My Breakthrough DMT Trip (And Thoughts On It)
Smoking DMT was one of the single most intense and insane experiences of my life. Going in I figured that it would be bigger than I could possibly imagine and boy was I right. Here I will attempt the impossible: to describe the experience in words.
To summarize, it was:
- Overwhelming – Monumental scale
- Utterly bizarre – As I said during the trip – ‘just fucking absolutely insane’
- Unimaginably complex – Mind. Blown.
- Interdimensional travel – I didn’t get ‘high’, ‘fucked up’, or ‘wasted’. It was as if I was zapped through a wormhole to a different universe.
Preparation
I approached the experience with great curiosity and respect. I wanted a full breakthrough experience and did my homework on the technique. I had a friend sit for me in a quiet, empty apartment and spoke with him about my expectations beforehand. I meditated directly before. And I filmed the whole thing, so I could get a sense of timeline, see myself through the experience, and so I could start talking about the experience as soon as possible and have my thoughts captured – it is well known that the experience slips away very quickly and becomes hard to recall, like a dream. It worked, so I’ve written this with the aid of notes and the video footage.
Smoking
I took the first huge hit, things started feeling wobbly. I took the second and my vision started becoming warped and I could tell it was really kicking off. I handed the bong to my friend because I could tell it would be difficult to hold for much longer. McKenna’s advice ran through my mind, that even though it really doesn’t feel like you need anymore, you need to push for the third hit to fully break through. My friend held the bong and lit for the third hit while I inhaled. I lay back and closed my eyes.
Blank
At this point I can’t remember what happened. Total blank. Here there is a period of 3 minutes that are unaccounted for and missing from my memory. The video shows me lying with my eyes closed and still breathing just as if I were asleep. The next thing I became aware of was an uncomfortable sensation. I wasn’t sure what it was or where it came from and it took me an eternity to think of what I needed, and then as I opened my eyes, the word that I was looking for came to me. With much struggle I faintly mumbled the word ‘water’ – my throat was dry as hell. My friend jumped up and handed me a glass of squash, at which point I threw up into my mouth, but I was still on another plane – brilliant streams of luminous colour shot out like lightning as I vomited. My buddy grabbed a bowl and held it in front of me while I spewed. It was quick and I lay back again. It was from this point that I again became aware that I had taken DMT. As I lay back and closed my eyes, I entered another universe.
Weird, Intense, Beyond Comprehension
Completely insane. Utterly alien. Wholly bizarre. So far removed from any other type of experience I’ve ever had. Next level freaky. This was interdimensional travel to a parallel universe, another tunnel of reality. Everything was of colours I’ve never seen before and at an unfathomable level of complexity and detail. I was entirely overwhelmed by the scale of what I was experiencing. It was information overload and then some. This wasn’t a human experience, humans aren’t capable of perceiving this much information.
I’ll try to explain it by way of analogy. Imagine your brain is plugged in to a machine that feeds you every single living person’s experience of the world, at the same time. So you are plugged in to 7 billion pairs of eyes and ears, every thought, emotion and feeling – receiving all that information as it is happening in real time. As well, you get a live feed of every single computer that is running, plus a direct download of the entire contents of the internet- every page, video, photo- every last piece and byte of information. You then make connections between all of this information and how it all relates to build a real time, continually shifting picture of reality in an immersive experience. DMT is on that level in the informational sense, and more bizarre than I can think of a way to describe.
Getting past the initial shock I began to come to terms with the experience and drew long deep breaths. I lay there and admired the DMTverse in awe.
The DMTverse
It was a grand expansive space – dark but shot through with brilliant colours. The fabric of everything was made up of incredible and perfectly mathematical patterns. I had a panoramic view of some kind of organic factory, I saw massive cogs made of an earth-like substance churning. The whole scene was forever subtly shifting, metamorphosing and with absolute synergy between all things – everything moved in accordance with everything else and energy seemed to be flowing symbiotically between all things. Everything was overflowing with life and energy. I saw inscriptions of letters from an alien alphabet that seemed to have been made by intelligent life. And then I was in a…
City Of The Future
Everything was so advanced. I’m not talking flying cars or impressive gadgetry or any technology that we might imagine humanity might ever possess. I’m not even talking how it might be if we were to time travel and show a smartphone to a caveman. The jump in the level of complexity was like the gap between the first formations of atoms in the earliest stages of the formation of the universe, through the birth of stars and the formation of solar systems, to when molecules combined to create living organisms. Entropy over 9 billion years, then. It’s hard to fathom how anyone could even experience this, but that’s the mystery of DMT.
“It may be that DMT makes us able to perceive what physicists call “dark matter” – the 95 per cent of the universe’s mass that is known to exist but that at present remains invisible to our senses and instruments.”
– Graham Hancock
Somehow Sober
What’s interesting is that I maintained a sober cognition and consciousness throughout the experience. It was unique to other drugs in this regard. For example, when I drink alchohol I get inebriated and my cognition gets sloppy, with MDMA I feel euphoria and more loved up, when I smoke weed I get stoned or high and sometimes anxious, with salvia I’ll get confusion. However, with DMT, there was no ‘druggy’ effect, not dazed, confused, fucked up – it was just like I had been zapped through a portal into a parallel universe. Like my consciousness had just been picked up by a cosmic deity and thrown out into a world that was wholly other. Whereas other drugs enhance our existing reality – dulling it, numbing us to certain sensations, or amplifying it, making colours more vivid or lines more wavy – this was just transition to a different reality.
If you’ve ever seen the 90’s movie Contact, that’s a great analogy. You really do go through the wormhole on that inter-dimensional journey that Jodie Foster goes on. In fact I felt so much that that part of the movie was the perfect analogy for the experience that I googled it after to see if anyone else had made the same connection, and sure enough, loads of other people had commented the exact same thing.
Real?
Is the experience real? I don’t think anyone can really answer that question but I can say how it felt. It felt absolutely real. It felt more real than anything else I’ve ever experienced – including my experience of typing this at my computer right now. This is where you start to go down the rabbit hole. I’ve had hallucinations from other drugs, like mind-movies, but this was nothing like that. Like I said before, it was as if I were just in another place. It wasn’t as if I was observing pictures or patterns, but that I was IN another universe, which is actually a deeper level of reality – deeper in the sense that it’s truer than the one we normally inhabit.
Plato’s Allegory Of The Cave
If it really is a deeper level of reality, Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is the perfect analogy. The world as we understand it in a normal waking consciousness is the cave, a normal person is the prisoner, and DMT is what drags the prisoner upwards and out of of the cave. I see the part of my trip which is blank in my memory as the part in which the prisoner is blinded by the radiant light of the sun and is unable to see even one of the things now said to be true.
This fits in with the DMT experience being far richer and more detailed than our everyday experience.
No Contact
People often report contact with other entities and beings. To be clear, nothing like that happened to me. Everything seemed to be teeming with life and energy but I didn’t have any communication or contact with beings of any kind.
Ineffable, Unimaginable
DMT is the definition of ineffable. Trying to describe it seems akin to trying to describe colours to a blind person. That’s why I’ve used so many analogies and said things that don’t totally make sense here. That’s DMT for you. There is simply no imagining what it’s like. If you want a peek behind the cosmic curtain you’ll just have to go see for yourself.
Had your DMT trip, but can’t remember shit?
Read more: How to Integrate a Difficult-to-Remember DMT Experience
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That sounds very intense man (but in a good way :D) I’ll be taking note of your preparation techniques since it seems you were definitely able to retain a lot – much more than myself and most others I’ve talked to. Your “DMTverse” sounds a bit like machinescapes (https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/Machinescapes) – apparently not an uncommon experience on DMT. Cool experience and thanks for sharing.
Yes very intense, (and yes in a great way!). I would definitely recommend the filming or audio recording to retain some of the information, I think I got the idea from McKenna actually, either way it really worked (apart from the first 3 minutes which totally escaped me!). Machinescapes! I’d never heard or read about them before but it definitely fits in with my experience, so that is VERY interesting, especially as something else which I said but which didn’t make it into the report is how in the city of the future I got a sense of an ‘escalator’. Mysterious stuff… further exploration needed 🙂
Thanks for writing this this. Much of this is so close to my experience recently and interestingly I also thought of Contact and Plato’s cave in following weeks.
However towards the end of my journey I met a diety in the shape of a human obsidian face who told me for off in a kind of paternalistic/warning/annoyed way for thinking that I would be able to comprehend what I was seeing and that that I could not go any further and remain myself (I have no idea if I had questioned what was beyond what i was experiencing). I was extremely relieved to return to this reality having at one point briefly wondered if I would. It was the most intense experience I have ever had.
Thanks J. It’s nice to hear that a lot of what I wrote resonated with you, it seems indeed that certain themes or analogies do fit the DMT experience quite uncannily amongst different individuals.
Your experience sounds pretty intense and scary (not surprising with DMT.. !), but I’m glad you made it back safe. Thanks for visiting the site and sharing some of your experience.
I am still blown away by this. I had my first breakthrough last night and all I can say is that it was the most beautiful existence I’ve ever experienced at one time with time not being real. I didn’t see any other being but I felt I constant reassurance in my mind that things were good, but at the end of witnessing creation (that’s the only way I can explain) I felt like I was told “enough”. I opened my eyes and had tears in my eyes. It was amazing. I want to thank you for taking the time and writing out your full experience.
Kiss
Kiss. Thank you for your words and for sharing your experience. Beautiful.
My best wishes go out to you today. Take care and remember to be kind to yourself in the aftermath of such a deep experience 🙂
John
I just tried DMT for the first time tonight. First time around I took 2 hits and Bam! It was off to the races, totally tripping balls my buddies where pixelated and then I was in a guest house outside looking in, I tried to describe it but couldn’t and the best I could do was compare it to the book called ” the shack” where a dude gets in a wreck and dies but come back and when he was in a comma met good and had long talks. After this I said wow that was intense but I want the “breakthrough” I’ve heard about, so next round I readied myself and took 1….2….3 hits on top of each other and ghosted them. I’m writing this literally 2 hours after the fact. I didn’t have and interdimensional traveling I was pretty much in a big black void and my mind broke into different pieces, I became all feeling, I myself was emotion in and if itself, I remember puking and trying to apologise while I did this but I couldn’t, but what I was puking up was everything I’ve kept bottled up for years and I was crying. After that I felt purged or something but in a good way. I’m getting information minutes at a time as I type this, like my mind wouldn’t give me what was happening at the time because it was too much so now it’s feeding it too me a little at a time. So utterly indescribable, the only thing I didn’t like and I’m sorry for is that fact that while I was in a. Different place I had no control over my body and I guess I puked everywhere and broke a couple things and pulled out a bit. When I started to come back my buddies where cleaning up stuff, I heard girls talking in the next room, and they just kept telling me everything was ok, I was soooo scared that I hurt someone and I didn’t thank God but still feel bad for scaring people. I’m sure I will still be getting information for awhile to come but I am ready and I got what I wanted, now I just have to take it all in and contemplate on what I’ve gained from the experience.
“big black void… mind broke…puking, crying, indescribable” Sounds like a pretty big trip then… classic DMT. Thanks for sharing and good luck with integrating your experience!
Before i had my first experience i truly thought, ha, yeah whatever to some of the things i’d been told. And i can honestly say having already done acid and mushrooms etc that i thought this was all hype. Not true….. DMT is in a class of its own and then some. Words alone cannot do justice. It is more than a drug, it is an opportunity to experience another realm and live to tell the tale, it is a chance to touch the essence of life itself! You probably won’t credit this but i truly believe that DMT is a path to an enlightenment that cannot be achieved elsewhere. If and i mean ‘IF’ your mind is lucky enough to be able to see a DMT trip through then i suggest you take a look at what’s out there. You’ll hardly believe I’ll bet you.
Yes, I would agree that it certainly lives up to the hype, and that words alone cannot do it justice. More than a drug? Probably, it is something certainly extra, extra special. In terms of it being a path to enlightenment that cannot be achieved elsewhere? I’m not so sure, and thats kinda impossible to verify, but I guess my response would be I think that would depend on many factors and also how you are defining enlightenment. Well, thanks for your comment Dan, safe travels in the other realms.
lol….. comment like these make me smile… because i was the same, over hyped, lots of liars making shit up, probably like a strong acid trip…. i can handle it….. then i broke through and i just wasn’t ready… WTF have I done…. oh no…… lol
Just had my first DMT breakthrough – literally been back 10 minutes – and came straight online to check other experiences.. and anyone just THINKS they may have had a breakthrough because of some nice visuals and some profound thoughts you didn’t; you breakthrough and you f*king know it… WTF WTF…. it was TOO overwhelming if I’m being honest i just wasn’t ready… cant remember much of it, i just was NOT here on earth…. i remember thinking What have a done, what have i done, don’t ever do that again…….lol
Quite something, right Paul? 😉
Yes it was…. and now the shock is over ( nothing can prepare you no matter how many high dose experiences you have beforehand ) i plan on trying again soon… this time i’ll be ready…
Just had my second breakthrough. First time i had one i literally thought i had died. This time i was ready. After a couple of light hits and the usual funky visuals i chilled for an hour then went for the big one. This time i was ready. I was in the realm i had entered the first time but this time i had no fear. I felt i didn’t need my body. As before i thought i had died, this time i knew i hadn’t. I didn’t even think of breathing or where i was physically. Felt like i had been gone ages. I was nearly in tears after due to being so overwhelmed. I’m going through a tough time lately as is everyone else but this left me feeling like nothing mattered as much as it did before. It’s true what they say, once the ego dies the soul can live.