In the last couple weeks I've had my first three DMT experiences. A friend of mine has been using DMT for a little while now, and he got me in touch with a friend of his who does extractions himself. The first day I actually smoked twice, once with ganja, once with peppermint leaf. Yesterday I smoked it with some other herbs which I've already forgotten the names of.
Anyhow, all 3 times felt like a natural progression. Each was more intense than the last. I'm sure I haven't had a breakthrough, but am very curious to see what that may be like if it's at all similar to others' experiences that I've heard and read. Visually, from what I can remember, it was a lot of pinwheels and geometric shapes. "Candyland" is an awesome name for it, when I read that on this site I immediately thought "that's perfect."
As for the ringing in the ears and strange sounds...
I'm a filmmaker, and have some experience with recording sound. If you've never put a pair of high quality headphones on and listened to your surroundings through an expensive microphone, you should try it sometime. The DMT trips reminded me a lot of that. The sounds and noises that you can barely make out with your naked ears are front and center on a good mic, and there's tons of very clear sounds you'll hear that disappear completely when you take the headphones off. The room I was in had a very small amount of ambient street noise coming in. But during the trip, I was hearing a lot of noise that sounded like traffic, people talking, airplanes, etc... but it was all LOUD and SWOOPING and distorted. It makes me wonder whether the noise I'm hearing in DMT world is really something else, of if my ears are becoming hyper-acute and I'm then filtering it in some bizarre way, and then perceiving it in an even more bizarre way. Anyhow, the idea that I was able to tune into a conversation that was impossible to hear normally, vs. hearing a conversation between beings in another dimension are almost equally cool to me.
I can't wait to go farther and see what I see.