5-MeO-DMT: 20-minute psychoactive experience that’s transforming lives
forbes.com
forbes.com
Erowid[1] is a good place to start.
[1] - https://www.erowid.org/chemicals/5meo_dmt/5meo_dmt.shtml
As far as drugs go psychedelics are generally very safe. They can have amazing therapeutic properties for some people. But don't do them without first doing as much research and preparation as possible, and without some idea of what you're getting into. Psychedelics break down walls in your brain, but some walls are there for a good reason.
I had an intensely terrifying "bad trip" (on something much less potent than DMT) some time ago that I'm still trying to come to terms with. I had no idea that the human mind could suffer like that. The suffering, terror, and panic was really beyond anything I've ever experienced.
Some people argue that there is no such thing as a "bad trip" -- only difficult ones that unearth negative thought processes and past trauma, and that you can utilize them to become a happier and better person. For a lot of people this is definitely true, but there are cases of psychedelics triggering long term anxiety, PTSD, DP/DR, etc.
If you want to get into psychedelics -- and especially stuff like DMT -- do your homework. Ask yourself why you actually want to do it. If you decide to go through with it, respect the drug, start with low dosages, and follow harm reduction practices.
It honestly had an entirely different effect than articles like this portray - it turned me from an easy going worry free 20 year old into a panic-attack riddled alcoholic (the only way I could get to sleep for many years.)
I guess the good side of it was that all that anxiety made me quit smoking, quit drinking caffeine, and come to terms with the fact that I am indeed mortal. So in a certain way it has really focused my life into actually living it and not just going through the motions.
I'm 95% better at this point, but yeah, not a good time in my case.
Useful things to know to make sense of and draw useful conclusions from trip reports:
0 - whether there was any preparation (things like fasting, meditation, therapy, prayer, "clearing the space", etc)
1 - exactly what was taken and its purity, how the users knew they got the substance they were told they had, and whether they mixed drugs
2 - the dosage
3 - where they had the experience (whether it was done at a club, at a party, at a concert, in a city street, over dinner with one's parents, in nature, in therapy, at a friend's house, in a church, or in a shamanic ceremony will make a huge difference)
4 - who was with them (and whether these people were trained or at least experienced in guiding psychedelic trips)
5 - whether they had set any concrete, constructive intentions beforehand, or whether it was done on a whim, to "party" or to "get fucked up"
6 - what was their mindset and life circumstances beforehand (tired? depressed? anxious? struggling with a breakup, a divorce, or a death of a loved one? a history of abuse or trauma in their past?)
7 - how much they themselves had researched about what they were getting themselves in to, and in to mystical, psychedelic, shamanic, and non-ordinary states of consciousness in general and how different cultures and peoples have dealt with and made sense of them
8 - whether they used any strategies before or during the session to prevent or handle adverse effects (things such as ritual, dance or movement, chanting, singing, playing musical instruments, prayer or calling for help from their guides, friends, god(s), or their own inner source of strength or wisdom)
9 - whether and what kind of music was played during the experience (a well designed musical accompaniment can make a huge difference, and this is one of the critical means by which the MAPS psilocybin and MDMA studies maximized the chances of having a constructive experience)
10 - how or if they tried to integrate the experience afterwards
11 - whether they consulted therapists specializing in psychedelic integration afterwards
12 - whether they themselves or anyone in their family had a history of mental illness
13 - how much prior experience with psychedelics they had, and which psychedelics they had used
14 - whether they were on any psychoactive medications
15 - what their state of physical health was
This is a lot to ask for, but without such details it's really hard to draw conclusions.
That said, yes, it's possible to have really harrowing experiences, and some people come out scarred from them, having gotten nothing positive from the experience at all.
But it is possible to prepare for psychedelic experiences in such a way as to minimize the risk of negative experiences, and if such experiences do happen to deal in constructive ways with them both during and after.
Unfortunately, many people don't know how to do that, or choose not to.
Something else to think about: Some people think they're "happy" or "normal", but they're really not, and just haven't been able to face their own dark sides, repressed past traumas, or the difficulties they have relating with others, and these things can come up during the trip or influence it.
Then a common reaction is to fight these realizations or run away from them, to hold on tight and not let go, which all but guarantees a difficult experience. In contrast, the MAPS guidelines advise to squarely face the difficulties (including physical difficulties like pain or discomfort, and even annoyance at the music), to explore them, to not fight them, and to surrender and let go. That tends to lead to a freeing, blissful, constructive experience.
One final thing: In an interview I once heard with a veteran psychedelic therapist, who'd overseen hundreds of psychedelics sessions, he said the people who had the toughest times with these substances were die hard theists or atheists with something to prove, because they both went in to the experience with an attitude of "I know what's going on!" They weren't able to just go with whatever was revealed to them.
Rick Doblin helped me integrate a psychosis I had 20 years prior within about 5 minutes of meeting me.
Also, when it comes to 5-meo you don't really "trip" per se, not in the traditional sense. You just kind of half pass out for about a minute. The potential for the risks you mention on 5-meo is nearly impossible, due to it not being a traditional kind of trip.
Likewise, DMT you don't really trip in a traditional way either. For about 5 to 15 minutes, you're off in la la land. You can barely think straight let alone enough to explore your inner mind like you would do during a normal trip. For similar reasons, the risks you describe are most likely non existent for DMT. Though, DMT isn't exactly enjoyable for most, so there is that.
I've seen a few studies and so far it seems to be that cannabis is most likely to cause the risks you're describing, including psychosis. While those risks are possible on LSD, magic mushrooms, and other drugs you trip on, the risk is far lower than in cannabis.
HPPD in theory is caused by a strong intense memory, and when something familiar to that memory occurs it brings that person back to that mental place. If this is what is going on, then you're going to have a hard time forming a strong memory to something when you're passed out or so out of it you're not paying attention to the setting around you. So, I imagine HPPD is not a thing in 5-Meo, but as I said there are not studies on it. HPPD is rare.
There is this movie called Revolver written by psychologists who try to show the audience their ego is not them. Some people took to the movie well and others... When Roger Ebert reviewed the movie he wrote, "Some of the acting is better than the film deserves. Make that all of the acting. Actually, the film stock itself is better than the film deserves. You know when sometimes a film catches fire inside a projector? If it happened with this one, I suspect the audience might cheer."
Tripping reduces the ego. If you go too far, the ego disappears for a couple of seconds. But for those who mistakenly think their ego is them, when their ego starts to disappear, they think it is them that is dying. A good sitter will tell them they're not dying, and they'll relax and have a good trip, but sadly not everyone gets that treatment.
The ego processes language and concepts. It understands words and it speaks words. It is tied to the inner dialog. When the processing of concepts, like the word 'self' and the concept of identity temporarily goes away, sometimes people mistake that for them.
The mind’s potential for suffering is immense. The scale doesn’t go nearly as far in the other direction. I cannot imagine any possible pleasure within many orders of magnitude. I can see how this would stop addictions by eliminating the sense of all pleasure or minor discomfort. Its possible that this was part of ego dissolution and I just didn’t come completely to the point of acceptance of the pain, but I think about it a lot, and fully expect an eternity of that when I die.
I've meditated a lot, which brain scans show the brain lights up in a near identical way to magic mushrooms, except when meditating you get to control how deep the state is, so if you bump into something you can't handle you can come out of the state or reduce the state as little or as much as you want. This gives the ability to "trip" without the risk of a bad trip.
I know it's a bit apples and oranges, but from meditation I've passed out from pleasure before, so I can say it gets very extreme. Neurologists and psychologists have been finding for a while that the average person's suffering is 3x that of equivalent pleasure for an equal event. They recorded day traders making a profitable traid and a losing trade and recorded their responses to get this rough baseline.
Facts, while valuable, never the less, can seem cold hearted in the face of painful emotions. I hope I'm not coming off that way. Understanding and knowledge gives power over what you know, and with the power of knowledge it is possible to conquer suffering.
Those who struggle with death have a baseline suffering that has been happening for so long they often don't even notice it. Identity is one of the three big causes for suffering. By understanding how the ego works, and what really happened there, one of the causes of many pain points throughout your life goes away. From that benefit it is imho worth knowing about.
Tripping is a bit of a trial by fire. Those who shed their ego comfortably gain the option to learn how it works, and from that they gain power over it, including suffering. This is why an ego death is touted as the single best thing that has happened to some while simultaneously touted as a horrible experience for others. The problem, imho, with the tripping community is it's easy to bump into an ego death, where in meditation circles it's walked up to and only experienced once one has removed (or at least reduced) all of the kinds of suffering before it guaranteeing a pleasant experience.
A very common experience with psychedelics is that you feel like you're dying, or that you have died. In that sense I can totally see how the real experience of dying could feel extremely similar. (Although yours seems to be an order of magnitude worse, partially because coming back into consciousness brought with it immense physical pain.)
> and fully expect an eternity of that when I die
This is exactly what has given me the most amount of anxiety post traumatic trip. The fear that consciousness exists in a constant and eternal state of suffering post death (since that's what I thought was happening in my trip). It's given me sort of the opposite fear of most people -- rather than a fear of non existence after death, I'm scared of the POSSIBILITY of life after death, because I'm afraid that's what it'll be. I would much rather have my consciousness just cease to exist after death. I've learned this is an actual phobia with a name: apeirophobia.
While this fear is still kind of in the back of my mind, here are some of the things that have helped me:
* The experience of suffering is something that exists physically within our bodies and brains. If consciousness does persist after death, it would be without a body or brain, and thus not capable of the same type of suffering we experience on psychedelics or in a near death experience. During those experiences we can feel like we're in infinity or that we don't have a body, but we have to remember those are still just things happening in the brain. * We have literally 0 evidence for consciousness existing after death. Why stress out about one unlikely possibility? From a probability standpoint, it's not really different from worrying that we're going die and be punished by Zeus or Odin or Ra. Can't prove it won't happen, but it seems unlikely. * Other people have experiences like this that are positive, affirming, and full of love and peace. Why give more credence to the idea of eternal suffering rather than eternal joy / bliss / happiness?
I haven't totally moved on from that fear, but this train of thought helps. I want to believe (and I think it's more rational to believe) that those experiences really are just a combination of the brain's normal processing being severely altered combined with the body's survival mechanisms being kicked into an insane overdrive. That there's not really anything more to it than that.
I have no idea if any of that helps (or if it's actually something that bothers you on a day to day basis), but it's the thing that has helped me the most with coping.
This is nothing to be fooled around with and I am not sure if mainstream articles such as these are helpful.
Bufo (Toad/5Meo-DMT) is extremely strong. You smoke it and you are in. Then you typically just drop out of the experience again. For some people it is blissful - like described in the article - the most common experience people have told me about is more like ego death. This can be a great experience, it can feel like hell; but whatever you feel: Integration is key! If you don’t know how to do that or have somebody experienced around: don’t. Maybe you’ll get lucky (many people do) but you might also feel more lost after than ever before.
Personally I find smoking DMT a little hard on the system. It is very different to ingesting it orally and - at least for me - harder to integrate than drinking e.g. Ayahuasca (NN-DMT and/or 5MeO-DMT admixtures). This is coming from someone with a lot of experience.
Psilocybin in small doses with assistance seem way more appropriate to me for people with depressions or similar.
That being said, if you are experienced, feel ready and feel the call: by all means. As the article says, it can be a life changing experience. You should however be ready for that change. Be safe.
this is also used by many about psilocybin (Micheal Pollan articles use that terminology)
Going for a true Bufo experience automatically puts you in the realm of possible ego death. I have never heard of anyone trying to micro dose it. There are so many other substances that are easier to low dose that are more readily available too.
It costs about $100 and a couple weeks but you’ll get anonymous spectral analysis of your molecules.
As for authenticity, my impression is that a huge proportion, if not most, of the exotic drug trade is mis-identified and/or mis-dosed. As others have pointed out precautions exist for the careful and meticulous. But let's be realistic, this does not describe 90% of recreational drug users.
As for this substance I've only had what was described as a "child dose" and enjoyed the absolute tranquility, some friends have had bad trips on much higher doses but as someone that isn't a fan of psychedelics and didn't want any hallucinations I loved that small dose.
Some people sell psychedelics in person. In my country they're incredibly rare and I've never seen anyone sell anything except mushrooms or LSD. So the fallback is the darknet.
>and know that they’re authentic?
If you're buying from the darknet, user reviews. Other people make good guinnea pigs. Otherwise, there are reagents you can use to test to make sure you've got DMT. But generally people just smoke it and see what happens. DMT is very unique, if the substance you have is something else it will be noticeable very quickly.
> As with DMT, 5-MeO-DMT has been demonstrated to be active orally when taken with an MAOI, but according to numerous reports this combination tends to be extremely unpleasant, producing a strong body load in addition to the risk of hypertensive symptoms and serotonin syndrome, and is therefore strongly advised against.
Both iboga and datura can be deadly!
Beware!
Both iboga and datura have been used in traditional shamanic contexts, and ibogaine (derived from iboga) has shown some promise in treating addiction, but usually this is done with a medical team trained to handle possible dangers.
I know of no remotely safe way to do datura at psychedelic dosages.
Most of the datura trip reports I've read have had a nightmarish character to them, with true hallucinations (ie. ones where the user does not realize that they're experiencing something that is not there), often involve the users putting themselves and/or others in physical danger, and often result in amnesia.
More can be read about iboga and datura on Erowid:
Except Datura. Which was very scary. I never ingested or smoked them but I also never wore gloves and was very touchy feely with masses of them. Having said that, I read a lot and my impressions were probably coloured with some fancy ..but it was something I wanted and welcomed. It was a very scripted imaginary ‘trip’, I guess ..on a mental plane as a well researched enacted experience...as I am very risk averse and protective about my physical health.
As someone that likely has more experience as a psychonaut than anyone that reads this thread, I would never ever recommend someone dip their toe into the waters of psychotropics and to be honest I wish I'd never have dabbled with them for the several years that I did. Being introduced to them in high school and continue that on into my early 20's is something I absolutely wish I could undo.
People like to go "I microdosed and had a great day of work!" or "man I did some acid/shrooms/dmt and felt connected to everything, my depression is gone!"
Not so much the bad experiences though. In 'another life' I did lots of things... LSD, DMT, MDMA, some synthetic tryptamines that not a lot of people have used, mushrooms, salvinorian a extracts...
Was I Santa once on a heroic dose of LSD? Sure and it was awesome, I was also a dragon on some alien planet in that trip, I was gouging bedrock with my talons and it felt so real and satisfying. Cool, right?
Did I have some alien head with octopus tentacles for a beard fondle my face and make me laugh and feel loved while on DMT? Sure.
Did I feel music on a subatomic level and taste electric happiness while on mushrooms, you bet.
Did I have tons of good times just hanging out with friends while we were on this or that while camping/floating down a creek or river, listening to music, hiking, hanging out at the mall, sure.
I also had some really, really, really terrible experiences back then.
Did I see my putrid, bloated, corpse that had massive bruising around it's neck staring back at me in the mirror on a DMT trip and manage to get up and stumble to the toilet and force myself to vomit because "I had to get death out of me" to the point of managing to throw up a baseball sized lump of bile trying to get death out of me because I wanted to still be alive. You bed.
Did I get stuck in a glitching 8-bit video game loop for what felt like the better part of a year while on a salvia trip one time, pleading to God that if he made it stop I'd never do anything harder than caffeine again as long as I lived only to come out of the trip and be told by my friend it had been less than 10 minutes. Oh yeah.
Did I have multiple experiences on DMT where I was a corpse in a morgue drawer, in a crematorium oven, with the feeling that I'd totally screwed up and it was my fault I was dead. Yes.
Did I have multiple experiences coming up on DMT hit hard out of proper glass where I 100% believed that I'd screwed up, that by inhaling I'd done something so incredibly wrong and I now had to suffer the consequences. That something knew I'd broken some rule and that I now had to live in 'reality' and that my prior existence had been a complete lie and I ruined it and it would never come back and everything and everyone i knew was gone and I was now fully awake in some horrible existence where malevolent entities reigned supreme and were quite unhappy with me. Oh hell yeah.
Did I watch a Star Wars film on 'penis envy' mushrooms once, watching an entire planet being destroyed, and know 100% that I was on that planet and was witnessing my own death and feel such pain and sadness like nothing I've ever felt in my entire life before or since. Yup.
Did I do DMT and salvinorin a on various occasions and have 'machine elves' tell me to kill myself so I could stay. Demand that I kill myself so they might share with me while my brain screamed "they're lying, they're lying, get out of here, snap out of it, they're lying to you, get out of the trip". Yyyyup.
Did I forget how to talk, lose the ability to even form words in my head/have an internal dialogue, for 10~ minutes on a very mild DMT dose once while showing someone how to hit the glass for their first experience, becoming quite scared at one point that it wasn't going to ware off and I'd seriously screwed up and caused brain damage? Yes, not something I'd ever want to happen again.
There's a reason I long since stopped doing these sorts of things. They can do far more harm than they can good.
Will they someday have valid medical applications that are effective and pleasant more oft than not? Maybe. Should we absolutely research them in very controlled clinical settings, sure!
Should people be randomly conducting self-experimentation in non-clinical settings without the ability to be sedated if stuff goes sideways and without trained individuals that can calm and control the situation and even restrain them if need be? No. Not at all. Not even microdosing because we have no idea what mid to long term consequences are.
And even if they are uncommon, somebody else in this thread made the good point that the mind's capacity for suffering appears to be so much greater than its capacity for happiness or pleasure. I don't know if this is actually scientifically true, but it sure feels that way. Out of curiosity, would you say your most positive, beautiful experience was anywhere near as powerful as your most negative, terrifying experience?
Out of curiosity, you said you stopped a long time ago -- do you happen to suffer any long term negative side effects? Anxiety, PTSD, DP/DR, etc? I'm about a month past the trip that blew my mind to pieces and I'm still suffering with some residual fear and anxiety, and hoping it'll continue to pass with time. (Before anybody says it, yes, I'm considering therapy. And also yes, I realize everybody's experiences are going to be completely different, some people would get over a terrible trip in a week, and some people may never be able to completely recover.)
No not really, aside from the memories of some of the bad experiences. Sometimes I'll be looking in the mirror shaving my neck, washing my hands, whatever and I'll remember seeing this bloated, mottled skin version of myself with deep bruising around my neck and remember being at the toilet on my knees forcing myself to 'throw death up' but it's not traumatic or anything.
Sometimes when I lie down in bed my brain will go to one of those DMT trips where I was in a morgue drawer type deal. A lot of DMT experiences were while in bed so even when I wasn't in a crematorium oven/morgue drawer I'd often experience myself going into some sort of compartment not unlike those or even like an MRI head first and then I'd go to what people usually describe as the 'waiting room' where there would be weird alienish faces/entities so that'll probably always be a thing occasionally when i get in bed. It doesn't scare me or disturb me or anything though, just reminds me of it.
Mostly I'll just remember effects or events from random trips while going about my life, nothing like a 'flashback' just kinda like how you'll smell something and it'll trigger a childhood memory or you'll see something and start thinking about an ex or something. I'll see a spider and maybe one out of twenty times I'll 'remeber' the 'time I was a giant spider in the corner of the room' because as I was coming up on a trip I was getting some water from the sink and there was an orb weaver outside of the kitchen window making its web so then when I was peaking I thought I was a huge spider hanging out in the corner of the ceiling for a while.
Sometimes I'll miss the visuals and I'll go watch some HD mandelbrot zoom.
>? I'm about a month past the trip that blew my mind to pieces and I'm still suffering with some residual fear and anxiety,
So when I mentioned the 8-bit video game loop salvia trip, that did stay with me for the better part of a year. I didn't want to do any other drugs, I didn't want to drink, I didn't want to watch anything animated or computer generated including playing video games, but it eventually just worked itself out.
Time will likely help considerably but talking about it will help. I did suffer PTSD when I experienced hypokalemia so severe I woke up effectively paralyzed [1] and required hospitalization. Once I was released I couldn't sleep, I couldn't even sit for more than a few minutes before I'd start getting panicky and have to get up and move. I was drinking close to a fifth most nights to try and relax enough to get to sleep because as soon as I'd start to relax my brain would panic and think "it's happening again!" and flood my system with adrenaline, cortisol, etc. Eventually I dealt with that by modulating the cortisol with 'large' doses of inositol and phosphatidylserine and by talking about it to myself. I'd have to tell myself it's fine, you can move, just relax while sitting. Then in bed I'd have to joke about it to myself leading up into bed, try and find humor in the few hours I was awake and couldn't move like the dog coming in and sniffing me as I shouted for help and then walking away like "I don't care about him!" until I could just make being still not immediately make me panic. That took the better part of 2 years to get my panic episodes down to less than once every few months. I had sleep paralysis last year and it only panicked me for a few seconds after I could move again so I'd say I was successful at fixing that. Seeing a professional probably would have been a lot faster though but I'm not one to ask for, or willingly receive, help.
If it's really bothering you, I'd talk to someone because I think it would probably help. Either a friend or a professional. Fear is something that's easier to deal with if you talk about it in my experience.
[1] https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/2013/2/19/flashback...
> If it's really bothering you, I'd talk to someone because I think it would probably help. Either a friend or a professional. Fear is something that's easier to deal with if you talk about it in my experience.
For sure, this is great advice! I've been working on finding a therapist. For the most part, I'm okay. I don't think I'm suffering from PTSD, but my base anxiety levels have risen a lot, I've had one panic attack (a couple days after the bad trip), and sometimes I catch myself ruminating on some really dark shit. (Like the idea that the natural state of consciousness is eternal suffering, which is what I 100% believed was the truth during the trip.)
Before my experience I would read stuff like your 8-bit Salvia experience and think "okay, yeah, that sounds scary, but also super interesting, and something I would maybe want to experience". I kind of thought people would exaggerate how scary things were for dramatic effect. Now I know better. The human brain has an amazing capacity for self torture.
>"okay, yeah, that sounds scary, but also super interesting, and something I would maybe want to experience".
It was definitely the strangest experience I've ever had. I felt like I was going up a roller coaster ramp but everything was like when an NES cartridge would glitch and kept looping... I would get the impression that time would go forward 3-4 seconds then would just pop back 2-3 seconds. So I was slowly working my way up this thing that felt like a roller coaster.
The angle of the climb of 'roller coaster' (it was just like a million kaleidoscopes threw up with vague notions of movement) months later made me think it was the exit ramp to get to my friend's apartment. We were driving up the exit ramp and I closed my eyes because the sun was just blasting them and I was like wait, this feels like that horrible trip.
Upon review of most of my trips, I can link them to real memories/objects I'd recently seen. Like the spider, the dragon I'm pretty sure was a mix of books in the Pern series, I was Santa because it was the day before Christmas Eve, the morgue/crematorium were always when I was in bed in the dark and wearing a sleep mask to block out light, the octopus tentacle face guy reminded me of the guy in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, a few times I felt a consciousness and tried to reach out to it only to have a buzzing and painful clap happen in my ears that would snap me completely out of the trip... per Biblical lore man can't hear the voice of God so that's probably where that came from.
The only time I had positive experiences from psychotropics was when I was in relaxed social settings with friends. We used to take acid at the mall in high school and we'd rove around together so we all had good experiences. Various things at outdoor concerts, floating down a river or creek on innertubes, hiking or camping. Even then though you'd eventually get tired of it long before the effects wore off but it wasn't so bad because you could just talk and keep busy, alone I'd often also get bored relatively quick on mushrooms/mdma/lsd and there's nothing you can do but just continue on with disjointed thoughts and a tight jaw (it took me forever to figure out to chew gum) and that's when you'd get antsy or paranoid or dark thoughts would start to creep in. Once you get antsy/paranoid/dark the trip is soured and almost certainly will stay there or get worse.
It was an interesting part of my life but it's nowhere near as glamorous as the internet, or even movies, make it out to be. DMT specifically can just be a generally unpleasant experience and appears to be pretty universal in that, while some people have good experiences pretty much everyone has some bad ones once they've done it a handful of times.
While there certainly might be some therapeutic use for psychedelics, they are a very unpredictable instrument. I think this recently re-emerging trend of attributing them with almost magical cure-all qualities is risky at best.
You might certainly have a blissful, life-altering experience with a prolonged positive afterglow, but you could also end up in a hellish, confused world of angst and terror for what seems like an eternity, and feel excruciatingly hollow for weeks or months afterwards. The latter can of course be devastating to someone suffering from depression, anxiety or other psychological ailments.
This is why it's incredibly important (especially for super powerful psychedelics) to prepare properly, take them in a safe place with an experienced person you like and trust, and integrate the experience afterwards in to your life.
That said, even difficult experiences might ultimately benefit you, if you try to learn from them and integrate them properly (perhaps with the aid of a therapist).
James Fadiman's Psychedelics Explorer's Guide[1] has a lot of great information on making the most of one's psychedelic experience, and doing so safely and constructively.
You could also maximize the chance the experience will be a good and constructive one by doing it in a therapeutic, shamanic, or sacred context.
But make sure to vet whoever you do it with thoroughly, as there have been some abuses by people in power in these contexts before (I'm particularly thinking of reports of rapes by shamen in Peru, and other reports of DMT facilitators shocking users with tazers or forcing water or tobacco snuff up their nose/mouth during the experience).
Be safe people!
[1] - https://www.amazon.com/Psychedelic-Explorers-Guide-Therapeut...
Yep, exactly this. I'm about a month past my bad trip, and I'm still dealing with the negative after effects (anxiety, some depression, and occasional DP/DR). I wasn't an overly anxious or depressed person before.
I am definitely feeling better than I was a couple weeks ago, and I feel like with more time I'll continue to heal, and get mostly back to normal (although "normal" now means something different to me).
People who haven't been there just can't understand the hell that you can potentially go through on high doses of psychedelics. Take the worst experience of your life, then multiply it several times. Now, strip out your ego, and throw yourself into the infinite expanse of space. Then give yourself the absolute surety that you will be in this state for all of eternity. There is no doubt in your mind that you will never escape. That's sort of what it feels like.
I was stupid and took way too much without being prepared. My comment isn't really meant to be a "don't do psychedelics kids", but a warning story for those that might decide to be dumb like I was. If people are going to do them, respect the drug, do low dosages, do lots of research, and follow harm reduction guidelines. The alternative is the potential to experience a level of suffering that's really completely unimaginable.
A recent experience with this substance took me to a very bleak place in order to remind me what it means to live. I had to metaphorically crawl, uphill and on ice, back to life. It was very, very difficult. I'm grateful. However, time does not behave in a normal way in this space and things had to be put back together, slowly.
That being said, understanding the risks and going into the experience without expectation -- with a trained guide, in a safe setting -- can significantly alter the outcome in ones favor. These medicines are powerful and potentially life-changing free agents inside of the mind -- to change in such a way means releasing a lot of psychic baggage. It can be unsettling, but there can also be a lot to gain. It's important to be educated.
...and it's somewhat surprising, because we said the same things about benzos (which turned out to be pretty harmful), tricyclics, and SSRIs.
When Prozac was released people were talking about "better than well" and saying the medicine licensing system was broken because only ill people could get hold of prozac and we were depriving other people of this substance that would improve their lives. SSRIs are useful, but they're not magic.
Carefully used psychedelics are likely to be similar: really good for some people, not much use for others.
Though I do agree with your position when it comes to higher "trip" doses. I think we should make a point to accompany any such warnings with a mention that these substances are still very useful in small doses.
I've come to view the "trip" doses in genreal as over doses, since the small doses are still so useful without the unpredictable madness.
We shouldn't forget anything can be dangerous in large enough doses. The difference between poison and medicine is generally in the dosage.
Until we can run safe, targeted, empirical experiments around consciousness, we are stuck using noisy outlier cases (like those who have physical brain damage) to extrapolate from, with no control, defined variations, or iterative deductions possible.
Alternatively, if one could quickly design drugs to alter conscious experience in a targeted and safe way, not only would it open up the population of people who could partake in these kinds of experiments (legally of course) but also open the possibility of a new frontier of exploration, with tactical ‘expeditions’ set out by researchers, similar to the astronauts, where there was some risk but the artifact would be validated knowledge about the brain and mind.
In combination with other experimental techniques, one could imagine a whole host of hypotheses which could be rapidly tested in a replicatable way that presently are not possible to do so. For example, the question of if these experiences are completely self-created psychoses, or if the ‘entities’ seen during these experiences have some, if partial, external coupling (even if it is as benign as non-living, static environmental factors), could be readily tested if it were possible for repeated, controlled, experiments to try to falsify various claims.
In other words, perhaps people are taught to have subjective experience — how to be a subject, because it has certain advantages in our current social context.
And this may not be the only way to be.
And this may be what psychedelics teach.
From there, you can either go into the direction where we are just machines, and everything we do is predicted by how we are programmed. Then, free will, ethics, etc. are out of the window. There is then also just a machine named trevyn posting bit patterns on HN. In such a world, consciousness and free will don't actually exist, or only do exist as some kind of illusion/imagination. While this world view is somewhat consistent, it seems very hard to reconcile it with your own self-image. Why would you continue to strive for anything if you really believe in this 'clockwork' model? It sounds like a sad life, somewhat like taking the red pill and finding out you have no control whatsoever over your own life and can't leave your lifelong coffin.
The alternative would be a real explanation, i.e., assume that consciousness and free will exist as you experience them, and explain how neural circuits generate these effects. With this assumption, you so far only stated that neural circuits cause consciousness. But that is not an explanation yet. You need to explain how it happens. And that means, you need to connect the tangible, physical world with an intangible, non-physical phenomenon such as consciousness. I'm looking forward to see how you cross that bridge.
It's not so difficult to induce "oneness with the universe", or even total withdrawal from it (as with dissociatives), but nobody has the slightest clue why any portion of the universe (or all of it, depending who you ask) should feel like anything. That's where the hard problem is, I think.
Are you saying qualia don't exist, as per some interpretations of Dennett?
Subjective experience is something quite different from that (or it seems to be).
oh, and in pretty sure i’ve heard tell of “psychonauts” before...
These two books on phenylethylamines and tryptamines have a unique mixture of personal insight into the recreational use of psychedelics along with technical instructions from a chemist to recreate hundreds of these drugs.
Don't try this at home. This probably applies if you get the actual toad stuff because it can hardly be pure but with pure freebase 5-MeO-DMT (which is a great thing to have) anything above 20 mg is dangerous, 50 mg has chances to be lethal.
I have tried about 15 mg (of pure freebase) and it actually had a profound effect. Not only it has "spiritual" sort of effects by giving you a direct experience of non-duality and perfect bliss, it also acts sort of like an awesome antidepressant - try it once and you then feel so much better (and concentration and awareness become so much easier, and anxiety is gone) for weeks after that.
I also microdose every time when I have hard time falling asleep - not only it relieves stress which prevents you from falling asleep, it also makes sleep much more refreshing and satisfying so the fact you didn't have much time to sleep doesn't hurt much any more.
I'd need a citation, or even an anecdote, to believe that it could be lethal.
I've found a datasheet[0] that lists an intraperitoneal LD50 of 115 mg/kg in mice. That's more in keeping with my understanding.
That's what I say.
> I'd need a citation, or even an anecdote, to believe that it could be lethal.
Somewhere on Reddit or on actualized.org (the place I've learnt about the substance from in the first place). 20 mg also is the highest dose Psychonautwiki mentions as heavy (which suggests nobody should ever try more). Doses directly above that are not straight lethal but, as far as I know, increase chances of getting a heart attack or stopping breathing to dangerous levels (theoretically, my personal experience doesn't actually include even a minor discomfort or disturbance in the heart rate or respiration despite my heart is very prone to rhythm issues). I would love to try a really heroic dose for sake of having an ultimate transcendence experience but wouldn't do that without supervision of a doctor.
Psychonautwiki also mentions the toad venom contains about 10% (15% max) of 5-MeO-DMT so 50 mg of the toad venom corresponds to just 5 mg of pure freebase (which is a toy dose). And it also contains 5-HO-DMT (bufotenin) and 5-MeO-NMT which certainly add their flavour to the experience making it different from pure 5-Meo-DMT.
As for the weed - you just need a strain adequate to what you want of it. If you want a sleep aid look for a CBD-rich and THC-low Indica strain (or just a CBD-only strain - these even are legal in many countries where normal weed isn't). There is a huge selection of weed strains that feel very different. There are strains good for work (energy and concentration), for creativity and thinking, for having fun, for sleeping and for other kinds of activities. I'm sure there is a strain that will shoot you dead-asleep instantly.
Salvia especially to me proved how absolutely weird and odd can an experience be like. The brief moment of thinking you are dead only to be instantly put in an experience where you forget you were even a human. An experience where you don't think about the future or past but just feel what you feel right now. Salvia is weird also because it doesn't change what you see but what you feel too.
Psychedelics are fascinating. All my experiences though come down to a powerful realization that all that I experience is all that life is. It's very God like feeling.
Psilocybin and LSD can certainly produce that feeling. For that matter, cannabis at high doses can as well.
It's possible to train oneself not to "chase" linear trains of thought so compulsively, though. Some would argue that's critical to a good psychedelic experience: letting go of typical patterns of cognition and allowing the mind to go where the trip takes it.
On sufficiently large doses of many psychedelics, I have the impression that the mind becomes less a goal-oriented, narrowly focused "thinking machine" and more a child-like, free-associative, broadly perceptive sense organ. Fighting that tends to be unpleasant, imo.
You could give a criminal multi-century prison sentences for crimes and they still have their life left at the end of it all. You could contract the boring parts of your life and extend the interesting ones. Forget "living to work", you could do a full day's work in the blink of an eye and have a decade-long evening to enjoy life.
I've had several DMT experiences. A couple were amazing. One was the most terrifying psychedelic experience I've ever had. Thankfully, DMT's high is very short lived.
As good as the "good" trips were on DMT I never felt any sort of introspection with it that I've felt with LSD and Mushrooms.
My good trips with DMT: the most vivid visuals I've ever experienced IF my eyes were kept closed; warped sense of time, it felt like it lasted for hours but was over in 10 to 15 minutes.
Once my DMT experiences were over it was like nothing ever happened. Zero residual psychoactive experience afterwards ( LSD and Mushrooms can take some time and you can see tracers, shadow effects, etc. as you're coming down ).
I'm a big fan of psychedelics. I do not recommend them for everyone. If you're going to do them do a ton of research.
It would be prudent to find out which "DMT" you're getting, and educate yourself on the difference. You really don't want to confuse the two.
Some friends had to hold another friend down to keep him from scratching his eyes out while on 5-MeO-DMT.
Start with a couple grams of dried Psilocybe.
And don't combine it with alcohol, marijuana, etc.
If you liked that, after at least a couple weeks, try two or three times as much.
Then repeat until you're experiencing a little ego loss.
If you liked all that, try some LSD. Maybe start with 50 micrograms or so.
Then repeat the dosage increase regimen until you experience total ego loss for several hours.
And if you liked that, then try some DMT or 5-MeO-DMT.
But not otherwise. It's only 20-30 minutes, but it could feel like forever.
I've personally engaged in 400+ journeys myself.
Feel free to AMA.
The most important point I wish to bring is that it is SUPREMELY IMPORTANT to work with facilitators who provide preparation & integration.
The potential for self-transformation and liberation from emotions not accessible by traditional means is profound.
If you feel the impulse, go for it!
I'm guessing that doing it this often, it's your "relax" before sleep at this point. So regardless of how much your actions aligned with your goals, or if you don't like that framework, how much you enjoyed doing whatever you did that day, you get that kick. I mean, I do that with music, but it seems that to resolve all conflicts in that complicated universe that is your head, you sometimes need to feel bad for a few days and figure out which things are colliding.
Also, what are some of the worst negative effects you've observed among the people you facilitated for?
People who go through this once come back to the other side utterly transformed. With the proper preparation and integration, they have a far greater ability to live a more aligned life in which it is easier to manifest situation of highest potential.
I've seen people release PTSD linked with being in combat, release sexual abuse in childhood (of which they were unaware), release profound rage & anger.
Each person having gone through the process has left behind "heavy layers" of pain.
The worst effect I've seen with people is going through a period of frustration and resistance by trying to go back to their "old" life. This has each time subsided as their new life takes off.
I must say I use a progressive process that I haven't seen anywhere else. The preparation process I use gets you prepared as best as possible (even though you are NEVER prepared for the experience of non-duality). It is then easier to retain the greatest changes. The integration makes sure you can transform the insights and realizations into applications in your life, which is the true integration.
Behaviorally most just go back to the same patterns and aren't particularly changed. Ayahuasca, due to the before/after dietary constraints, is more effective (IMO) in inducing lifestyle changes.
That said, 5MeO is the death experience (i.e. it very likely mirrors the experience at the moment of physical death) and is, if nothing else, great practice for the real thing :)
In terms of adverse effects, some wounded warriors take days, weeks, or even months to heal, but that's the same for any psychedelic, a segment of the population will be adversely affected.
Also, 5MeO can be abused; I've encountered at least one facilitator who takes it daily (over 3K journeys), which seems somewhat excessive, and can be seen in their flat affect (i.e. you'd expect such a being to radiate joy if number of journeys === depth of experience).
From what i read of the Johns Hopkins studies using psychedelics to quit smoking, CBT style sessions before the psychedelics was a key part of the program.
I agree that without the proper context & assistance, most of the effect is just wasted and remains in people's Being as a distant experience.
As far as integration goes, I mean, who really knows the territory of the infinite such that they can help another through some difficulty in their own unique path? Most facilitators that I've seen just collect the rather large cash based consulting fee and move on to the next group, with a hug or pat on the back if a participant had a difficult journey.
I'm certainly skeptical when there's an undeniable profit motive involved, so the whole facilitator role is a bit overblown; there's no shamanic tradition behind Bufo (discovered in the 80s), it's just people that have had experience with the substance serving it to others, hopefully with good intentions.
I also agree that nothing can prepare for the non-duality - but preparation can help you make the most of the experience & retain what was meaningful to you.
You'd be surprised how far we've come in terms of knowledge. We do have the practical models to navigate the dual experience having had the non-dual experience. Understanding that you are the embodiment of the Infinite through your direct experience isn't an end in itself. It is a beginning.
I have developed "business models of Being" for a lack of better terms that frames how to operate in an optimal fashion in the practical world of service.
While I trust that you can give psychologically healthy people a good experience, I have a hard time imagining how you could give the necessary support to people with larger issues. And because those issues are often deeply hidden, it is hard even for professionals to detect that in advance.
It is an intense journey but if you come with the right intention (heal, grow etc - & an attitude of humility & surrender), then there are tools to support you and in my experience, it all comes out alright.
I've grown a lot from my experiences with ayahuasca and bufo but still have some inner work to do. I am integrating every day best I can but I feel the Call to dive deeper once in awhile.
1. After so many trips, I am wondering if you've seen any negative effects? Anything like DR/DP, HPPD, depression etc.?
2. Have you tried other substances? If so, any preferences? Why do you prefer 5+MeO-DMT?
Q2. I've used ayahuasca 50+ times, mushrooms 15-ish times in full journeys & microdosing for 1 year, peyote, mapacho a few times. Iboga: 2 months of microdosing & a proper flood dose. I prefer 5-MeO-DMT because it is efficient, it is direct, fact acting & doesn't carry the discomfort of nausea etc like other psychedelics. 5-MeO-DMT is called the crown jewel of psychedelics and I fully agree. It is the only one proper to use for first timers (with the proper support) in a personal-development business context.
Q1. In all my journeys, I have never had a bad trip. I've had challenging journeys but no bad trips. Then I've experienced emotional upheaval during short periods of time, emotional flush as I call them. No DR/DP, HPPD or depression to report. I must say I've engaged with entheogens after a lot of self-work already and a lot of education in the nature of the universe. I ALWAYS approach entheogens with an attitude of humility & surrender.
I am way less experienced than you are, and yet I can't help but feel that your experience is somewhat atypical. I never had a bad trip myself, but I can definitely see how one could happen. Given high doses and time, I'd say it's almost guaranteed. Also, HPPD seems to be correlated with the number of trips and definitely not as rare as some statistics might suggest. However, it's largely unresearched, so who knows? I'm not criticizing in any way, just saying you're one of the lucky ones, I'd guess.
If you will allow me one more question, I'd like to know how this has changed your perception about well... everything? It's a broad question, but I guess sort of aimed at your reason for existence, death and so on. In my case, experimenting with psychedelics both revealed the unavoidability of death, but also cured me from the fear of it. Overall, I'd say that's a win, but it definitely had its challenges. Because of those challenges, I avoid blindly recommending psychedelics to friends, the desire to confront such issues has to come from within.
I profoundly KNOW (not believe) that I am the embodiment of the Infinite, I live my life in a game I have designed for myself, I create my own reality and everyone is another facet of Me, the Infinite. It doesn't make sense to choose less than Love or choose less than EXACTLY what my heart desires. I live my life as such. To the best of y ability, I walk my talk & serve as best as I can. Psychedelics are not for everyone, but I feel those who feel the calling are lucky bastards :-) It's such a beautiful world is you can sustain the intensity of inner transformation, but of you feel the calling, then this is what you are after.
Psychedelics are no doubt an interesting area of research and potentially very powerful agents in the context of comprehensive, professionally-guided treatment strategies. However, it's important for everyone to acknowledge that these powerful drugs are not guaranteed to produce unilaterally positive changes in all people who use them. Ordering some psilocybin, LSD, or 5-MeO-DMT off of the darknet and dosing yourself in your home is a completely different experience than the MAPS style treatment protocols, which involve many intense sessions of pre-trip preparation, active guidance by professionals during the trip, and multiple post-session therapy sessions for integration and monitoring. It's a mistake to assume you can replicate these procedures by yourself, alone, with questionable substances purchased on the darknet.
I've also noticed that internet comment sections are actively hostile to any negative experience reports from psychedelics. Whenever psychedelic research related topics hit the front page of Reddit, it's fascinating to read the variety of anecdotal experience reports in the comments. They range from glowing endorsements of life-changing positivity like this article, to horror stories of multi-year depressive or psychotic episodes that were difficult to recover from. However, the negative anecdotes tend to be so aggressively downvoted that you can't see them unless you switch to "Controversial" sorting some times. Worse yet, the negative anecdotes draw attacks and victim-blaming from people who don't want to believe that psychedelics can be harmful.
It's common to dismiss the negative reports as failures of "set and setting" or "latent pre-existing conditions", but the truth is that the outcomes of these substances are very unpredictable. Everyone assumes that their own experience will be positive, or that their preparation and research will save them, but that's not always the case.
I've even witnessed positive psychedelic outcomes turn dark as people become fixated on their tripping experiences. In psychedelic research the drugs are a part of the therapy. A means to an end. However, I've seen more than a few casual psychedelic users put too much weight into their hallucinations, or become fixated with the false belief that they are just one or two more trips away from a major breakthrough. Or they think enlightenment will come if they just double the dose next time. Or they become obsessed with trying the next research chemical or trendy mushroom strain. Or their first response to every difficult situation in life is to reach for psychedelic drugs.
Fascinating topic, but I urge everyone to please watch from a distance rather than self-experiment. If you have serious medical conditions, please engage with professionals for a monitored treatment strategy. If you absolutely must have your fix of psychedelic medicine, you can always engage with a ketamine treatment facility.
On the other hand, just because someone has a difficult experience it doesn't mean that on the whole the experience was detrimental. A lot depends on who the person is, what kind of help they have, and how they react to and integrate the experience.
This is much like reactions to difficult experiences in ordinary waking consciousness. One could go through an illness, for example, and come out of it stronger and with a greater value for the simple things in life you had taken for granted before. Or one could come out thinking "why me?", feeling sorry for yourself, feeling bitter at the world and life, or feeling persecuted.
In the MAPS therapeutic protocol that you mention (which is based on the work of Stanislav Grof), people are prepared for such difficult experiences, and if they happen are urged to stay with them instead of fightng them and trying to run away from them, to go deeper in to them, and afterwards are helped by trained therapists to deal with them integrate them.
All indications are that it is such an approach is what is responsible for the overwhelming positive outcomes of these studies, as opposed to the "acid casualties" that happen in informal, usually uninformed or even self-destructive casual use.
I was referring to those with long-lasting negative effects that persist for weeks, months, or even years after the trip.
These negative effects are frequently downplayed (or downvoted) in online discussions. They tend to be dismissed through victim blaming, such as suggesting that the person was unprepared, had latent psychiatric issues, or had improper set and setting.
The definition of "correct" preparation and set and setting seems to be defined as an impossibly high bar that few people actually follow. The impossibly high bar makes it easy to dismiss, ignore, or victim-blame the negative outcomes.
For example:
> All indications are that it is such an approach is what is responsible for the overwhelming positive outcomes of these studies, as opposed to the "acid casualties" that happen in informal, usually uninformed or even self-destructive casual use.
How many of the people reading this article or this comment section will be following the MAPS therapeutic protocol with trained professional supervision? Realistically, that number is zero. How many HN readers do you think are searching the darknet right now to buy some 5-MeO-DMT or Psilocybin for ad-hoc personal drug use under the belief that they are self-medicating? Probably quite a few.
Interested people are going to use these substances regardless, as the abject failure of the War on Drugs has shown, and in the internet age there's no effective way of keeping people from finding out about these substances. If anything, the information about them is going to get out way more effectively and faster than ever before.
We need to inform users of the risks of these substances along with their benefits, and safe ways to use them. If they then choose to ignore those ways, that's going to be their choice.
Right now there are ayahuasca circles and peyote ceremonies people could join, and underground psychedelic therapists they could go to.
Hopefully, when these substances are legalized there'll be more safe places where people could go and have their experience with trained, caring people.
I can state with complete certainty that trained, professional guides and clients in this kind of work are reading this article and this comment thread.
It's pretty obvious you are referring to Reddit ("sort by controversial"), just call it by name. Reddit is generally pretty hostile towards anyone who indulges in wrongthink.
I’m also concerned with the commercialization of psychedelics, and that we may lose something important as it becomes a common commodity. Shorter trips feels like something more easily commercialized with higher user turnover.
YMMV and all effects vary between individuals.
The plan is to use a machine designed to inject anesthetics to inject DMT intravenously. Since use of DMT seems not to build up any tolerance, it could in theory be extended indefinitely, or at least for hours or even days at a time.
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tlbtqLOmYs
In contrast, the DMTx experiment will be done with pure DMT.
While it was really intense, I didn't take away any lessons from it as I have from LSD and psilocybin. I think it's too strong to be a proper teacher and is just more of a thrill ride.
I recognize that we all have different responses but I'm betting that I'm not alone in this assessment.
It would be prudent to find out which "DMT" you're getting, and educate yourself on the difference. You really don't want to confuse the two.
"We have an amazing book by Ralph Metzner called The Toad and the Jaguar. Ralph traveled all over Europe and in the United States, visiting these groups that were using it, using some illegal loopholes or doing a kind of underground research and he wrote this book where he collected that information in a way that could become the basis of scientific research.
"Now, what is fantastic there is that this substance creates a very short, within an hour, which is within the time of one psychoanalytic session, you can experience significant transformation, even spiritual opening. The substance is methoxy-DMT.
"I have in my book When the Impossible Happens a chapter which is called "The Secret of the Toad of Light" -- there are churches in the American Southwest that are actually using it as a sacrament, called the Church of the Toad of Light.
"I took a fairly large dose, one that is more than is usually used. My first time I really didn't know the dosing. It was estimated 25 milligrams. Today you would use 5 or 10. This was by far the most powerful psychedelic experience I've ever had.
"Within seconds it took me out of my body. There was nothing biographical, no birth experiences, nothing archetypal. I was just facing this incredible source of light, for the lack of a better description. It was beyond anything I could imagine in terms of the brilliancy and incandescence that it had, but also a sense that there was incredible intelligence, creative intelligence going beyond any dichotomies. I couldn't say if it was daemonic or divine. It was just off the scales that I had.
"Coming down from that experience, I had the feeling I was dying -- not from life in to dying but from a place beyond death into a dying body, and after a while it became clear that this was not really dying, it was an experience of dying, and for quite a while I was in a situation where I was an absolutely blissful state and I was having visions of streams of my past life experiences where I had the feeling of dying and being killed in different situations. My body was acting out the agony. It was shaking, twitching, but psychologically, emotionally I was in absolute bliss.
"Then coming down for a week I was in a state in which I would like to live. We were at the time living at Esalen. We had a deck overlooking the ocean. This was the time I was handwriting my manuscripts and giving it to a secretary and having to edit it. In that week I had to do editing of my manuscript, which I could do perfectly lying in the sun there, and I would take a little break and within seconds I had the feeling of oneness with the whole environment, oneness with the world. Then I would open my eyes and I could continue editing.
"But then of course, the consciousness of the industrial civilization came back to do workshops, travel, so I didn't stay in that state but my meditations became much, much deeper and it was not difficult to get into some version of that state just through meditation.
"So I think this would be an amazing substance to try for practical reasons. Because you will not find psychiatrists like my self, in the 60's and so on, sitting for six hours with their patients but they could certainly do a one hour session with the methoxy-DMT and I think signifcant therapy could be done within this very short time.
"It's also, according to Ralph Metzner's observations, it's a substance where the experience ends very cleanly. There's no lingering on. So there is a very powerful experience but also a good closure.
"So this is my experience with methoxy-DMT. Now it's very very popular. For example, we had the Tranpsersonal Conference in Prague and there were lectures about it and of course there were people who had access to the toad material, to the excretions or secretions of the glands. So it's becoming a very popular substance right now."[1]
[1] - From about 38 minutes in to Tim Ferris' interview with Grof here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mdYUmvTeig
One can achieve this through yoga, and not for 20 minutes trip but as a constant state of experience.
So I am aware that you can achieve similar experiences naturally, it seems like a lot more time / effort. (It was a mushroom trip that got me started meditating).
Yoga is great. Meditation is great. Both are slow, and humanity wants / needs to wake up now.
Don't worry about humanity, just see what you can do for yourself.
>Both are slow, and humanity wants / needs to wake up now.
If you are making a baby, do you want one which is made 9 months or one which comes earlier? Everything has it's time, for someone it takes less time, for some - more, but this is just how it goes, if you are taking shortcuts with life you just fooling yourself.
Thanks I do appreciate that view and one that is often said. Healing starts with us. Heal yourself, heal the world etc. So I went to see what I could do for myself. And I found that helping others was how I helped myself. So I think that often suggested philosophy is simple on the surface but actually quite the paradox.
> if you are taking shortcuts with life you just fooling yourself. What is a shortcut? Isn't part of improving as an individual or species about finding ways to do things more efficiently? With less time or energy or resources.
That is an important observation, on many levels. One of them is that right things do not have to fit into our logic, eg they can be paradoxical. By "right" I mean what works, not moral or something.
By shortcut I mean to get to big experiences quickly. In yoga they always talk about stability and discipline because if there is no stable enough base big experiences might be too overwhelming.
According to the Zen Buddhism "enlightenment takes no time, it can happen in a single, split second".
That being said in total agreement that having a base can make for a safer, deeper experience and or more lasting results.
It can or it can not. Every day you can also find a bag full of cash, so are you quitting your job already? :D (This is by no means some authoritative or profound answer, just how I feel it now)
Psychedelics got me started meditating.
I see value in both.
Quite the opposite in my experience. The effect wears off, but it doesn't create an addiction.
I certainly don't think we should have the destructive, Puritan regime of prohibition in place (it was pretty much an excuse to arrest members of the left-wing counterculture in the 1960s rather than any genuine public health concern), but completely heading in the other direction isn't a good idea either. The cultures that have used psychedelics for millenia have lots of cultural/spiritual practices around them to make them safer, just taking a pill and thinking you're ready to meet God without any sort of preparation is a recipe for going spectacularly mad.
A shaman was coming through NYC to work with vets with PTSD and I was invited to sit in a ceremony with him.
I was afraid I was going to loose my mind / be sent to hell.
And I did. The trip immediately amplified my fears and put me into a hellspace that was also outside of time.
I had what felt like an eternity to be face to face with these fears and paranoia.
At one point I thought, the reason people do this is so they never do it again.
5 minutes later I was back and thinking, wow that was intense but really useful, I should do it again immediately.
So this time I was able to surrender to the experience and not fight it.
It wasn’t very visual but I did encounter a very dark energy that felt like the Devil. This energy was the depression and suicidal impulse. I went deep into it and it was frightening but I eventually confronted it in a very direct way and just said “I want to live my life”.
I then came out and observed a sort of metaphysical geometry. I could see a white light at the center and surrounding it the darker energy I had just confronted.
The dark energy felt to me like “sin”, as in the archery term that means missing the mark.
The white light was the bullseye.
And I was reminded in a very deep way that the way to ensure being able to embrace the experience of death and head into the white light, is to practice embracing life every day.
Step into the adventure of your own mythology, take the risks, speak the truth, follow your bliss, and also face the pain and suffering head on.
It took a couple weeks to integrate that, and waves of the experience resurfaced at times like while in the subway - (which in reflection was a new way of experiencing social anxiety) but I knew to stay with these experiences and to integrate them.
After that experience my life really became much more stable, I expanded my theraputic executive coaching program (ALCHEMY) tripled my income in a few months, shipped a number of creative projects (majagual.org; MemeScope.com; anthonydavidadams.com/lsd; dnnyc.org to name a few)
And the suicidal thoughts really feel gone this time.
Integration is really important and needs to be focused on and I’ve done a number of things to support that.
Mandala Journaling (I have a free pdf of my practice on my website)
Cuddle Therapy
Oxtocin Supplementation
Yoga
Breathwork
Co-leading a men’s group
I also co-founded dnnyc.org to help decriminalize natural entheogens in New York City.
Having used more than my share of psychedelics, extracted from Bufo Alvarus even, 5-MeO-DMT is not something normies or even people who'd like to remain sane, should ever fool around with. "vital mental health tool" my mental image of an asshole.