Hello Nexians,
I've lurked your fine forums as a guest for many weeks. I will be procuring the needed materials for my first DMT extraction later this month for what will be my first experience with the molecule. It would seem fair to introduce my reasons for wanting to do so prior to subjecting you to my long-winded, tangential, cryptic writings. Fortunately, for us all, life is not fair. I am confident any attempt I were to make to briefly sum up my thoughts on the matter would only serve to muddle my focus, resulting in a perfectionist rejection of inevitably misinterpreted unclear thoughts that I have become all too familiar with experiencing.
What I believe to be my first mind-altered experience occurred when I was just five years old, now 26 years ago. I fell ill, and stayed at home for what seemed like a full month. I admit that the time frame is likely distorted in my memory, and was probably kept at home for a week at most. During this time, I distinctly remember being given two different types of liquid medication. The two bottles that my mother kept in her bedside table were colored differently, and one was for morning doses while the other was given before bedtime. Such trivial details may seem mundane, but for me to have them from such a young age is remarkable to me. I do not have vivid memories; nearly all long-term memories I have of events passed are purely conceptual in nature.
Around the same time as when I fell ill, I began having very interesting experiences. Right as I would close my eyes after lying down to sleep, I would get a sensation of my hands and feet swelling. The first couple of times it happened, I would open my eyes to look, only to see that my body was very much the shape and size to be expected. After several instances of feeling the swelling sensation and then visually checking for but finding no evidence of any physical happenings, it would cease to occur that evening or would be very diminished as to cause me no worry. At some point, I came to the conclusion that despite having sensations that told me otherwise, nothing was physically amiss and thus grew more and more comfortable with the odd signals that would begin firing most evenings when I went to sleep.
The rabbit hole this comfort zone thrust me into is hard to put into words. At the peak of the swelling sensation, an alternating cycle would begin of shrinking back to normal proportions and then swelling again. Each cycle would both accelerate and intensify the experience, gradually causing my entire body to be engulfed in the sensation. At the peak of the cycle's accelerated frequency, my closed-eye visual field would become gradually saturated with an indescribably pure white light that would then cycle in synchronization with the physical sensations. At the opposite end of the cycle grew an utter blackness that simply felt unnatural; a complete lack of existence is more befitting a description than that of a lack of light. I felt as though I was being given a glimpse of what death was in that blackness. Very abruptly, the cycle would halt, leaving me with a sense of meaning that was altogether the most wonderful and frightening notion I had ever comprehended up to that point in my life. I sensed for the first time that meaning and reality were not just what I saw with my eyes; something in my mind was screaming out to be heard and for me to know that it had control, and that my own thoughts and desires were the essence of reality.
Being a very introverted and analytical person, I never spoke of these experiences to anyone. I was afraid that it would be considered abnormal and that something would be done to stop them from happening. The experiences continued, albeit more seldom as time went by, until I was about the age of 10. I venture to say that puberty played a distinctive role in their cessation. Not until the age of 20 would I discover my experiences to be far from unique. My first chemically-induced dissociative experience came in the form of 900mg (a 14.2 mg/kg dose) of pure DXM HBr. Through William White's DXM FAQ I learned of Ann Shulgin's experiences with what she coined as the Dissociative Spiral, and that the sensations I could not put into words were Lilliputian hallucinations. I had tried LSD on many occasions in the couple of years preceding my first DXM dose and in turn was intrigued to know more about hallucinogens in general. Reading Shulgin's description of the Spiral, though, triggered a wave of revelation for me. Though it has taken 11 years since then to get to the point in my life to be compelled to try DMT, I can state without a doubt that it is the reason I am now here on these forums. Discovering that I was not alone gave me a bit of courage to seek out more information about what I had gone through as a child. I asked my mother about the sickness I had while in Kindergarten and the two bottles of medicine and what they were and she told me that she had no recollection of it having ever taken place. Whether it be part of what she calls her "Sometzheimer's" or that she has reason to withhold information from me, I cannot say. I have little emotional connection to my verbally abusive father, and not much more so to my mother who did nothing to stop it or help me to cope in any way. So, I saw little point in pressing the matter further.
Throughout my life, the discovery of profound meaning has oft come with shortcomings of equal magnitude. My discovery of online social interaction became a binge addiction to gaming (fed by frequent LSD trips) during my first year of college studies. I flunked out despite being awarded a scholarship awarded to only 8 Health Sciences undergraduate freshmen out of roughly 600 applicants. My binge into DXM resulted in the loss of the most stimulating job I've yet to have, an eviction, and credit/debt issues that took many years to recover from. The only LSD trip to be so powerful for me to lose time and memory of what happened during it (while scaring the shit out of the new friends I had just met and tripped with) ended up being the trigger to a series of events that would lead to the first meeting of my daughters' mother and myself. The birth of my first daughter, an event I felt to be at the time very much not in line with the path in life I wanted, turned out to be the impetus that would eventually rid me of the social withdrawal issues and the irresponsibility that came with them which had plagued me for so long.
To briefly describe the most trying time in my life, it will suffice to say that giving one's 5-year-old child an honest answer of "I don't know." when asked when their mother will come home after 4 months have passed is an experience I would not wish upon anyone. Through 12 months of not knowing yet having no desire to seek out a trip, I learned that the thread of life I had spun for myself had come to the point of accepting the difference between seeking out a state of mind to withdraw into and that of one to learn from. I spent all of my childhood and much of my young adulthood embracing the nuances of my personality without fully understanding them. As a result, I have attained an unfaltering love of myself which I believe to be borderline narcissistic even though those close to me don't feel the same way, and a unique individuality that I am comfortable being honest and open about. Emotional immaturity and a weak sense of self-control are the resultant crutches I still bear in part due to partaking in this backward route of self-development. Coming to terms with my nature of being susceptible to binge addiction was a journey ill suited to be traveled alone, but alone is the only way I have ever been able to find solace. To this day I find difficulty in writing about the circumstances of it; speaking of such things face-to-face even with those whom I love the most is daunting to say the least.
Should you find yourself at this point in my story, know that there exist just two individuals outside this forum that know as much detail. A friend once told me a few years ago that her only wish for me would be to find the courage to put my true self out there for the entire world to see. She thought it a shame to hold my virtues contained within such a closed circle. If you're reading this, perhaps I've found the courage to not back down from hitting the 'post' button and have begun to make that wish come true. The gift I see to be had in these forums is a solidarity I've sought but been unable to find. My only hope is that, in time, I too can be a part of giving that same hope to others
