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A DMT trip 'feels like dying' – and scientists now agree

bbc.co.uk

91–100 of 142 posts

Re: A DMT trip 'feels like dying' – and scientists now agree

#91

The feature that sets DMT apart from other psychedelics such as LSD or mushrooms is the persistent environment called "hyperspace". In short, various psychonauts over the years have discovered an environment - for lack of a better word - they named hyperspace, which consists of surprisingly similar perceived attributes _over many different observers_. Experienced LSD/mushroom users know that there is a tremendous deg…

This is often my experience too - DMT is like being in VR. The geometry is simplified - lots of smooth curves and sharp angles, mostly flat textures or gradients. And it's populated by barely intelligent entities made of the same stuff.

Re: A DMT trip 'feels like dying' – and scientists now agree

#93
It feels like having sex with the Universe. Pure dmt is more “cold” experience. With hamalas (changa/rima) its a more warm prolonged loving experience that happens more gradually Where the pure is more a fast blast into space. Its medicine and Works sonders for the mind. It saved marriges, lifes, jobs among my friends.

Re: A DMT trip 'feels like dying' – and scientists now agree

#94
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Smoking venom from the glands of a Sonoran Desert Toad somewhere in New Mexico I don’t know why but I just found this hilariously funny. Suddenly my life seems very mundane.

Have you lived or been to new mexico? Mundane life is what results in actions like that. Boredom breeds strange creativity.

Grew up in Arkansas, I can confirm this phenomenon.

Re: A DMT trip 'feels like dying' – and scientists now agree

#95
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I don't want to die" has a pretty strong biological determinancy to it. It helps, mostly in adverse situations. Flipping over to "meh, who needs bodies" is inexplicable (to me)

There’s a moment where your brain switches from “fight for your life” to “I’m fucked, don’t bother trying to save me”. The I experienced when I nearly drowned once. I was very calm and ready to go. You can see it in videos of how to spot a drowning person.

I am an anxious person. About a decade ago I was a passenger and at one point I was within about one second of almost certain contact with a vertical box section on a very slow moving vehicle. There was no way that my friend, and inexperienced driver, could brake in time.

That one second was slow and I was unnervingly calm. Right at the last minute with probably less than 200ms to go, the driver very gently swerved and we must have avoided collision by less than two inches. Quarter inch if we include wing mirrors. My friend, the driver asked later why I didn't say anything. I explained that had I panicked, he would have panicked and we would probably both be dead.

Re: A DMT trip 'feels like dying' – and scientists now agree

#96
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that can be a frightening state. And yet, it was my favorite part, during the peak of the peak. To some degree, the rest of the trip was just something to be endured. Although I eventually learned to go dancing or bike riding or whatever. The absolute worst combination is marijuana on the tail of an LSD peak. Your short term memory drops to about 100 msec. I spent a few hours, decades ago, reminding a friend wh…

yes I should clarify that after the experience, it felt like I had been in a sauna for the psyche. Basically, I had lingering sense of peace and wellness. The scariest shit I've seen while tripping was seeing the Eye of Providence. What's more creepy is that this is a common symbol people experienced. For example, I didn't know what the hell was a third eye until I saw it. It was unbelievable. It changed my life. It…

That's so weird. I experienced the same thing the first time I took mushrooms as a teenager. I had no idea what a trip was. There were a few notable things in the trip but one thing that stood out was the eye of providence. I can't for the life of me think why that appeared since it's not something I can really associate with anything in my life up to that point. I'm not a religious person and not very spiritual but this is one of the things that has always stuck with me. It is pretty weird and spooky what it symbolises. To be honest, that was a profound turning point in my life.

Re: A DMT trip 'feels like dying' – and scientists now agree

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

did you regret that last one? how much of a DMT trip can you actually remember?

In general it doesn't seem like memory is affected; the main difficulty is making sense of what you experienced.

This. I spent a solid year reflecting and trying to understand everything that happened during my first LSD experience. The whole thing simply transcends anything you have ever experienced.

When you “see” a strange loop involving your mind creating the physical world as you know it, and at the same time realizing the physical world enables your mind, it can take a long time to unpack. Sure when I’m here, we say that the mind is just a construct within he physical world, that just happens to be modeling the physical world. But that Doesn’t make it any less of a significant experience.

It was like seeing the concept of ying-yang (duality and mutual dependence) reflected onto mind-body problem, and everything else.

Oh great times when you get bored of all the analytical logic problems of the everyday world. :)

Re: A DMT trip 'feels like dying' – and scientists now agree

#98

“My body just didn’t seem relevant anymore," says Iona. "And I felt like I arrived in some consciousness soup which seemed like a different realm to the one I ordinarily inhabit – even in dreams. It just seemed like everything was rotating and swirling and spiralling. It didn’t seem like there were normal space-time proportions going on.” I'm not exactly sure how close I came to dying, but I had the exact opposite ex…

I had a similar experience from a bad trip on acid. I felt like I had had a stroke while trying to leave my body, and got pulled hard back into the physical realm. All I could feel was my flesh, tongue, teeth, skin, breath, heartbeat, etc. Everything was physical machinery, and had lost all meaning and purpose. It was the most horrific experience I've ever went through by far.

I'm not sure that was very good acid.

Re: A DMT trip 'feels like dying' – and scientists now agree

#99

> “There is nothing here to begin to enable us to propose that on DMT, you literally transcend the laws of this universe and do actually go to another world,” he says. This is faulty thinking. An afterlife doesn’t presuppose a violation of natural laws, or a separate world. It just means you continue living in a different form. The only thing that would be required for that is a causal relationship (yet to be observe…

Thank you for sharing. I think too often we assume the concept of an "afterlife" implies some kind of supernatural or religious phenomenon. Since we don't have proof of it I can't say I definitely believe such a thing exists, but I certainly believe it's possible. If there is an "afterlife" I believe it fits into our natural laws and can be explained and observed scientifically - we just haven't discovered all of the information we need yet.

Re: A DMT trip 'feels like dying' – and scientists now agree

#100
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you lived or been to new mexico? Mundane life is what results in actions like that. Boredom breeds strange creativity.

It seems mundane when you live in NM. But I spent a decade in LV, NV. I’m very grateful to be back in NM. This place even had a Burning Man celebration before California afaik.

Burning Man is in Nevada, 100 miles north-northeast of Reno.
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