Hello,

First of all, I want to thank this community for the knowledge it provided to me so far. Now, a bit about myself.

Since I've become a teenager I've known what I've wanted, and I pursued that desire - I had a pretty difficult child experience, to say the least, but in time I learned to deal with the experiences I had until the underlying issues simply didn't matter. It was a very long and sometimes painful process, but now I feel like I'm living in the moment, not in the past or the future, so I guess that counts for something. I must say that having an exceptional mentor throughout the years has helped a whole lot with changing my perspective of life and becoming more confident in myself. I also trained myself to become a positive person, and I have to say that I am very happy with the results.

I've recently become a vegetarian, and became very interested about meditation after seeing how much impact eating meat could have on the body. I've never felt better in my life. Anyway, during the last month or so, I've spent a whole lot of time researching DMT, about which I've been briefly informed by a close friend. I've searched the internet up and down, and it seems like Terence McKenna seemed to put it the best for me and made me understand this beautiful world of psychedelics. I've only encountered LSD about a year ago, and found it to be the most interesting experience of my life. Other than that, just a one-time-per-year MDMA dose, and the regular canna joints for the last 3 years.

Since I've been a child, I've been very fascinated about out of body and clinical death/post life experiences. DMT opened up my curiosity as I learned about it. But I didn't yet take the big leap. I've researched various teks and I recently made a very small 10g extraction, and wound up with about 0.035. Maybe my clumsy first-timer hand didn't help me very much this first time, but it did shape up my rusty chemistry skills (I happened to like chemistry and it just stuck). I put a lot of heart into this extraction, even though it was more of a test run. I feel like I need to be humble to the spice, knowing (even if thoretically for me at least for now) what it can show you. I prepared myself thoroughly, meditated before the session, and loaded the .035 into the machine (mini). I inhaled deeply the first wave of smoke, and held it in for the 10 seconds. The smoke didn't feel heavy but rather pleasant, even though the spice wasn't washed, but was white at least. I exhaled and took another, smaller toke, because I accidentally got the flame dangerously close and might have burnt some of the spice. The last toke was a big one. At the moment, I felt the heaviness of the smoke and the plastic taste. I let the machine down and lied back, closing my eyes. I felt a rush through my body, as if energy was emanating from my chest and flowing through the whole body. Then I felt very heavy, like I was a giant rock dropped onto this very soft pillow. I liked the sensation however, and just remembered myself to breathe deeply, because everything is ok, I've read about this. Then this ascending ear tingling started and rose to a huge volume, and then just suddenly stopped. Very beautiful patterns started to emerge, but they were pretty far and small in size. It was like looking at a huge 2000x2000 screen and seeing the animations into a 300x300 square. However, the physical feeling was sooo nice, it was like I was infinitely embraced by nothingness. After the visual effects wore off (about 15 min), I opened my eyes to discover a euphoric sensation, which lasted for the following 20 minutes or so. I took the time to think about the experience and while I do want to breakthrough, I now think this doesn't need to be rushed. I feel this overwhelming respect when thinking about the spice, in an anxious kind of way, is this ok for the trip? (when breakingthrough?)

Thank you very much for taking the time to read this post and I hope I didn't omit any important details. It's just so much stuff to put in words, it's amazing

Cheers!

dear rjb,

welcome to the nexus and welcome to the never ending fascination and awe, welcome to the world of dmt. I'm glad your first experience was interesting for you, and I agree, there is no need to rush into any of it, but my guess is that your curiosity has now been sparked and you will want to explore it further now.

Concerning extractions it is in general advisable to start off with small amounts for test runs as you have done. However at some point a low amount becomes very impractical because the losses from transferring your solvents etc. from one glass to another (or similar actions) will result in a high percentage in relation to your starting material. Additionally if you used naphtha and freeze percipitation for your extraction but only extracted from 10g probably your naphtha was not overly saturated which means a bit could still be in the solvent. In case you evaporated this wouldn't be a problem.

I found extractions of a size of 80-100g of mimosa to be ideal for a start, and also for later on - they give enough yield to make you actually see a final product that you can work with and have enough to experiment with for quite a while without doing another extraction. I would say if you go too small you will waste time and chemicals more than if you do a little larger extractions. Of course going up in weight too much can also become impractical, so again, my recommendation for next time for you would be somewhere between 80 and 100g mimosa which should yield around 0.6-1.3g of magical white crystalline spice...

I am in general always curious what brings people here. In a way I am still trying to figure out what exactly attracts me to psychedelics, and I have been doing them for over 10 years now. For me it's changed over time of course and I think by now I see them as a means to learn about communication and consciousness. What do you see in them and why are you interested in them?

Thank you for the kind welcome.

I appreciate the hints on the quantities and such; these come in very handy for me. I'm currently extracting from 50g of MHRB (STB freeze precip). Will post pictures when done and next time will use 100g or so of MHRB. Depends on what the current yield will be, I'm curious about that myself I like to evaporate the naptha slowly (after running most of it through a coffee filter), and in 2 hours I have finished product that also smokes kind of smooth and the orange gooey stuff is present in small amounts compared to the crystal ratio (and only on the 2nd/3rd pull).

You asked me a very good question. I ended up here after doing massive researches on various forums and got to the conclusion that this is the place that can help me the most, because of the kind of attitude required and quality of information. I love to hang out with people who think beyond the box, and to have someone to share these experiences with. I think these are all critical aspects in understanding the whole experience; just my humble opinion. My real purpose is to better myself as a person and learn how to help other better themselves, because I feel that most of the current social values are just ideas fed to us by others; we don't have ideas of our own and the ones that are perpetuated don't seem to make sense to me. I don't think spending a whole life just to work to afford a job and a house is the real humanity purpose as a whole. It certainly isn't a very efficient system, and doesn't promote the individuality of each of us. I truly like to believe there could be something after the physical life (which itself I consider a little part of the whole human experience), and it must be waaaaay bigger than what I can imagine. This is what I truly believe. It might be true or not, but one can only prepare and it is what keeps me going and hoping into a better "everything", really.

Hi rjb,

Welcome to the Nexus. I love what you've written so far. You sound like a fine Nexus addition. Don't hesitate to post questions if they come up.

There are many great resources in the wiki (upper right hand corner has a link in the Forums). You might want to look up recrystallization to separate orange goo from white crystals. Regardless, it's all here. And now you're here too. Wonderful.

Again, welcome.

Thank you, Pandora. I will most definitely post questions if they arise. For now I'll read some more on the existing info, as there is a huge volume of it, and each and every thread seems so interesting I can't just skip it

A little more info about me: I'm a 24 yo self employed software developer from somewhere in Europe, I started working at 18 as a programmer right after I finished highschool. The analytical thinking developed by simply being a programmer helped me a lot in changing my view on life and on pretty much everything I knew up to that point. Of course, this is a realization I come to in these days, looking back in the past; I didn't know it at the moment. What I did know was that I was being extremely unhappy; I realized this is what I felt because of the very bad experiences I've been through as a child - my mom died when I was under 1 yo and while I didn't miss her physical being there, I did miss a maternal figure; my step-mom didn't seem to be filling that place very good, as she was filled only with anger and hate and it all dropped on me, always. Combine that with a newborn little brother and a whole mixture of odd family conjectures, and you have the exact ingredients of my childhood. Plus the physical household work, which I was required to get done otherwise I was not "worthy" of eating/sleeping. My dad wasn't at home most of the time, so I was on my own; even when I shared with him these things I was going through he didn't want to or didn't understand what was really going on. I won't go any further into this for now, because it's been a 16 years long rollercoaster ride and I'd have to write a book, but after all of this I managed to transform what I've been through into a positive experience. I no longer feel fear about what happened or anxiety or hate or anything really, because I understand that has been a chapter of my life which helped me define the person that I am now, the very core of it. And that's something I am grateful about. Currently I have a good relationship with my folks, we got through everything and we're a lot more connected now (me, my father, my bigger sister and my little brother I was telling you about earlier) than we were a couple of years ago, and we're also helping each other a lot more.

After 3 years of working as an employed programmer for a few major companies, I came to realize this wasn't what I really really wanted anymore; my priorities began to change. The work environment seemed toxic because of the employers propaganda and stupid bs ideas they were trying to force on the very people who were bringing them they're money. So I just took life into my own hands, so to speak; I quit the job and started going from business to business and trying to find my own projects instead of looking for the leash again. It's been 3 years since and I don't feel like "losing time" or being frustrated about what I do anymore.

I'm currently living with my fiancee (for 2 yrs now), but we're not the kinda "lets marry and have a couple of those cute babies" couple; even though there has been this period, but after careful analyzing and reasoning, we decided we didn't need any of that, and especially we didn't want a child; we are still trying to figure OURselves out, and we have a long way to be able to support another human being who you can't just ignore; I don't want my child to be like that, this is where good social and moral values and intentions are being lost - into the ignorance of our children and of our own, after all. I tried to talk with her about DMT a couple of days ago and while she seemed repulsed by it, I tried to break it down and find out why she felt this way, even though she knew nothing about the substance. I asked her just simple questions, like "what exactly are you afraid of" and "where did you get the info that ... is true or not", and after we talked for about 2 hours and she spent another 2 reading about it (I said to her to get her own info, so as not to feel biased towards what I showed or told her about already), and that she should form her own opinion, instead of labeling just like everyone else. I wanted her to understand what I wanted to do and be my support. She came to terms with it eventually, seeing that it's physically/medically harmless, unless abused, and she understood that this was a choice to make for her own, but that we can't change how others think or feel, regardless of being a life partner or a sister/brother or someone totally unrelated. After this, we spent the weekend doing together stuff, such as cleaning the house and redecorating/repainting the apartment and going into the park to just walk and enjoy a good time later in the day. Also had the time for the extraction, which yielded 0.29g (from 50g of MHRB). Some of it might have remained behind, I wasn't able to extract the whole naptha in the last pull, about 3ml remained (a very very thin layer, a bit thinner than the syringe needle). But it was ok after all.







I felt like I needed to complete the picture a little bit, and I hope I did so without being boring.
Thanks again.

hey rjb , welcome to the nexus

Hi again,

Just wanted to share a few more things. As I stated before, I recently started meditation. I've made it my goal that everyday I will spend 2 sessions (more if possible) per day doing this; one in the morning and one in the evening or late night; I've started this week with this target in my mind. I'm having a little trouble concentrating while trying to maintain the posture, but it started to work. Today I had a fascinating "discovery", for myself at least. I believe this is due to the fact that I shared this whole lot of information here and it brought back some memories, even though unconsciously.

Here we go...I remembered I had some very weird and very alive dreams as I grew up from a child to a teenager (I only today realized that the source of these dreams was DMT and got a little bit more understanding about how it works, possibly); there were 2 dreams especially that I can vividly recollect (some would call these nightmares, but after a while I got used to the sensations):

- first dream: I was falling from high...things - I can't recall how the surroundings looked, but I definitely remember they were extremely alien, and different each time I had the dream; but I can now recollect they were not frightening, but rather interesting (skies sometimes painted like aurora borealis, and other times as bright red and black); also, the paths that led to me falling from a high point - building, mountain, plane, or such always were different and I can't remember how I got there, because I have no memory of climbing them or anything, I just was there, just like you blink and when you open your eyes the whole world is totally different. I didn't feel or hear a thing - no emotions, no physical pain (or at least I don't remember now); however, right before waking up, as I was falling from that building or what ever, I felt fear...a great fear, upon my inevitable way to slam into the ground. But I wasn't scared of dying, I was rather scared about what my mind knew what impact that kind of a fall would have on my physical body. Then I would wake up, right as I should hit the ground, still feeling the same adrenaline rush felt during the fall; I was also very sweaty. I now clearly see the meaning of the dream, and looking at my life after these dreams have dissappeared (which was right before I took my first job), I've related those visions I had back then to my fears about different things: fear about failing myself and others (the society), fear about failing school, fear about change and responsibility, etc. That was my wake-up call, even though unconsciously realized, but I'm glad I had the opportunity of decoding this vision. I find very interesting the way DMT functions, being released as to warn you that you are not working at optimal parameters.

- the second dream was about a black cat - always the same cat from what I can recall, at least its presence felt like it was the same being in every dream. I can't remember this one as good as the first dream, but what I can tell is that I was always catching that cat into the house we were living at the time, doing various things that bothered me and I always chased this cat into our neighbor's yard (we had a common fence). Weird facts: running didn't feel like running at all, but rather like floating an inch above the earth; the cat always made her way over or behind that fence, but when I got there, there was no actual hole where the cat could've gone, it just vanished; sometimes I'd just cross the fence (as if walking through it), and still the cat wouldn't be there, as if it never was; lastly, this cat action always took place into the house/yard where we were living at that moment, unlike the previous dream, which had a more abstract look and feel. Thinking back I can relate this to my private space being invaded by "unfriendly" people in my life at the time and only being told what to do, without me having an actual saying in it; since then, I learned to let go of hate and take that and transform it into a positive thought, to find a resolution to the problem I'm facing (ie instead of fearing unreal, shallow appearances others put up). This dream also stopped when the negative presences (people) dissappeared from my life - ie when a change was made.

I find these facts extremely interesting and I can only find myself smiling thinking about how an experience considered by most to be "casual and meaningless" - a dream that is - to be actually life defining. Very, very interesting stuff...

I'm planning on an experience tonight; will keep everyone posted. Hoping for a breakthrough, the timing and the general feeling seem right. Now I *think* I'm ready.

No, I am not. I loaded the machine with .035 and prepared myself with some meditation for about 20 minutes prior to the experience. Everything seemed ok and I looked forward to it. I lighted the spice and took 2 hits, each time hitting it for 7-8 seconds and keeping the smoke in for about 10-15 seconds. Melting plasting smell entered my nostrils and I knew I hit it hard because I felt my whole chest like a bag of sand; this sensation soon passed. And then the unexpected happened: I was overwhelmed by a great fear and I felt like I couldn't take it further and laid down the pipe, while laying on my back on the couch. I closed my eyes and tried to calm myself and breathe, but there were no visuals, just a high volume buzz in my ears, so this didn't help much. I opened my eyes for a second and everything in the room was still the same. After closing my eyes again the fear felt like shrinking and in the end, disappearing. It was pretty wild, though. I think this might have to do with a soon to come trip with some friends (in a couple of days) which also involves 2 flights, which I'm very nervous about in general. I just can't cope with planes, I have to work on that.

Maybe some of the more experienced fellow psychonauts could give an insight as to what might help in this case. I'll definitely wait until I return from the trip (&recover) and then think about another dive. But in the mean while, I want to prepare myself and I can use any help. Thank you so much.

Looks like you are on the right track with your extractions. I have found that taking care I can get about 1 gram from 100 grams of bark.

Welcome to the nexus! I hope you find what you are looking for here.

Wow, this is really powerful...I now understand the meaning of the words "this experience should not be taken lightly".

I woke up this morning thinking about the last night failed experience and that heightened fear I sensed. The machine remained loaded after last night (with 10-15mg maybe), and I found myself sitting in the couch with the machine next to me, thinking about what this did to me and the fact that what I felt was totally unnatural and I couldn't explain it. So I felt brave as I was just waking up still, and lighted the spice up and took a deep breath. I knew I needed to face my fear in order to understand it and get over it. A slight visual perception distortion was felt immmediately, and then the fear began to grew. Only this time, I tried not to channel my whole attention to it. I focused more on my breath and I imagined I could sing notes directly as I was breathing air out of my lungs. I just acknowledged the question "who are you and what do you want from me?".

After a while (after the DMT kicked in I think), this realization suddenly just came to me: I was afraid this substance might kill me or that I could lose my mind. Even though my research didn't conclude this, it was just a hint from my yet untrained mind (just like the telepathic thoughts described by many people in their experiences). I then remembered the whole bunch of people who've posts I've read around here. You're all still here, so why shouldn't I? After that thought, I visualized myself sitting in the couch and then I began seeing flashlights of various moments in my life for a couple of moments, after which I felt the calm again. I was not done with my life, I suddenly understood. And it all made sense. I took more small hits from the machine, because I was already past that point where I feared. I only feared the unknown, I've come to realize now; I didn't know what to expect, so I feared what could happen. The visuals then started, and while they were pretty mild, I really enjoyed them. Each transformation I was seeing was making me smile. These things didn't really make sense, they were pretty much just spots of color and light merging together and "dancing" up and down and swirling around. It was amazing.

So, to conclude this, I must advise newcomers such as myself to start pre-dosing and go from there. I now realize it's going to be a long way until I'm going to be able to do a full breakthrough. I'll take it one little step at a time, try to understand it better. My attitude was wrong, I now see. This is definitely not a joke, but it certainly becomes interesting once you understand how to approach it.

I must thank once again this community for the very useful information it provides, as I've learned the stuff I've posted above just by reading and reading and reading.

By the way, thanks everybody for the kind welcome! I want you to know it's greatly appreciated.