Backstory and leadup:
I had an interesting and mostly good weekend. Friday I met up with some new friends, whom I hope will stay friends, and afterwards I went on my own to a club event I had been looking forward to for some time. I wasn't very social there due to my usual anxiety but the music was awesome so I was happy just sitting somewhere listening. Stayed out till it ended, and got home very late, but did get some sleep.
Saturday was more interesting things to learn and talk about and people to meet etc. I had been told of an event that would be happening that night from the people I was talking to yesterday and had decided to go to it. So Saturday night I wandered around for a bit to relax first, ate some food, had some minor stomach discomfort which fortunately settled itself, and then went off to see this place.
I was a bit apprehensive at first since I'm really new to the kind of event and atmosphere and things like this in general. Even the few friends I had there were people I'd known less than a day or two, but I was hoping it would be fun.
The first few hours however, weren't. I generally get nervous in crowds and I'm not good at talking to people I don't know. After a couple hours of this I was on the verge of having a panic attack, and debated if I should just leave and never return again, or take my anti-anxiety meds which are prescribed "use as needed" and see if I could make it work. So I took about 1.5mg klonopin and a 25mg benadryl (which I noticed seems to amplify it a bit). I figured may be my normal dexedrine ADD prescription (10mg IR 4x/day) was not helping me in terms of keeping calm.
About half an hour after the klonopin I felt much better and found I was able to go and talk to people I hadn't met before. So I got to meet more new people and generally had the kind of experience at a new place I always wanted to but was never able to due to my anxiety issues. So I considered this a great success and much progress on dealing with my problems, since next time it will likely be easy for me even with less or no chemical help due to the positive experience to draw on. I was also able to find someone who was going to get E for him and his friends let me pool in and get one. But I did this more as a symbolic act for my self to confirm that I could finally negotiate my way through this kind of environment than to actually roll (my tolerance usually requires at least 2). I did feel effects from the single pill, and they were quite good but short lived, which was nice because it was not overwhelming and I could still enjoy the new ability to talk to people. It also did not produce any nasty after-effect (i.e. meth bomb) so I was quite happy with that.
By the time things were winding down I was felling pretty good and confident and more sober but not so tired. I found some of my longer-known (as in 2 days instead of that night) friends and they were leaving and I asked if I could follow, and I was invited along. So I went with them to go relax somewhere.
There was a discussion of having some DMT. I believe two of the people there had used it before, and myself and a fourth person hadn't. I mentioned I had bad experiences with hallucinogens in the past (one which I believe to have been DOB that was sold as "acid") mediocre ones with some other drugs like actual LSD and weed, and good ones with things like 2C-B and MDA.
This made the most knowledgeable person in terms of things there advise me that I might not find DMT that pleasant though its effects were generally short lived. At first I decided to decline, but after about an hour of hanging around (nobody had started using anything yet) the sun was about to come up and they decided this would be a good time, I decided I would try it once as an experiment, and just be prepared to accept the consequences. They suggested I watch everyone else's reaction first and then make a final call, and after the other 3 seemed to enjoy it I decided to go ahead.
End backstory/leadup, on to experience:
So, I tried smoking approximately (I was told by the person estimating the measuring) 50mg recrystalized DMT. I needed a little help with this since I didn't really know how to use the pipe as I haven't really consumed any drugs by smoking before. But I did manage to get it working, and not cough it all out too quickly.
It did seem to take effect quickly though the effects were much more subtle than I anticipated. I did eventually notice it produced a slight euphoria and general sense of well-being.
But the first thing I noticed was how the color saturation just drained right out of everything. So the first thing I said was "Wow, these colors really suck!"
Someone else immediately then asked me what I meant by that, and for a split second I felt the potential for things to go extremely bad. However, I recognized the issue was that my perception was differing from his, and I then tried to explain that my perception was that things had kinda lost something.
A bit more detail on the visual effect:
I noticed that colors were more pure in composition (i.e. more pure green with less yellow or blue tint in leaves) but seemed desaturated (like on an old TV). There was a very pronounced 3D effect in my central vision, and some distortions of objects. Most noticeably, objects would seem to scale or "float" a bit. I have seen this latter effect before as a result of other drug combinations, and I believe it's the result of some alteration in the part of the brain that recognizes shapes as discrete objects, and how they are combined into the overall scene. Basically it looks a bit like a badly pasted together photo, but from what I can tell what's going on is the process that smooths over the inconsistencies between the constructed images in the mind and the actual scene kinda falters for a bit, leaving the odd impression. Faces are particularly noticeably affected (or at least are for me both in prior times and this time with DMT) and I suspect it's due to the dedicated face-recognizing areas of the vision system.
As for the color problem, once I started observing more around me I realized the main issue was that my synaesthesia was off. I have full time multiform synaesthesia that has multiple sensory crossover channels including lexical-gustatory, sound-color, sound-temperature, letter-color, number-shape, and more. Plus all those secondary channels then produce weaker tertiary links that their own signals trigger, which may induce even weaker quatrinary ones, and so on until it's just a big overall combination of sensory pattern. It's not really overwhelming because it's filterable, much like other voices in a room while you're having a conversation with someone. But generally at least a low level of it is present all the time, even when I'm not focusing on it or focusing on ignoring it. However, all that got drained away. All the primary senses were heightened in their response and detail, but their cross-feeds that are normally present all the time for me were either suppressed or overwhelmed, producing a sort of "super-normal" type experience. For the computer graphics buffs out there, it was like turning HDR off.
Now, this wasn't overly alarming, but I found it very interesting just how different things looked and sounded and felt. For me trees normally have not just their color but associated with them are the color representations of the memory of their smells, texture, sounds, specific memories involving them, and that adds an entire layer of warmth and color and texture that I guess I didn't realize others don't see because for me it was always there so I had no way to compare seeing without it. People's faces suffered some of the most dramatic changes. I wouldn't say they appeared corpse-like (I think that's because death has it's own negative connotations that would overlay in that scenario) but they were drained of all sorts of details which I think are visual overlays off personality, opinion, past experiences, their smells, etc.
The effects gradually subsided, and after a few minutes I tried another dose of DMT. The same effects were reproduced, but I had a harder time holding the smoke in (I think more of it was burnt on the 2nd pass) and for a few moments I thought I had damaged my lungs and was suffocating. I tried forcing myself to take deep breaths and though couldn't feel a mechanical problem, it felt like oxygen just wasn't getting in. After about 30 seconds I figured out that the synaesthesic organ-feedback channels were also off, so I wasn't getting the "cool-bluegreen-midtone-watery" response that I feel when my lungs are getting good air intake. Fortunately once I realized this I relaxed and enjoyed the slight euphoria again, though eventually I became a bit cold.
The entire set of effects faded over a period of I'd say about 10-15 minutes maximum, there was no sudden change where everything came back on. It was more like it just kind of relaxed back into normal state (for me). I didn't notice any negative effects after the end.
So, I think I would probably try DMT again. It was an overall interesting and pleasant experience and the potential fear during it was manageable. I didn't get any life-changing blast through other dimensions experiences that I've read about elsewhere, but personally I think the temporary loss of what I actually have all the time was much more eye-opening than any kind of sensory overload could have been.
I had an interesting and mostly good weekend. Friday I met up with some new friends, whom I hope will stay friends, and afterwards I went on my own to a club event I had been looking forward to for some time. I wasn't very social there due to my usual anxiety but the music was awesome so I was happy just sitting somewhere listening. Stayed out till it ended, and got home very late, but did get some sleep.
Saturday was more interesting things to learn and talk about and people to meet etc. I had been told of an event that would be happening that night from the people I was talking to yesterday and had decided to go to it. So Saturday night I wandered around for a bit to relax first, ate some food, had some minor stomach discomfort which fortunately settled itself, and then went off to see this place.
I was a bit apprehensive at first since I'm really new to the kind of event and atmosphere and things like this in general. Even the few friends I had there were people I'd known less than a day or two, but I was hoping it would be fun.
The first few hours however, weren't. I generally get nervous in crowds and I'm not good at talking to people I don't know. After a couple hours of this I was on the verge of having a panic attack, and debated if I should just leave and never return again, or take my anti-anxiety meds which are prescribed "use as needed" and see if I could make it work. So I took about 1.5mg klonopin and a 25mg benadryl (which I noticed seems to amplify it a bit). I figured may be my normal dexedrine ADD prescription (10mg IR 4x/day) was not helping me in terms of keeping calm.
About half an hour after the klonopin I felt much better and found I was able to go and talk to people I hadn't met before. So I got to meet more new people and generally had the kind of experience at a new place I always wanted to but was never able to due to my anxiety issues. So I considered this a great success and much progress on dealing with my problems, since next time it will likely be easy for me even with less or no chemical help due to the positive experience to draw on. I was also able to find someone who was going to get E for him and his friends let me pool in and get one. But I did this more as a symbolic act for my self to confirm that I could finally negotiate my way through this kind of environment than to actually roll (my tolerance usually requires at least 2). I did feel effects from the single pill, and they were quite good but short lived, which was nice because it was not overwhelming and I could still enjoy the new ability to talk to people. It also did not produce any nasty after-effect (i.e. meth bomb) so I was quite happy with that.
By the time things were winding down I was felling pretty good and confident and more sober but not so tired. I found some of my longer-known (as in 2 days instead of that night) friends and they were leaving and I asked if I could follow, and I was invited along. So I went with them to go relax somewhere.
There was a discussion of having some DMT. I believe two of the people there had used it before, and myself and a fourth person hadn't. I mentioned I had bad experiences with hallucinogens in the past (one which I believe to have been DOB that was sold as "acid") mediocre ones with some other drugs like actual LSD and weed, and good ones with things like 2C-B and MDA.
This made the most knowledgeable person in terms of things there advise me that I might not find DMT that pleasant though its effects were generally short lived. At first I decided to decline, but after about an hour of hanging around (nobody had started using anything yet) the sun was about to come up and they decided this would be a good time, I decided I would try it once as an experiment, and just be prepared to accept the consequences. They suggested I watch everyone else's reaction first and then make a final call, and after the other 3 seemed to enjoy it I decided to go ahead.
End backstory/leadup, on to experience:
So, I tried smoking approximately (I was told by the person estimating the measuring) 50mg recrystalized DMT. I needed a little help with this since I didn't really know how to use the pipe as I haven't really consumed any drugs by smoking before. But I did manage to get it working, and not cough it all out too quickly.
It did seem to take effect quickly though the effects were much more subtle than I anticipated. I did eventually notice it produced a slight euphoria and general sense of well-being.
But the first thing I noticed was how the color saturation just drained right out of everything. So the first thing I said was "Wow, these colors really suck!"
Someone else immediately then asked me what I meant by that, and for a split second I felt the potential for things to go extremely bad. However, I recognized the issue was that my perception was differing from his, and I then tried to explain that my perception was that things had kinda lost something.
A bit more detail on the visual effect:
I noticed that colors were more pure in composition (i.e. more pure green with less yellow or blue tint in leaves) but seemed desaturated (like on an old TV). There was a very pronounced 3D effect in my central vision, and some distortions of objects. Most noticeably, objects would seem to scale or "float" a bit. I have seen this latter effect before as a result of other drug combinations, and I believe it's the result of some alteration in the part of the brain that recognizes shapes as discrete objects, and how they are combined into the overall scene. Basically it looks a bit like a badly pasted together photo, but from what I can tell what's going on is the process that smooths over the inconsistencies between the constructed images in the mind and the actual scene kinda falters for a bit, leaving the odd impression. Faces are particularly noticeably affected (or at least are for me both in prior times and this time with DMT) and I suspect it's due to the dedicated face-recognizing areas of the vision system.
As for the color problem, once I started observing more around me I realized the main issue was that my synaesthesia was off. I have full time multiform synaesthesia that has multiple sensory crossover channels including lexical-gustatory, sound-color, sound-temperature, letter-color, number-shape, and more. Plus all those secondary channels then produce weaker tertiary links that their own signals trigger, which may induce even weaker quatrinary ones, and so on until it's just a big overall combination of sensory pattern. It's not really overwhelming because it's filterable, much like other voices in a room while you're having a conversation with someone. But generally at least a low level of it is present all the time, even when I'm not focusing on it or focusing on ignoring it. However, all that got drained away. All the primary senses were heightened in their response and detail, but their cross-feeds that are normally present all the time for me were either suppressed or overwhelmed, producing a sort of "super-normal" type experience. For the computer graphics buffs out there, it was like turning HDR off.
Now, this wasn't overly alarming, but I found it very interesting just how different things looked and sounded and felt. For me trees normally have not just their color but associated with them are the color representations of the memory of their smells, texture, sounds, specific memories involving them, and that adds an entire layer of warmth and color and texture that I guess I didn't realize others don't see because for me it was always there so I had no way to compare seeing without it. People's faces suffered some of the most dramatic changes. I wouldn't say they appeared corpse-like (I think that's because death has it's own negative connotations that would overlay in that scenario) but they were drained of all sorts of details which I think are visual overlays off personality, opinion, past experiences, their smells, etc.
The effects gradually subsided, and after a few minutes I tried another dose of DMT. The same effects were reproduced, but I had a harder time holding the smoke in (I think more of it was burnt on the 2nd pass) and for a few moments I thought I had damaged my lungs and was suffocating. I tried forcing myself to take deep breaths and though couldn't feel a mechanical problem, it felt like oxygen just wasn't getting in. After about 30 seconds I figured out that the synaesthesic organ-feedback channels were also off, so I wasn't getting the "cool-bluegreen-midtone-watery" response that I feel when my lungs are getting good air intake. Fortunately once I realized this I relaxed and enjoyed the slight euphoria again, though eventually I became a bit cold.
The entire set of effects faded over a period of I'd say about 10-15 minutes maximum, there was no sudden change where everything came back on. It was more like it just kind of relaxed back into normal state (for me). I didn't notice any negative effects after the end.
So, I think I would probably try DMT again. It was an overall interesting and pleasant experience and the potential fear during it was manageable. I didn't get any life-changing blast through other dimensions experiences that I've read about elsewhere, but personally I think the temporary loss of what I actually have all the time was much more eye-opening than any kind of sensory overload could have been.
