Poll: how did you first learn about DMT?

[Godsmacker]

I first heard about DMT from erowid when I was curious about LSD. It seemed cool but I didn't look into it much. A few months or so later, an acquaintance of mine nonchalantly said that it was easy as hell to extract and that its visionary aspect blew acid out of the water. Being the person I am, I went about extracting it, discovered a new found love for chemistry along the way, and was pleasantly surprised when I took that first toke...

 

[ScientificMethod]

^You read Electric Koolaide as a teen?!?! That's nuts! I could barely get through it (as a straight person) in my late twenties. LOL. I was recently thinking back to the scenes in that book where they bring the Hell's Angles dudes into the tree house and launch them off. LOL.

I first heard about DMT on a podcast. It was actually just a comedy podcast that isn't very popular, and one of the cohosts talked about how he was at a friend's house and his friend asked if he wanted to try this crazy stuff. He did, and he explained on the podcast how the entire room disappeared and became something else. I thought that it was really weird, and I relistened later to figure out what this stuff was.

Then the second time I heard of it was on the Joe Rogan show. I listened to that for a number of years before I even smoked my first bowl (at 25 years old). After I started smoking bud, I started meeting people who were into mushrooms. They gave me some, then I had some L, and that's when I was searching the web for mushroom/lucy information when I found Terrance McKenna talks.

From there, it's history. But it all started with a benign podcast.

 

[blue_velvet]

Word of mouth. I was already smoking pot and had one mind-blowing psychedelic trip under my belt (either LSD or DOC). I was really into Tool and when 10,000 days came out, my friend read and relayed to me that Rosetta Stoned was about DMT and what it was, etc. I tried it once in 2008 and about 20 more times in 2010 when I did some extractions with a friend. I never broke through due to poor smoking technique/apparatus. One day I'll get a GVG and do some more extractions.

 

[Ryusaki]

When i was 19 i took a moderate amount of hawaiian shrooms which showed me visions of middle/south american shamans.
I researched the topic, found out about Ayahuasca and ended up reading William Burroughs Yage Letters.

 

[DMTripper]

Somewhere while browsing the net in '96-'97.
No one I knew had heard of it. I've been kind of obsessed with it ever since. But don't use it often. Several times a year but haven't had a breakthrough for a looong time now. A lot of stress in my life the last 2-3 years. To much resistance in my nervous system. But I just made some changa and will break through soon. Working on changing my life now. Reducing stress factors to get ready for Hyperspace

 

[RAM]

For me it was a multitude of factors.. Although I probably first saw it on the r/psychonaut thread on Reddit, the show Drugs Inc. showed a hipster man in Detroit using DMT and describing his experience. My best friend in high school read Strassman's book too and told me about it, but this was probably after I had already told him about DMT.

Even though I know it's probably just the result of cognitive biases, I take some things as signs. I remember when I was first learning about DMT, someone online had said, "You don't come to it, it comes to you." So when I was seeing it all over the place, I knew the time was right. And I'll never look back.

 

[Morris Crowley]

Reading D. M. Turner's Essential Psychedelic Guide about 15 years ago. It boggled my mind that there was a substance which he described as being unequivocally more intense than LSD or mushrooms.

 

[Mitakuye Oyasin]

Terrence McKenna lectures, then his books in the early 1990s.

 

[voyaj]

I came across information on NN-DMT & 5MEO after I had a very weird 30/60 (hard to say) second trance and then a slight natural psychedelic experience in 2004 that lasted an entire sleepless night. Nothing like it has happened to me before or after that experience. Wondered what the hell it could have been because it almost felt somewhat like a threshold dose of psilocybin after the trance - came across DMT on the internet (strassman, etc), wondered if it might have been the reason - said one day I would try and find out if it was similar. Found out - the idea is similar but the experiences were not, hahaha.

It's funny now that I think about it, I totally forgot about that strange experience until now and why I found out about DMT since I actually started experimenting with DMT three years ago. If I thought that natural experience was strange, holy shit - nothing can compare to the spice in bizarre and yet absolutely awesome. It's definitely one of my favorite topics.

 

[doodlekid]

From a dutch book called 'uit je bol' which translates to something like 'out of ya head'. There DMT was described as being the 'business man trip'. It kinda appealed for being such a powerful breakthrough psychedelic which only lasted for a lunch break. But it still took years before I actually inhaled it first time...

 

[Dante]

I was in my early teen and a friend passed me a CD with no title and with some strange electronic music on it. It contained some tracks from "Classical Mushroom" by Infected Mushroom and "1200 micrograms" by 1200 Micrograms. One of the track of the latter was "DMT". I didn't know the title at the time, but I couldn't get the words it says at the beginning off my head... "I remember the very very first time I smoked DMT"
8)

 

[mad_banshee]

I used to do acid, shrooms, and mescaline back in the 60's /70's. But then got busy raised a family and all that good stuff.
So then, about 10 years ago, at about age 52 I heard something about this stuff called Salvia Divinorum. I did some research on it and bought some and I was astounded! Spent a lot of time in discussions at the Salvia Forum which is now long gone. There, Fractal Enchantment ( a current member on this forum as well under a different name) kind of tapped me on the shoulder and pointed me to DMT. Since then, I love the soul breakthroughs I often experience!

 

[DmnStr8]

I had seen DMT on drug lists and heard about it but I guess equated it to some other drugs like heroin or something to that effect. I had applied a stigma. Then I watch 'DMT-The Spirit Molecule' was amazed at how I quickly it spun me around on my thinking.

I had to have this experience in my life. I had to experience what these people were talking about. I have often judged things in my life as good or bad without first learning about it. The same can be said for people.

This is the first lesson DMT taught me out of countless so far. An awareness is now open. There is a saying that you cannot fill a cup that is already full. I now try to be empty.

I have found that my friends have all come into my life exactly when I needed them and was ready for them. Like I was in training just to have these relationships. I feel the same about DMT. Like a friend I have been waiting for. It came into my life exactly when I was ready for what it had to offer.

Powerful medicine.

 

[Heretic]

I was on an anonymous imageboard back in 2006ish when someone mentioned dmt... I had never heard of it before, but something about the way he spoke called to me... I felt a sensation inside my head both strangely new & familiar at the same time... eventually I found my way here, and well, the rest is unwritten history

 

[zhoro]

I was a part of the psychedelic trance scene around the turn of the century. People in those circles were familiar with it. I heard something along the lines of it being a key that unlocks something in your brain that never closes again.

 

[oversoul1919]

Documentary, years ago on National Geographic channel. It was something about NDEs, and DMT was mentioned as one of possible causes for it.

Not long after that, I discovered that people actually make and use it.

My first psychedelic of interest was the acid. I mean, seriously, who hasn't ever heard of acid?

 

[SKA]

First heard about it when a psychonaut friend of mine told me that "one of the most powerfull psychedelic compounds can be obtained from simple preparations from common grasses"

He mentioned the name DMT, but nothing about it's effects AFAIK. I may have searched info
on DMT on erowid.org following that, though the first significant information about DMT
I remember finding were the many lectures of Terrence McKenna I found on Youtube.

His lectures about his DMT experiences made me realise DMT was something I wanted to experience.
A number of years later I met a friend who studied organic chemistry, was also a psychonaut and
with him I smoalked my first pipe of DMT.

 

[joedirt]

I knew of DMT for a long time.. Don't even remember when I first heard about it...

however it was James' Orocs Tryptamine Palace that really caught my interest and led me down the path of seeking it out... Worth noting that I still have not come across 5-Methoxy DMT... which is what his book was primarily about.

Strangely my fascination with pure DMT has largely waned at this point. Now oral dmt with harmalas is a much more worthy experience to me... But I would never deny the sheer power and beauty of a breakthrough dose of DMT.

 

[Adjhart]

EROWID - When I was a junior in high school (2003), I was sucking up psychedelic information like a sponge. Reading all about LSD, Shrooms, DMT, although DMT was very obscure then and it was something that I probably only knew about because I was the kid who read every single page for each drug on Erowid main. I didn't even do DMT until last year when I become a member of this site - the 11 year dormancy since inception of the idea has struck me as really cool, too.

 

[MelCat]

I had never heard of DMT before.
I was taking a lot of acid at the time.
My tripping buddy called me up and said
"Get over here now!" in a playful tone
so I knew it wasn't serious.

As soon as I got there, he packed a bong
and then fiddled with his little container
and sprinkled a good bit of orange crystals
on top of the bowl.

He slid the bong across to me and with
a mischievous grin, he asked me:

"You wanna meet Jeeesus?!?"

How can you say no to that?

Not having a clue what I was in for, we proceeded
to turn Aphex Twin's Windowlicker up on full blast
while I got cozy in a recliner.

I gobbled as much as I could down in two hits
and while my friend was expecting me to pass out
like everyone else he had dosed did, I just geeked out.

I remember thinking I was seeing all of these different
radio waves as different colored clouds. I could almost see
through the walls as they were composed of nothing but
energy. That energy was displayed as hieroglyphic/Egyptian
styled patterns that raced across the walls faster than I
could keep up with them.

At one point I was staring at a metal sun sculpture my friend
welded together and in the middle, I saw three Native American
Indian Chiefs emerged from the rippled brass in the middle.

There was an unspoken awareness of each others presence as I
stared at them and they stared back at me.

Behind them I could almost make out a long hallway which I
interpreted as the hall of our ancestors.

Soon afterwards I remember thinking "This is like dying" and
it was completely peaceful if not blissful.

I will always be eternally indebted to my friend for introducing
me to dmt.