Thursday, August 16, 2007

DMT (dimethyltriptamine): Brief History, Effect

DMT (dimethyltriptamine) is an extremely powerful hallucinogenic drug found in certain tropical plants. Most street supplies are a home-made synthetic equivalent.

Form

In its pure form, DMT is white, strong-smelling crystal, but on the street it's normally a light brown powder. The powder or crystals are usually smoked through a glass or metal pipe. The powder can also be eaten. If it's prepared from the plant, it will generally be greenish brown, thick sludgy liquid, which is difficult to swallow and then keep down. Raw leaves have no effect.

What you won't like

DMT is horrible. It gives an unpredictable, roller-coaster ride involving a mixture of feelings - euphoria, fear and insanity.

  • Once on the "trip", you can't get off it and it could feel like it's lasting for years.
  • If DMT is smoked, the risks of a bad trip are even greater than if it's eaten. Beyond that, the best way to describe the effects is to quote some people who've tried it: "There were snake-like things inside my legs, but at the time I didn't realize they were my legs", "I knew I was insane, and I doubted I would ever recover. I didn't even know what being sane meant. I couldn't remember what it was like to be normal"

The DMT effect

The effective amount is higher than the amount taken for an acid trip, say, but this doesn't mean the trip will be lightweight. Take an average quantity and the trip will walk all over any previous hallucinogenic experience.

  • If DMT is smoked, the effects hit hard in a matter of seconds. They'll peak after about five minutes, last for about 15 minutes and will be followed by a period of "cruise", similar to that experienced on a mild dose of acid.
  • If DMT is eaten, the effects take about 2-5 minutes, peak after about 15 minutes and stay at that level for an hour or more.
Words of advice

  • The DMT experience is very intense and not necessarily pleasant. The hallucinations are powerful and can be absolutely terrifying, and you can never really predict how you'll be affected. It doesn't seem to be as dependent on your mood as an acid trip - you might have a good experience one time and a totally horrific one the next. So if you take DMT, bear in mind the following: sit down or lie down when you take it - you'll almost certainly collapse if you're standing up
  • never take it, unless you're with someone you trust
  • choose a quiet, safe environment - a club is not the right place.

If something goes wrong

bad trip
Your friend may begin to see or hear frightening things that aren't really there - this is known as hallucinating and it may cause your friend to panic. Talk to her and reassure her that the things she can see or hear are imaginary and will soon pass. Stay with your friend until the bad trip is over - don't let her wander off alone.

unconsciousness
  • If your friend is breathing, place him in the recovery position. Call an ambulance. Tell medical staff what your friend has taken - it could save his life. Be prepared to resuscitate your friend if he stops breathing.
  • If your friend vomits while unconscious, check that he's still breathing.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

i love how this article fails to adress the eminence potential to experience one of the most euphoric moments of your life meeting and interacting what apears to be an intelligent designer. Also how bad trips are rare and only occur when the user resists the trip or has either internal conflictions or supressed memories that reveal themselves while tripping. Otherwise this article was dead on(note the sarcasim)

Anonymous said...

weak description. dmt is an amazing substance that can literally act as a door into and out of different worlds. of course this could be frightening to someone who does not know what to expect. For someone seeking direction and a spiritual experience, DMT is the answer.

Anonymous said...

Took DMT last weekend.

If you've ever had a strong trip... it's like that but more intense... if you could handle seeing what you saw on trips and prepare for that but 2x-3x stronger... you should be fine.

DMT gave me increased perceived depth, heavier patterning (or "fractalisation" as a friend of mine describes it) but it is considerably stronger to the point that some refer to the visuals as "alien"-like.

Prepare for a ridiculously fast come-up compared to trips, shrooms, etc. When smoked you can feel the euphoria kick in within 10 seconds... (which had me laughing!!) peaking at 30 seconds and last for 6 minutes.. with a much milder after-effect euphoria lasting approx 45 mins to an hour.

I felt no major come-down and certainly nobody I know has reported feeling like they were going to be "tripping forever". There were 4 of us and for all of us it was a pleasant experience.

Ultimately though, I'd recommend people try shrooms or LSD first.

Once your brain is trained to accept and just be amused by hallucinations rather than frightened by them... DMT is more viable.

As with all things.. start with a small dose (10mg for DMT) and make sure you are in safe surroundings.

I'd also agree that if it's the first time you've taken DMT sitting down is probably wise.

As for eating it... the effects are negated by our biology and will need to be taken with an Monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOI) but this leads to a much longer trip that some sources state can last for days (maybe the source of the "tripping forever" statements??)

Most street use is through smoking though, so the euphoria usually wears off in approx an hour.

As for the taste.. damn, it's nasty... it's like inhaling a mix of methane and plastic... for me, the taste was pretty much the only downside. ;)

Paladin said...

This is stupid. Fear mongering ignorance. DMT is a naturally occurring substance in the brain, and bad trips are subjective experiences derived from your own mental state of fear, not the drug.
All of this panic propaganda about bad trips or even dying is completely misleading, and the big ass banner against "drugs" on the right is not helping this post gain any more credibility.

open mind said...

I must say that i found your post very amusing. having tried different batches of D.M.T on several occasions my experiences were the complete oposite of what i have read.

on my "trips" i had wonderful visuals, like all the patterns in the natural world around me were emphasised and enlarged. colours were brighter and more vibrant.
and my whole body had a very pleasant relaxed tingle.
and all of these sences were experienced mere seconds after smoking, the hight of it lasting less than 10 minutes. followed by 45 minutes of feeling very calm, relaxed and in a sence uplifted.
probably the best way of describing the experiences would be to say that they were extremely.........beautiful.

After trawling the net and any text i can get my hands on i have the most noteble points of D.M.T are these.

1)we humans produce D.M.T in the pineal gland in our brains every evening during REM sleep.

2) thousands of plants and animals produce D.M.T.

3) there has never been a reported case of addiction.

4) there has never been a reported case of overdose resulting in death.

5) there are thousands of cases of D.M.T being used for the succesful treament and cure of alcoholism and herroin addiction. in hundreds of cases after only one dose has been administered.

6) D.M.T has been used for thousands of years by shamen for spiritual and medical purposes.

7) That the cases where a person has gone on a "never ending trip" the subject has attempted to enhance the D.M.T experience by adding "booster" chemicals. Or the subject has had mental health issues prior to their experience.

I would however agree with the other comments on this post and thourghly recomend that previous experiences with other psycadelic drugs like L.S.D or magic mushrooms is essential. For D.M.T is an extremely powerful psycotropic drug, would probably be a very overwhelming experience for the uninitiated.

So my final conclusion is that this post was written by a person who has obviously not tried D.M.T (other than in their sleep) or that they work for another shamefull pharmaceutical company.

Anonymous said...

A skewed to the point of false and uninformative article. Whoever wrote this article really needs to read a single book and i definatly never want to meet them.

of course use DMT with caution... i.e. start with a low dose and see how you feel then take it from there. Of course it can be intense too, but meaningful and powerful dont go hand in hand with the phrase "walk in the park"

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Anonymous said...

So... If you eat it, and you peak after 15 minutes, and that lasts an hour.. what if you ate just 50 - 100 mg of crystals? Would you get a very pleasant state for an hour? It is not quite like a roller coaster, more like a blast in to the far reaches and a journey home.

Anonymous said...

Very misleading article.

DMT is spirit medicine for me.
Not at all the same game as lsd.

Anonymous said...

GET YOUR FACTS STRAIGHT IDIOT!
WHO THE HELL ARE YOU TO WRITE AN ARTICLE LIKE THIS?

1. DMT is NOT orally active, unless taken in conjunction with a strong MAOI like Caapi, (ayahuasca)or syrian rue among others. So where you got that information I don't know.

2. The "advice" you give to sitters on how to administer and care for someone under the influence is aweful!

3. Your comparisons to LSD in both dose amounts and experience is 100% FALSE INFORMATION!!!! Effective LSD doses are measured in micrograms. Increments sooo small, it's ridiculous to compare to smoking 35mg of another substance. Especially trying to put into the readers head that these amount will have any effect on comparable experience between the two. We are talking about two completely different molecules. LSD is a much more complex tryptamine, than DMT.

I could go on and on on the falsehoods of this article. This person is NOT a doctor, nor do they have a clue what they are talking about!

Everyone do their research!