depressive episodes. In the really bad episodes it's like my brain gets stuck in a really negative thought loop that just gets worse and worse until I'm about ready to end it. Sufficiently large doses of LSD or mushrooms (e.g. 3-5 tabs of LSD) can very reliably break me out of these thought loops and return me to a somewhat "normal" mental state. Interestingly, the experiences are usually either quite neutral or negative in emotional character, but they still help every time. These experiences have definitely saved my life on several occasions. Unfortunately I still haven't found a solution for the deeper existential/spiritual issues, so it's easy for me to fall back into a depressive thought loop.

I suspect I may have what some have described as a "spiritual blockage". I can experience light at a shallow level, but there is some kind of "wall" deeper in my soul that blocks any happy emotions from going there. I have memories from my early childhood and my first mushroom trip at 16 of feeling very deep, spiritual joy, so I have some idea of what I'm currently lacking. It makes me wonder if all of the pain I've experienced since then has erected this wall.

So back to the DMT, the reason why I'm interested in pushing into higher doses is because the lighter psychedelic experiences haven't helped with the deeper issues. Of course I'm approaching it very slowly and taking a lot of lighter experiences anyways to build confidence in my technique and appreciation/respect for the molecule. I can definitely continue this for a while, but at some point I feel like I may need to "take the plunge" and up the intensity beyond anything I've experienced before.

I would be very happy if I could just stick at the low-moderate doses and still address the deeper issues. I just don't feel like that's happening. If you have any idea what I could be doing wrong with these experiences, I would be happy to hear it.

 

[Voidmatrix]

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Here are some threads that may be helpful.

You're having medicine experiences, and it's not your choice, but it's what's happening. There is an opportunity to heal sitting right in front of you. But it's hard. It's also hard alone. If you can come across a guide or a sitter, someone who knows the vibe, then that could help tremendously (or you could be like me and be stubborn and want to get up in that hyperspace on your own, not ask for help, and then meander in the shallower waters (I don't regret it really, and I'm not really meandering)).

What comes up is what comes up. Medicine gives you more of what you need then what you want. Do the work, get the dross out of the system, even if that means literally shaking like you're convulsing (but not literal medical necessity convulsions, just your body somatically processing stored trauma) such as in a medicine experience (breathe through it, deeply, witnessing, allowing, letting go, if you find yourself in this situation ever).

If you've had depression since 14, and you're an adult, then there's probably a lot to heal, a lot to figure out, a lot to process, a lot to integrate, a lot to reorient in order to get to a better place. It takes time. I'm 36. I'm still going at it. Learn things like compassion and patience for yourself on a very deep level as you go down your path. This will probably come up for you again until certain things are resolved. DMT sees into our souls.

We row similar boats. I can be kind of a ghost, but you have support here.

One love

 

[kactuskutter]

Dose 10mg.
September 24 3:34am, right after the experience:

Wow. This may have been the most intense experience yet. I was really scared beforehand so I remembered what my therapist suggested and brought a picture of my wife smiling with our pet rabbit and a crochet bunny she made. I looked at these objects for a few minutes. I reflected on how happy and beautiful my wife looks with the bunny, but I still felt very scared. On inhalation the vapor felt light, like it may be a slight under dose. I inhaled a second time for a few seconds but didn't feel like I got much. The visuals were pretty light too. I was greeted with what looked like some abstract modern art in light pastel colors like sky blue, yellow and red. The shapes in the art were rounded. Then I went through a hallway and into a room. It felt like a domestic environment, like a child's bedroom. Someone I couldn't see pulled out some toys and children's drawings and showed them to me. I saw a baby doll, smiling puppy dog, a sock puppet, and some other such things I can't remember. I felt a bit of fear when the baby doll came out, considering what has been on my mind lately, but nothing bad happened. Then I left the room and returned to the hall where I saw what looked like a living room. I did not recognize the home. As the effects began to subside, I began to think about why I just had this experience. All of my other experiences have been pretty dark, with malevolent or cold entities. I definitely felt unwelcome in these experiences. This experience was totally different. I smiled because I thought it was kind of funny. Seriously? I take DMT, known for producing bizarre and alien hallucinations, and it shows me an ordinary home? Then I thought back to how I felt before the experience. So terrified. Depressed. Alone. Why would the medicine show me such a mundane domestic scene when I feel so terrible? Does the medicine know that I'm suffering and want to welcome me and comfort me? I felt a feeling of love wash over me. Does the medicine, or something else out there care about me? I haven't felt this way in a very long time. I burst into tears. I am still crying a little bit as I write this.

 

[northape]

Dose 10mg.
September 24 3:34am, right after the experience:

Wow. This may have been the most intense experience yet. I was really scared beforehand so I remembered what my therapist suggested and brought a picture of my wife smiling with our pet rabbit and a crochet bunny she made. I looked at these objects for a few minutes. I reflected on how happy and beautiful my wife looks with the bunny, but I still felt very scared. On inhalation the vapor felt light, like it may be a slight under dose. I inhaled a second time for a few seconds but didn't feel like I got much. The visuals were pretty light too. I was greeted with what looked like some abstract modern art in light pastel colors like sky blue, yellow and red. The shapes in the art were rounded. Then I went through a hallway and into a room. It felt like a domestic environment, like a child's bedroom. Someone I couldn't see pulled out some toys and children's drawings and showed them to me. I saw a baby doll, smiling puppy dog, a sock puppet, and some other such things I can't remember. I felt a bit of fear when the baby doll came out, considering what has been on my mind lately, but nothing bad happened. Then I left the room and returned to the hall where I saw what looked like a living room. I did not recognize the home. As the effects began to subside, I began to think about why I just had this experience. All of my other experiences have been pretty dark, with malevolent or cold entities. I definitely felt unwelcome in these experiences. This experience was totally different. I smiled because I thought it was kind of funny. Seriously? I take DMT, known for producing bizarre and alien hallucinations, and it shows me an ordinary home? Then I thought back to how I felt before the experience. So terrified. Depressed. Alone. Why would the medicine show me such a mundane domestic scene when I feel so terrible? Does the medicine know that I'm suffering and want to welcome me and comfort me? I felt a feeling of love wash over me. Does the medicine, or something else out there care about me? I haven't felt this way in a very long time. I burst into tears. I am still crying a little bit as I write this.

Thanks for sharing
You've got all the advice already. I can just repeat the one that fits best here:

But as the dose go higher, it becomes more and more likely for things to go out of control and for dmt to show you what you need vs what you want.

Maybe, you have been shown what you really long for. From my experience working with darkness, the most important thing is to accept it in yourself. You are just human, like everyone else. Do your best and cultivate love and kindness. Just being aware and present in your situation is a healing in itself.
All the best

 

[ShadedSelf]

Sounds like you have a strong sense of what it is that you need and I imagine you are probably quite good at figuring things out on your own, honestly my only advice would be to keep up whatever it is that you are doing.