Michal_R
Rising Star
Hello everyone,
Please apologize my non-native English, and let me try to explain what brought me here.
It was relatively late in my life when I came across psychedelic substances. Albeit occasionally smoking Marihuana since I was about 16, I came across Salvia Divinorum and magic mushrooms (the only psychedelic plants I have experimented with so far) for some reasons relatively late, not until I was 30. After I started experimenting with magic mushrooms (with low to moderate doses only) and found it to be really amazing to be able peek through the "doors of perception". While trying to educate myself about other natural psychedelic substances out there, I came across DMT. What immediately caught my attention was this kind of "mystery" surrounding it (a mixture of interesting scientific data and personal accounts of something unexplainable...). I will make it brief here... Simply I extracted my own DMT, and it took me three attempts of smoking it, due to having a bad smoking technique, to finally break through.
I don´t think that until now I was actually able to figure out what happened. I smoked DMT only once so far (at present, frankly, not knowing when, or if ever, I will do it again). It was about a month ago, and I smoked about 35mg of freebase. I did my "homework" by studying, reading and learning about the substance. However, I don´t think that such preparation actually helped me to prepare for what was to come. When I came down from the DMT realm, I was completely overwhelmed, astonished and amazed ("Ohmygod, how was this possible? /Because it is not possible!/") as well as a bit – or perhaps a lot! – confused ("WHAT happened? WHAT was that?" – and other, I assume, not unusual questions). When the effects diminished, I got up from the bed and did everything as usual – prepared something to eat, took shower and went to bed. A friend on phone told me, right after my experience, that it was little foolish to do it alone, as I could have been confused, depressed etc. because such experiences change people´s worldviews etc... I didn´t take this friend´s comments lightly, but I felt quite well and thought that maybe I was lucky not to have had a bad or some really frightening experience (however "quite frightening" the experience actually was).
The "shadow" of my DMT experience came back to me later. The next day, I was not able to do much, as my mind kept itself occupied with the "what happened" and other similar questions. After a few days, I think I went back to "normal" and felt more easy. However, a kind of feeling of "uneasiness" about the whole thing persisted. A creeping feeling, at the edge of a positive realisation, that nothing will be the same anymore. Then I found out that I have basically nobody to talk to and to share my feelings and thoughts with. I tried to explain to my wife what happened to me as best – and as careful – as I can, but I knew from beginning that I am actually unable to do so. For me, my DMT experience has been really something unspeakable, even difficult to think about. I don´t believe that I have been seriously psychologically disturbed by the event of smoking DMT (I was able to function "normal, as usual"), but I was simply facing the problem how to integrate, psychologically as well as emotionally and spiritually, the most overwhelming, incomprehensible, powerful and intense experience – but also the most "real" experience! – I ever had in my life. For some time I felt quite uneasy about my whole experience, playing with the idea that smoking DMT actually was not the best idea. I felt kind of "lonely in the world" like a small child who just realised that s/he actually already grew up. I took me a while to come to terms with the fact that there is no way back, nothing will be the same, and – perhaps – that I somewhat excluded myself from the larger society.
At present, I feel generally positive about my DMT experience, actually grateful for the new outlook on the world and myself. It just took me some time to integrate the experience. Few things helped me to sort things out:
(1) I read and listened to Terence McKenna a lot, and it helped me to understand that my experience was, after all, not that unusual (only generally speaking, it has remained more than unusual in itself). McKenna´s thoughts helped me to intellectually position my experience, at least a bit.
(2) What helped me a lot was undertaking a medium dose magic mushroom trip in complete silence and darkness (the method McKenna suggests, and now I understand why). It was "there", "where" I realised that psilocybin and DMT lead one to same, or at least similar, realms, and that they are experientially sort of interconnected. It was the relative slowness of the psilocybin trip (in contrast with the sudden teleport of DMT) which enabled me to actually think about it during the trip which was, at least for me, absolutely out of question during my DMT trip.
(3) Another thing that helped me to sort my DMT experience out, was simply "giving up" trying to force a meaning onto it NOW and HERE. Maybe it is part of the DMT experience not being able to give it meaning from "this world" and from the realm of everyday consciousness.
(4) Last thing that helped me to "find peace" has been realising that I am not actually that alone, as I thought I were. I was glad to find DMT-Nexus as what seems to me a supportive and resourceful community. Also, Vovin´s resent post "Why you should NOT take DMT" (Why you should NOT take DMT - First steps in Hyperspace - Welcome to the DMT-Nexus) resonated strongly with my own experience and with my own thinking about my DMT experience.
This is basically what brings me here to the DMT-Nexus.
To learn more from DMT and the DMT-Nexus community.
Peace and Love,
Michal
Please apologize my non-native English, and let me try to explain what brought me here.
It was relatively late in my life when I came across psychedelic substances. Albeit occasionally smoking Marihuana since I was about 16, I came across Salvia Divinorum and magic mushrooms (the only psychedelic plants I have experimented with so far) for some reasons relatively late, not until I was 30. After I started experimenting with magic mushrooms (with low to moderate doses only) and found it to be really amazing to be able peek through the "doors of perception". While trying to educate myself about other natural psychedelic substances out there, I came across DMT. What immediately caught my attention was this kind of "mystery" surrounding it (a mixture of interesting scientific data and personal accounts of something unexplainable...). I will make it brief here... Simply I extracted my own DMT, and it took me three attempts of smoking it, due to having a bad smoking technique, to finally break through.
I don´t think that until now I was actually able to figure out what happened. I smoked DMT only once so far (at present, frankly, not knowing when, or if ever, I will do it again). It was about a month ago, and I smoked about 35mg of freebase. I did my "homework" by studying, reading and learning about the substance. However, I don´t think that such preparation actually helped me to prepare for what was to come. When I came down from the DMT realm, I was completely overwhelmed, astonished and amazed ("Ohmygod, how was this possible? /Because it is not possible!/") as well as a bit – or perhaps a lot! – confused ("WHAT happened? WHAT was that?" – and other, I assume, not unusual questions). When the effects diminished, I got up from the bed and did everything as usual – prepared something to eat, took shower and went to bed. A friend on phone told me, right after my experience, that it was little foolish to do it alone, as I could have been confused, depressed etc. because such experiences change people´s worldviews etc... I didn´t take this friend´s comments lightly, but I felt quite well and thought that maybe I was lucky not to have had a bad or some really frightening experience (however "quite frightening" the experience actually was).
The "shadow" of my DMT experience came back to me later. The next day, I was not able to do much, as my mind kept itself occupied with the "what happened" and other similar questions. After a few days, I think I went back to "normal" and felt more easy. However, a kind of feeling of "uneasiness" about the whole thing persisted. A creeping feeling, at the edge of a positive realisation, that nothing will be the same anymore. Then I found out that I have basically nobody to talk to and to share my feelings and thoughts with. I tried to explain to my wife what happened to me as best – and as careful – as I can, but I knew from beginning that I am actually unable to do so. For me, my DMT experience has been really something unspeakable, even difficult to think about. I don´t believe that I have been seriously psychologically disturbed by the event of smoking DMT (I was able to function "normal, as usual"), but I was simply facing the problem how to integrate, psychologically as well as emotionally and spiritually, the most overwhelming, incomprehensible, powerful and intense experience – but also the most "real" experience! – I ever had in my life. For some time I felt quite uneasy about my whole experience, playing with the idea that smoking DMT actually was not the best idea. I felt kind of "lonely in the world" like a small child who just realised that s/he actually already grew up. I took me a while to come to terms with the fact that there is no way back, nothing will be the same, and – perhaps – that I somewhat excluded myself from the larger society.
At present, I feel generally positive about my DMT experience, actually grateful for the new outlook on the world and myself. It just took me some time to integrate the experience. Few things helped me to sort things out:
(1) I read and listened to Terence McKenna a lot, and it helped me to understand that my experience was, after all, not that unusual (only generally speaking, it has remained more than unusual in itself). McKenna´s thoughts helped me to intellectually position my experience, at least a bit.
(2) What helped me a lot was undertaking a medium dose magic mushroom trip in complete silence and darkness (the method McKenna suggests, and now I understand why). It was "there", "where" I realised that psilocybin and DMT lead one to same, or at least similar, realms, and that they are experientially sort of interconnected. It was the relative slowness of the psilocybin trip (in contrast with the sudden teleport of DMT) which enabled me to actually think about it during the trip which was, at least for me, absolutely out of question during my DMT trip.
(3) Another thing that helped me to sort my DMT experience out, was simply "giving up" trying to force a meaning onto it NOW and HERE. Maybe it is part of the DMT experience not being able to give it meaning from "this world" and from the realm of everyday consciousness.
(4) Last thing that helped me to "find peace" has been realising that I am not actually that alone, as I thought I were. I was glad to find DMT-Nexus as what seems to me a supportive and resourceful community. Also, Vovin´s resent post "Why you should NOT take DMT" (Why you should NOT take DMT - First steps in Hyperspace - Welcome to the DMT-Nexus) resonated strongly with my own experience and with my own thinking about my DMT experience.
This is basically what brings me here to the DMT-Nexus.
To learn more from DMT and the DMT-Nexus community.
Peace and Love,
Michal
