SpaceGandalf
Rising Star
“The Game”
Okay, so I tried DMT for the first time two weeks ago. It was not what I expected - no carrier wave, no fractals, no alien landscape, no visible entities and no feeling like I was dying. There was however an incredible sense of familiarity with past ketamine experiences and it was pretty fucked up.
A bit about me: I have a condition called aphantasia (the inability to conjure images with the eyes closed) which I have always had. I had around 8 years worth of experience with psychedelics in my youth, mostly involving ketamine, but I haven’t done any in about 14 years. I was raised in an atheist household, but had exposure to a range of religions. I have spent decades learning about various systems of philosophy, esotericism and occultism. I would call myself a “radical sceptic” with a heavy leaning towards a theistic form of gnostic pantheism.
Pre-flight: To prepare my self I cleaned my trip space, had a shower and put on fresh clean clothes - consider it a ritual of cleansing, reverence and preparation. I had arranged for my partner to trip sit and agreed that she could film me. I wanted to make the undertaking during the day, to give myself time to process the experience, unfortunately this meant we only had a short window between her finishing work and kids coming back from school.
Sitting down in my prepared space I began to try to measure out a 30mg dose on my electric scale. At first the scale didn’t register anything and I had to fiddle around a lot to measure it, lifting the bowl off and on to get a reading as I added spice. I then loaded up the e-mesh and tried to pre-melt it... nothing. The heating unit had come a little unscrewed from the battery, so I had to dump everything off the mesh and fix it before reloading. This time the spice melted into a nice puddle and I placed the mouthpiece over it. Throughout the process I’d had to repeatedly go for a pee - I likely have “ketamine bladder syndrome”, unaided by strong coffee and nerves. After a final tinkle, I sat down and looked at the clock. No way was I going to be back to normal by the time my son got home now, but I wasn’t going to be put off - I’d delayed the experience several times already - so I arranged with my partner to deal with it when he arrived. It was time to do this. I did some yogic breathing, fully exhaling with sharp puffs out followed by slow diaphragm inhales. I thought I was ready.
The trip: I put the mouthpiece to my lips and inhaled as I pressed the button. I cleared the substance easily and it hardly felt harsh at all (the direct e-mesh method is even easier than I expected). Immediately I placed the vaporiser down on the table and my vision began to “vibrate” as I felt myself detaching from reality, and time and space began to melt. I lay back in my seat as I felt it rushing on, that weightless and excited feeling in your stomach you get just before the rollercoaster goes racing down the track. “Here we go then, there ain’t no turning back now.” It felt like only seconds, but I’d held my breath in for 30. In this suspended state it occurred to me “you’re supposed to breath out you know”. I breathed out slowly.
I sat there breathing deeply. Part of me was resisting, my conscious mind having to fight it to move forward. My thoughts bouncing back and forth in an increasingly tinny vibrating voice “you don’t want this”, “yes I do”, “no you don’t”, “yes I do”. 1 minute in. I put my palms together in front of me as if in prayer and raised them like this to my face. “Yes I do, yes I do, yes I do!”... Reality was folding in on itself, concertinaing in towards me in ever lighter panes. “Yes I do!”... then everything melted into a red and orange space of information, moving like a liquid machine.
I knew this place, I’d been here before, like a half remembered snapshot from a k-hole. This was not a good place. I knew what this was about. This was “The Game”.
“Surrender to me” came the request as a thought, from something vast, hungry and leering, which I perceived as ‘evil’.
I resisted. I knew what it wanted - my soul. “No. What the fuck have I done, is this all it was.”
“You’re mine now” it mocked.
“No I’m not” I could see it all, understand it all, “The Game”. The vast fucking cosmic game, like a bad joke.
“You’ve smoked it, now your soul is mine”
“No it’s not. I didn’t know what this was, you have no right over me” I began humming, hands locked in my lap.
“Yes I do. You’ve done these things before. You belong to me”
“No I don’t. None of that matters. All that matters is is being good, doing good”
“You don’t know what’s good or bad, you can’t tell the difference. You don’t know if I’m the devil or god”
I know this puzzle, this eternal trap, I understand “The Game”, god, the devil, the demiurge, the liberator - “That doesn’t matter, what matters is that you try” 3:30 in, I take a deep breath with my mouth and open my eyes for a moment, before closing them again.
“I can teach you everything”
“I don’t need that. All I need is the love of my family and to love them back” 4min in, I open my eyes and move my hands in a symmetrical pattern, something I knew instinctively to do, a ward, a protection. Then I close my eyes again. “The Game” dances before me.
“I can show you what you want to know, what to paint” this is something I had gone in wanting - inspiration for my paintings.
“I don’t need or want that, it’s the struggle that makes it worthwhile”.
My mind is filled with many thoughts of the context of this experience, the clues throughout esoteric wisdom of the existence of this substance. Is this really what it was all about. Is this really all there is to it?
I realise I should probably talk to my partner, let her know what’s going on, record something of this. I open my eyes and say her name. She responds “yes ‘gandalf’”
“How long has this been going on for?” I ask. I’m not really asking how long the experience has been, my thoughts are on how long “the game” has been going on, as I do more hand manoeuvres which help to ground me.
“About 5 minutes, why?” She responds.
“Because this is very, very, very fucked” long pause “up.” In the moment I’m amazed by the level of clarity of my thoughts throughout and the level of emotional control I’ve felt.
“It’s fine Gandalf, I’m here” she says. The objects in front of me are not stimulating particularly noticeable hallucinations, but the presence is still there and when I close my eyes I see “the game” as a static geometric pattern, like decks of cards covered in symbols fanned out.
I’m bored with the experience, of having to resist this presence. I ask my partner about how long I’ve got left, and we begin to converse. I look at her, her face a mutated splodge. I look away immediately, I don’t want to see her like this. The picture on the wall has been transformed too, into a dmt world version of itself, but everything else about the room is normal.
The psychedelic effects slowly recede, lasting a little over 15 minutes, I remained calm throughout.
Overall my impression from the experience was disappointment. It very much felt like surrendering was about giving up my soul to this thing, not really like dying. One of the things I said to my partner was that it felt like “signing your name in the book of the devil”. Ask a priest though and they’ll tell you - it doesn’t matter how fucking good you are, if you want to get into heaven you have to surrender to gods will and give your soul to him - and yeah, they sign your name in his book too, go figure. Sounds like a cheap fucking trick to me, which is what the experience felt like too.
Certainly it did give me a reminder of the things that mattered to me in my responses to what was happening. I was however left with questions rather than answers about what the fuck lies beyond.
Maybe I’m just too much of an anarchist and a skeptic for this shit. I really wasn’t ready for how much control I would have - nothing like ketamine in that regard.
As the weeks passed by and the memories faded, my opinions of the experience softened. Reviewing it and writing this brought it all back though.
“Fuck knows”, but I really would like to hear your thoughts - and please ask any questions you want (the worst that can happen is that I’ll reply)
EDIT: see below for an UPDATE and ADDITIONAL INFORMATION about my trip.
Okay, so I tried DMT for the first time two weeks ago. It was not what I expected - no carrier wave, no fractals, no alien landscape, no visible entities and no feeling like I was dying. There was however an incredible sense of familiarity with past ketamine experiences and it was pretty fucked up.
A bit about me: I have a condition called aphantasia (the inability to conjure images with the eyes closed) which I have always had. I had around 8 years worth of experience with psychedelics in my youth, mostly involving ketamine, but I haven’t done any in about 14 years. I was raised in an atheist household, but had exposure to a range of religions. I have spent decades learning about various systems of philosophy, esotericism and occultism. I would call myself a “radical sceptic” with a heavy leaning towards a theistic form of gnostic pantheism.
Pre-flight: To prepare my self I cleaned my trip space, had a shower and put on fresh clean clothes - consider it a ritual of cleansing, reverence and preparation. I had arranged for my partner to trip sit and agreed that she could film me. I wanted to make the undertaking during the day, to give myself time to process the experience, unfortunately this meant we only had a short window between her finishing work and kids coming back from school.
Sitting down in my prepared space I began to try to measure out a 30mg dose on my electric scale. At first the scale didn’t register anything and I had to fiddle around a lot to measure it, lifting the bowl off and on to get a reading as I added spice. I then loaded up the e-mesh and tried to pre-melt it... nothing. The heating unit had come a little unscrewed from the battery, so I had to dump everything off the mesh and fix it before reloading. This time the spice melted into a nice puddle and I placed the mouthpiece over it. Throughout the process I’d had to repeatedly go for a pee - I likely have “ketamine bladder syndrome”, unaided by strong coffee and nerves. After a final tinkle, I sat down and looked at the clock. No way was I going to be back to normal by the time my son got home now, but I wasn’t going to be put off - I’d delayed the experience several times already - so I arranged with my partner to deal with it when he arrived. It was time to do this. I did some yogic breathing, fully exhaling with sharp puffs out followed by slow diaphragm inhales. I thought I was ready.
The trip: I put the mouthpiece to my lips and inhaled as I pressed the button. I cleared the substance easily and it hardly felt harsh at all (the direct e-mesh method is even easier than I expected). Immediately I placed the vaporiser down on the table and my vision began to “vibrate” as I felt myself detaching from reality, and time and space began to melt. I lay back in my seat as I felt it rushing on, that weightless and excited feeling in your stomach you get just before the rollercoaster goes racing down the track. “Here we go then, there ain’t no turning back now.” It felt like only seconds, but I’d held my breath in for 30. In this suspended state it occurred to me “you’re supposed to breath out you know”. I breathed out slowly.
I sat there breathing deeply. Part of me was resisting, my conscious mind having to fight it to move forward. My thoughts bouncing back and forth in an increasingly tinny vibrating voice “you don’t want this”, “yes I do”, “no you don’t”, “yes I do”. 1 minute in. I put my palms together in front of me as if in prayer and raised them like this to my face. “Yes I do, yes I do, yes I do!”... Reality was folding in on itself, concertinaing in towards me in ever lighter panes. “Yes I do!”... then everything melted into a red and orange space of information, moving like a liquid machine.
I knew this place, I’d been here before, like a half remembered snapshot from a k-hole. This was not a good place. I knew what this was about. This was “The Game”.
“Surrender to me” came the request as a thought, from something vast, hungry and leering, which I perceived as ‘evil’.
I resisted. I knew what it wanted - my soul. “No. What the fuck have I done, is this all it was.”
“You’re mine now” it mocked.
“No I’m not” I could see it all, understand it all, “The Game”. The vast fucking cosmic game, like a bad joke.
“You’ve smoked it, now your soul is mine”
“No it’s not. I didn’t know what this was, you have no right over me” I began humming, hands locked in my lap.
“Yes I do. You’ve done these things before. You belong to me”
“No I don’t. None of that matters. All that matters is is being good, doing good”
“You don’t know what’s good or bad, you can’t tell the difference. You don’t know if I’m the devil or god”
I know this puzzle, this eternal trap, I understand “The Game”, god, the devil, the demiurge, the liberator - “That doesn’t matter, what matters is that you try” 3:30 in, I take a deep breath with my mouth and open my eyes for a moment, before closing them again.
“I can teach you everything”
“I don’t need that. All I need is the love of my family and to love them back” 4min in, I open my eyes and move my hands in a symmetrical pattern, something I knew instinctively to do, a ward, a protection. Then I close my eyes again. “The Game” dances before me.
“I can show you what you want to know, what to paint” this is something I had gone in wanting - inspiration for my paintings.
“I don’t need or want that, it’s the struggle that makes it worthwhile”.
My mind is filled with many thoughts of the context of this experience, the clues throughout esoteric wisdom of the existence of this substance. Is this really what it was all about. Is this really all there is to it?
I realise I should probably talk to my partner, let her know what’s going on, record something of this. I open my eyes and say her name. She responds “yes ‘gandalf’”
“How long has this been going on for?” I ask. I’m not really asking how long the experience has been, my thoughts are on how long “the game” has been going on, as I do more hand manoeuvres which help to ground me.
“About 5 minutes, why?” She responds.
“Because this is very, very, very fucked” long pause “up.” In the moment I’m amazed by the level of clarity of my thoughts throughout and the level of emotional control I’ve felt.
“It’s fine Gandalf, I’m here” she says. The objects in front of me are not stimulating particularly noticeable hallucinations, but the presence is still there and when I close my eyes I see “the game” as a static geometric pattern, like decks of cards covered in symbols fanned out.
I’m bored with the experience, of having to resist this presence. I ask my partner about how long I’ve got left, and we begin to converse. I look at her, her face a mutated splodge. I look away immediately, I don’t want to see her like this. The picture on the wall has been transformed too, into a dmt world version of itself, but everything else about the room is normal.
The psychedelic effects slowly recede, lasting a little over 15 minutes, I remained calm throughout.
Overall my impression from the experience was disappointment. It very much felt like surrendering was about giving up my soul to this thing, not really like dying. One of the things I said to my partner was that it felt like “signing your name in the book of the devil”. Ask a priest though and they’ll tell you - it doesn’t matter how fucking good you are, if you want to get into heaven you have to surrender to gods will and give your soul to him - and yeah, they sign your name in his book too, go figure. Sounds like a cheap fucking trick to me, which is what the experience felt like too.
Certainly it did give me a reminder of the things that mattered to me in my responses to what was happening. I was however left with questions rather than answers about what the fuck lies beyond.
Maybe I’m just too much of an anarchist and a skeptic for this shit. I really wasn’t ready for how much control I would have - nothing like ketamine in that regard.
As the weeks passed by and the memories faded, my opinions of the experience softened. Reviewing it and writing this brought it all back though.
“Fuck knows”, but I really would like to hear your thoughts - and please ask any questions you want (the worst that can happen is that I’ll reply)
EDIT: see below for an UPDATE and ADDITIONAL INFORMATION about my trip.
