Hi all. This is my first post. I have to talk about this.

I am interested in the nature of consciousness. I want to know what it is. I want to know what will happen when I die. When I heard Terrence McKenna talk about DMT on Youtube, I was immediately and overwhelmingly curious.

So I found this place. I ordered glassware and root bark from the internet. From 100g MHRB, I ended up extracting and recrystallizing about 1 gram of off-white crystalline powder the color of parmesan cheese. I bought a new atomizer for my nicotine vape device. I added 1 mL of 50% propylene glycol/50% vegetable glycerin and counted out 28 inhalations to deplete it. I dissolved 500 mg of my DMT powder into 1 mL of 50% pg/vg, total volume ended up being about 2 mL. So I calculated ~9 mg of DMT per inhalation.

Then I started experimenting. On my first attempt, I think the vape device's cotton was still pretty saturated with DMT-free pg/vg juice. I took 1 hit at a time, waiting about 30 seconds between hits until effects were noticed. It took 5 inhalations until I got an effect very similar to magic mushrooms, but x 100. Visuals lasted 5 minutes or so. It was intense but not overwhelming. Pleasant and fun. could be a party drug.

I tried the next night and got the same effect with 2 x inhalations. [~18 mg?]

Then I had 2 days off, home alone. On the first day, I took 4 hits. Should be about 36 mg DMT. I was prepared for an intense experience and told my self to just remember to let go. It was utterly terrifying. I wrote down what I could remember of the experience immediately afterwards:

4 puffs [~36 mg DMT]. Extraordinarily frightening. Felt like a panic attack. Telling myself not to fight it helps 0%. It feels so so bad. Wanted it to stop. Agony. Like something has gone wrong, something is not right. Can't remember much from the beginning of trip, from initial visions, just fear. I'm petrified, trying to figure out how i can take my pulse, reassure myself I haven't done something horrible in reality. Stuff was happening, but all I remember is preoccupation with dread. There is no way to think logically. I think visually it was just disorganized patterns, central was just the feeling of panic. [edit, next day: I am definitely wrong and just can't remember the trip. I remember more from this trip after dosing the next day, as I had a repeat of many of the visions which are still poorly remembered and not describable.] Complete dread does finally pass, and I'm somewhere, covered in dmt? Some yellow, fluffy stuff. I think it was dmt! And I'm in an object like a commercial fryer, a metal basket or drawer. Entities are there, covered in the same stuff, too, made out of it, like fuzzy Muppets but with insectoid eyes. They don't seem good or evil, they're amused maybe, perhaps scientists. They were looking at me, doing something with me. I was some sort of subject. not an equal. They did not try to communicate with me. Slowly must have started coming down, realized I should try to remember what I was seeing. Then realized I had a body, and I could open my eyes. I was ok at this point though and did not open my eyes. tried to stay where i was as long as possible to try and figure out what this dmt experience is. Extreme relief. I had survived. But disappointment. All I remembered seemed like a mere hallucination without any sort of insight.

Next day, I am home alone again. I steel myself to try it again.

3 puffs [~27 mg DMT]. Infinitely better, but somehow still too strong. I figured out a lot from last dose this time, as many of the experiences were the same. I remembered the initial part and now know why it scared me when it is first kicking in. Piece by piece, as the dmt takes hold, every faculty with which I make sense of reality stops functioning. I believe I've heard this described as ego dissolution. It feels bad until it's complete, as then there's no faculty capable of worrying about it anymore. It is the dismantling of sense of self, sense of interpersonal relationships, and, the most difficult and anxiety inducing, sense of time. I comfort myself beforehand with the idea that even if it's bad, it'll only last 10 minutes. That means nothing when sense of the passage of time stops functioning. As this is happening, it is shocking. You are helpless to prevent it, and I don't know how an extreme negative reaction can be avoided without simply getting used to it! I also realized yesterday's dose was disappointing only because I only remembered the very, very end of it, a minuscule amount. After my mind is dismantled as described, I don't think I can remember much. I remember something about mosquito-like beings, again not communicating. They were just working. Was I watching them work or was I part of the indescribable material they were working with? I'm not sure. As it happened, I was eventually aware of my fingers tapping together, then of my breathing, then of my position in "real" space, that I was lying on a bed. The visions then ended as if sunlight was cast on them and they started to melt as if made from impossibly thin ice. This--the end of the trip, coming back--is again the only clear memory. I opened my eyes to incredibly complex patterns that looked like ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics everywhere. I felt the memory of what happened in the trip leaving me, knew the visions and experience would be mostly impossible to remember which made me grin and laugh. I felt good yet exhausted, like I had just survived a car crash unscathed. I accidentally took another hit of the dmt vape before replacing atomizer with the one containing nicotine. Exhaled immediately with no continuance of trip.

So, I'm going from hey, this feels like mushrooms! with 2 hits, to complete loss of baseline reality and dismantling of most aspects of my consciousness and accompanying 90%+ memory loss of the experience with 3 hits.

The experience is 1000 times weirder than any trip report I've read or heard, including McKenna's. McKenna's description of the trip is so sensical, it sounds to me like he made the whole thing up! There was not enough "me" during my trips to interact with an entity or do anything. I'm dismantled so quickly, I can't remember where I went or how I got there.

Has anyone else had dmt trips like this?
Is there any strategy to remember more?
How is it not universal to experience extreme panic when first confronted with the shutdown of every tool your consciousness has to navigate "baseline" reality?
Why am I tripping this hard off what I understood to be low-ish or at least below breakthrough doses?
WTF does it all mean?!

Were the aliens like mosquitoes or praying mantises?

Stratedgy to remember? Write trip reports like this because after a few trips you will forget previous trips. Now you can always look back on this one.

Psychedelics need not be pleassurable.

You are tripping so hard because 30mg is most of the times a breakthrough dose. Its not even tripping anymore but entering a whole other dimension/state of consciousness...many times its sort of like entering a coma/near death experience. Weird stuff man...its get waaay weirder too! xD Insectoid beings are common in trips from what I have experienced and read.

Honestly I can't even really visualize what the entities looked like anymore. Vague memory of large, fly-like eyes. Mosquito was what I wrote fresh out of the trip. It was like it was too weird to remember and bring the experience back with me. I was expecting entities to interact with me and be happy I was there. Instead, I'm just watching entities doing incomprehensible things that I can't remember!

I'd really like to get a trip somewhere in between 2 and 3 hits. More intense than just visuals, but not so intense I can't remember it.

Welcome to the DMT enigma

The fast-paced fractal land stuff is impossible to understand or integrate in such a short period of time. However, in my experiences, not all journeys are like that. The deepest ones have been more singular such as a black void with one fractal dragon that slowly burrowed it's head into my chest, or a journey that had me viewing a vast avatar-esque landscape full of lakes and islands floating in the air without any fractals at all. Not all of my journeys have involved dissolution of sense of self - some have, others haven't. Yet to figure out what dictates the nature of each journey, but no doubt the answers are buried in our subconsious.

And yup, entities commonly seem to be insectoid, lizard-like or jesters. My journeys would frequently have a carnival theme or be based around a deck of cards, specifically face cards: king, queen, jack, joker.

I did 1 hit, ~9 mg, to see if, in the DMT state, I could remember more from my experiences over the last two days.

It felt similar, starting aggressive and insectoid. The first half especially, the feeling is reminiscent of the aggression of salvia. Language stops processing. Generally, when I'm thinking, I'm sort of speaking to myself in my head. This process turns to mildly startling gibberish, and I stop. I feel like if I tried to speak, I could not form words. Then the second half of the experience melts into a feeling more familiar to mushrooms, like serotonin activation, love-y feeling, makes me want to smile and laugh.

Experienced full-on auditory hallucinations. I'm doing it in my room with a loud fan on for white noise. It seems to morph into the sounds of a robotic insect hive. Maybe that is taking my experience in that direction?

Not scary at all. Maintained ego, sense of a body, and knew I had taken DMT. Significant visual hallucinations with eyes open. With eyes closed, aggressive fractals evolving to gentle waves.

Another 3 hits tonight. I put on headphones with some hippy music. I searched "dmt music" on youtube to see if I could avoid the damn insects. It was heavy on drums. Oh boy was it successful.

Holy shit, it's a wonderful experience. Ominous build-up. Just the smell of DMT increases my heartrate by probably 20 BPM at this point. I put the vape to my lips twice and chicken out. I try to meditate to calm down, but I'm too nervous and tensed up. Finally I just have to grab the vape and hit it, like psyching yourself up to jump into a pool of cold water.

I close my eyes to a fractal kaleidescope. Then comes the orb to disassemble and destroy me. It gets easier every time. I remember I could hear the drum from the music for quite a while. Everything else turned into crazy hallucinations, but the drum stayed for a long time. But you know, I don't know that I was as disassembled this time. This time I feel my body flatten out to one dimension as my consciousness expands in all dimensions out of it. Then I enter something that I could call hyperspace. Intense colors, extremely complicated geometry. I'm in a room, I remember I was here both times before, just could not remember the last 2 times. I think I didn't stay in this room before, but I stayed now. There are 3 female figures here, they were also here every time before. This time I can actually think somewhat. But when my mind tries to form a word it comes out as jarring gibberish. This gibberish is also visible as static. One of the females slaps it away and smiles. She doesn't want me trying to remember this. I am bathed and immersed in this wonderful warmth. The figures are looking at me and smiling, and they keep checking on me and smiling, happy when they see me. Towards the end, there are more than 3 figures, all checking on me. They are beautiful. Strangely, they are like nurses, and I'm in a hospital. I work with nurses, and towards the end of the trip, I can recognize some of them. WTF?

That is a really strange thing about DMT. You not only hallucinate visually, it causes serious tactile hallucinations. I've felt things touch me, caress all over. I remember once first becoming aware of my body, trying to move it, and becoming overwhelmed by tactile hallucinations. And that amazing warmth, it was somewhat like a major opiate high, i mean that's the closest thing I've felt to describe it, but much, much better. It was godly, divine.

I came to with tears drying on my cheeks. It was really amazing.

What a trip man! Thats what DMT is all about. Dmt is just too beautiful! You made me remember most of my first trips ...in one of those I got the weirdest tactile hallucination, the weirdest sensation, like my body was, particularly the palms of the hands on my quadriceps, felt like satin or something. It was an alien feeling and smell and tact. A whole synesthetic thing and I managed to bring back from hyperspace. Like I WAS THE ALIEN. Went to the swamp, spent the whole day in the green bright natural wild and still had the sensation like 5 hrs later. I felt amazing. Just when I started thinking I would stay like that forever it left me. This happened to me after a 15 min trip or more where I was caressed and touched. Like an opiate high for real. So pleassurable. Keep on trucking! Hyperspace is amazing.

Thanks for the comments, Fran. The tactile hallucinations are really wild and like nothing I've experienced with any other hallucinogen. With LSD and shrooms, it's generally visual hallucinations and some altered emotions. With DMT, it's auditory, tactile, EVERYTHING!

I have kept going with my experimentation. In the evening after the experience of warmth, in fact shortly after I wrote my last entry on this thread, I took another breakthrough dose. The next week, I took 4 doses consecutively one day. Then I took one breakthrough dose the next day, and it was the big one.

I'll go in order.

5/12 evening. 3 inhalations. what the fuck was that. Nothing familiar at all. It was totally new. I remember nothing except they wanted to keep me there. Lizards. Emerged confused, tachycardia, shivering. They don't want me to tell anyone else about it. I felt a strong compulsion to delete my thread here immediately afterwards. They were angry. It's better to be scared to see them maybe? Why were they angry? The orb at the beginning. It's a council of them. They decide what they are going to do with me. I didn't enter for a good reason? I wanted another feel good, hedonistic trip. That's not what this is for, I guess. I feel like I almost died. I may have inhaled much more enthusiastically after earlier positive experience. I was just 100% gone. Took much longer to subside. So cold afterwards. Wow. What happened? I had the hippy drums playing and everything.

5/15. 4 trips consecutive
1. 2x inhales. Got to the door. Entity could not open it. Seemed frustrated. Couldn't open me up.
2. 3x inhales. Male hawaiian entity with female looking on. I asked him, what is consciousness? I remembered to ask it, but I couldnt remember what those words meant. He looked on amused, ignoring me, until I couldn't form words to ask the question anymore. Then there was this asinine loop of chairs stuck to this piece of gum, trying to break free, happening over and over, until I came down. Mundane.
3. 3x inhales. Best one. I kept my eyes open. It looked like tripping shrooms, then more shrooms, then an energy and color entity appears. I'm confused, trying not to feel confused. Entity is confused too, but she tells me to be ok, reaches out for my forehead. I rocket out of the room, reappear in a different room, maybe on a ship? Many entities are outside, the tree is absolutely alive with many eyes. This one is fun, quite enjoyable. My first words were, "were my eyes open?" spoken to an empty room.
4. 3x inhales. Like it's not gonna kick in. Then it just tells me, be nice to people. Be nice to your coworkers, be nice to everyone. I can do that. The DMT is trying to bully me. WTF are you doing? You shouldn't be doing this. As I'm coming down, I realize, the DMT is being hard on me cause it's me being hard on me. I'm hard on everyone, the one who gets that most is myself. Cut that shit out, it's not helpful.
From these experiences, I was a bit disappointed. It was feeling kind of like... this DMT is just a drug, isn't it.

5/16
4 inhalations. Ok, this was it, the big one. I'm no longer fearful in the transition from normal experience to the way I experience awareness on DMT. I went somewhere else. Where I went is simply incompatible with where I am now. Like when I come back, there is no way to remember it well. A human brain can't even process this place. But it was so, so much grander, more colorful, more expansive. What I am, or what reality is, is so much greater than I know. My first words after getting back were "am I alive?" asked with complete sincerity. I continued tripping for 30 minutes after hyperspace. I tried to put it together in those 30 minutes. My conclusions are a guess, but I think there is a reason my experience is here, in this human. I am here to help. That I am ignorant, that I think I am gonna die, and it's gonna be scary, that I suffer, so what? I am so much bigger, so much kinder and full of love, the true nature of reality is like that, that any suffering I feel in this life is seriously no big deal. I can easily handle that if I can help in any way.

Ok, so this was it. This is confirmation to me. No, DMT cannot be just some drug. There is no way a human brain can do THAT no matter how you tinker with the neurotransmitters. That was me short circuiting my brain to a degree that I lost my connection to it and went back home. There is simply no other explanation. I remember just enough to know that. Can I prove it? No I can't. But I just had direct experience of a reality far greater than this one.

And that's the thing about consciousness. Science can't do anything to explain it either. It's funny, your brain does control a lot of things pertaining to consciousness in this reality: language, ego, memory. And you lose all that as your brain scrambles. That's what makes it feel like dying at first. But when all that is lost, something remains.

The only way to gather evidence about what you are, what this is, existence, seems to be through direct experience. I can't give you physical evidence of my conscious experiences. This is a road everyone has to take individually.

So confusing, all of these breakthroughs. But this time, I remembered enough. I took back enough. I think I've been there before but was so scrambled, it was gone when I came back.

Crazy report man. You seem quite experienced with dmt! I've heard of many stories of people that felt they were on a hospital bed being pushed around by a nurse. Almost like they were being processed after dying...

hah, I don't think I am too experienced with DMT. It must have been less than a month ago I first extracted and tried it. I am just excessively intrigued by it and trying to figure out what it is, what it means. I am still taking several breakthrough doses per week. I am waking up with psychedelic fractals in my vision even after going days between doses of DMT. I would not describe taking DMT as pleasant--it's too intense for that. The intrigue, however, is compelling.

What I have started doing before each DMT trip is meditating for a full hour. I would have disregarded this suggestion if I read it before.

However, since I started doing it, every trip has been extremely good with no fear, not even at the start of the trip when the self is melted and the body is left behind. Every hyperspace location I enter, I get the feeling that everything is ok there.

I am not good at meditating. I had messed around with it in the past. Even now, I mostly end up daydreaming/falling asleep. But once I make it through that hour, my mind is just relaxed. I can take the hits without psyching myself out, and I can melt into the trip without fear. Now, is this because I've become more accustomed to the DMT trip experience or because of the meditation? I don't know for sure, but seriously, try it. Even if it feels like torture to sit there for an hour and feels like you aren't getting anywhere, if you can make it sitting still and trying to focus on the sensation of your breathing, it seems to have this calming effect that allows the transition from baseline reality to hyperspace much easier.

I'll go ahead and document my last 2 experiences, written directly after returning from hyperspace. These are long, but maybe they will be of interest to someone.

5/22: I simply can't remember it. During it, I am trying so hard to make memories, to remember to remember. The beings are laughing, trying to help me. It's very amusing to them. I know that I would enjoy being there more if I stopped trying to remember it. It's really funny, actually. As soon as I remember I have an eye to open, I'll do it. I can't really think. I can close the eye and sort of go back. I know it just happened, but it won't write to my memory. Ok, what can I remember?

Female beings, jesters? again, eqyptian? Same as last time, something weird... I just don't know if I can describe it. I do remember something. Eqyptian spaceship? With pods? pods the size of the beings, like stasis capsules. I barely remember the transition out of it, opening that eye. This place had more dimensions and colors. I had a sense of what was going on behind me, like 360 degree vision + tactile sensation of the entire space: I can see it and feel it, I think. The transition out reminds me of moving through impossibly thin ice sheets, then what happened in hyperspace is simply inaccessible. I don't know. What is the point of taking DMT if I can't remember what happened.

It felt pretty good, very alien, not in the extraterrestrial sense, in the nothing relatable to this reality sense. I was getting warmth, good feelings.

Now back in reality, I'm frustrated. I know what happened, what I saw, where I went, was incredible. I know I was in a similar place when I've vaporized DMT before. But a few flashes of images, feelings, is all that is in my brain at the end.

5/23 Went as deep into 4th inhalation as I could go before I lost too much touch with baseline reality. I find holding an inhalation any more than 10 seconds seems to give no discernible added effect to me and only makes me vacate this reality before I can finish puffing. The word I went in with, repeating, was, "remember". I tried opening my eyes as it was taking hold to help me remember. This was causing unpleasantness. I was starting getting an ominous feeling from fighting the DMT, so I dropped it, relaxed into it. I went deep, deep. I saw a hyperspace room clear as day. I know I did. I know there were numerous amused beings, and everything there was just as it should be. But I can't remember what they looked like, what they were doing. I have some memory of coming back through many, many layers, dimensions, something, like it was obvious that where I was, there was no way to bring back a clear memory.

But seriously, what were they doing? The only thing that sprung into my head was drinking coffee!! What?! How can I describe what little I remember. I was hyper real. I could extremely clearly see everything happening. We didn't need to communicate, as everything was ok and nothing needed to be said. Everything was in motion, fluid, and it was really nice, beautiful with intense colors. Back now, it reminds me of a room on a spaceship. I remember my awareness zooming out and seeing everything so clearly, and feeling like ah ha! I've got it! Just a feeling like that. But then as I was coming back, through layer after layer, realizing then that what I thought I had, there was 0 chance of keeping it.

Back in my body, I open my eyes. I was a little upset about losing it. I close my eyes again, and suddenly my trip became unpleasant. It was those fuzzy DMT aliens looking at me on an operating table. I knew this was all due to my state of mind, my frustration. I was down enough to know they were hallucinations and was not frightened.

So I'm left wondering again, is it illusions I'm experiencing? just really, really strong ones? That my emotions caused it to go unpleasant? That hyperspatial beings in a 10th dimensional spaceship are discovered, and they're drinking coffee?

Honestly, I don't think so. I think, once I'm down, yes, I'm just kind of hallucinating. But hyperspace, hyper-reality, wherever-the-fuck it is I go, how can a brain hallucinate a reality richer than any I've ever experienced? More beautiful than the most picturesque scene nature has ever created? Also, when I'm down, I think my brain tries to take these vague memories and insert details to get them to make some sort of sense. Honestly, god knows what was happening in that hyperspace room. I don't think they were actually drinking coffee. But I don't know. It's so confounding.

As I was leaving hyperspace, I did want to go back and stay, even if it meant I died. It's just really nice there. You know how you feel good in a dream? That's why you don't want to wake up when the alarm goes off. If just feels really nice watching the dream happen. That's what it felt like, plus no memory of myself, no concern for myself in reality, so I would have happily just died and stayed if I had been given the choice.