Newsgroups: alt.drugs
From: J
Subject: DMT/harmaline reports
Date: Jul 1993
I am posting these reports about the effects of oral DMT following oral harmaline ingestion for a friend. The DMT source was Acacia phlebophylla, the harmaline source Peganum harmala. I had nothing to do with the experiments, and so can't answer detailed questions about them.
ENTER THE DMT ROOM
This article describes the visuals seen during 3 seperate DMT sessions using ayahuasca and harmaline. To date, with the exception of marijuana and nitrous oxide, DMT is the only true psychedelic I have tried.Details of the first session can be found in an article called "Dr DMT (or how I learned to stop reality and love psychadelics)". The second session was nowhere near as intense as the first, but did produce some astounding (and more memorable) visuals. The third session was done on a small amount of ayahuasca, combined with marijuana and nitrous oxide.
The visuals are grouped together in stages of trip intensity. These are:
OEVs refers to Open Eye Visuals
CEVs are Closed Eye Visuals.
1. First noticable effects.
(OEVs)The first noticable effect of the DMT was an indescribable oddness in the air. The room looked different, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. After staring at near and far objects, glancing back and forth, I noticed that there were subtle changes in perspective. Whilst looking at a distant object, objects close to me seemed to move closer, and when I looked at the objects moving closer, the distant objects moved further away.
While looking around the room I also noticed that the lights seemed brighter. I kept staring into the lights and noticed them moving slightly, although others in the room insisted that they were still. The total intensity of the room seemed to be constantly changing, although there was no natural light (all DMT to date has been taken after 10pm).
Most of the movement in the room seemed to be out of the corner of my eye, for instance, I'd look at something on the left side of the mantlepiece and I was sure the things on the right side were moving, but when I looked across they'd stopped.
(CEVs)
The CEVs I saw were comparable to my marijuana visuals. Geometry came and went, in the form of moving lines and polygons. There were no intense colours or definitions, and I couldn't make out any particular objects in amongst the haze.
2. Entering the DMT room.
(OEVs)When the DMT effects moved up a level, a colour change took place. Fine textures (shirt fabric, for instance) were replaced by a single, flat colour, as though my eyesight was rendered through a computer capable of only 16 colours. All scratches, dents and marks were removed from all objects, giving them a new look. The new colours are bright, intense and exciting to look at. All "boring" colour seem to disappear.
Objects began shimmering, waving about as if they were made of thin plastic and moving to invisible air currents. Objects with long, straight lines would bend. Walls breathed. If I stared at an object, it would either start breathing or melt into something else entirely. Once I realised what was happening it would quickly snap back to its original form, only to start moving again when I resumed staring at it.
Shadows on the walls seemed to rise up and form three dimensional plataeus, then disappear again into the wall. I also noticed an effect where panning my head around the room would result in a flickering of my vision, as though I was looking through a fractured prism.
(CEVs)
The geometry floating around in my head turned into definite shapes. A corridor was formed, and I had the feeling that I was at one end and wanted to make it through to the other. Objects formed out of the walls of the corridor, the corridor spun around with me in it, doors opened and closed. Roads and corridors have always seemed common in my DMT trips. There was a definate sense of travel within me, I knew I was going to go somewhere.
3. The DMT room.
(OEVs)The subtle changes from reality to the DMT room finally stopped. Nothing was subtle anymore. Everything was changing. The room was still recognisable, but everything in it was moving, all the walls were breathing, and all of this was happening constantly. I'd look at an object, and it would either move, change or disappear. Objects that were close together would blend into a new object; first by forming pseudopodia and then by moving closer together and enveloping eachother with them.
Objects basically still stayed where they were, and only objects that were close together tried to form new objects by mating with their neighbours. I had no control over what was happening, I could only sit back and watch. I did try to control what I hallucinated, but was usually unsuccessful with one exception.
I held a mirror in front of my face and watched my beard magically lengthen, then shrink back. I tried to make my nose grow longer, and after a few seconds, I was amazed to see it happen. It didn't grow by more than a centimetre, but it did happen.
I asked for several handfuls of pistaccio nuts, which I placed in my lap. They felt odd to touch. They were soft and smooth, instead of hard and sharp. I stared at them for a while, and the edges of the shells turned into mouths, and suddenly I was staring into a collection of eyeless grinning creatures. I smiled back. They seemed happy.
My hands fascinated me for minutes. I'd look at them and then realise that there were objects moving underneath the surface. Large white bone type objects were rising from the depths of my arm until they were just under the surface, stretching the skin. The hair on my forearms looked like sea kelp, moving to invisible currents. A change of perspective followed that made the hairs on my arm seem two metres long, and I was staring at real sea kelp, life size, coming out of my gigantic arm.
My fingers changed in length constantly, and my knuckles moved so that the part of my fingers that could bend seemed to be changing.
I looked at the back of my hand, and spread my fingers apart. Webbing magically appeared and joined the gaps between my fingers, and then the colour of my hands changed to a deep orange, similar to the colour of cooked duck's feet.
As I moved my eyes down my arm, I saw printed circuit board tracks materialize on my skin, then run down my arm. Underneath the skin I could see mechanical contraptions that moved everything.
I found regular geometric patterns almost intolerable by this stage. I prefered to close my eyes and see geometry there, rather than open my eyes and experience total confusion. Even though I still realised where I was, I was too confused by the moving of once familiar objects to stay in the DMT room open eyed for too long.
(CEVs)
The shapes increased in complexity, the rooms got larger and more crowded with wierd machines and contraptions, and the activity that was going on seemed to intensify. Things were coming out of "walls" in these virtual "rooms" with an odd regularity in their timing.
Amongst a million other visuals, I remember
All the visuals seemed real. I felt as though I could reach out and touch them. Some of the more insane and fun visuals I experienced while closing my eyes, and watching what the DMT did with the afterimage.
- A huge dinosaur made of Lego bricks lift out of the right hand side wall of a room and melt into the ceiling.
- An incredibly wierd machine, perhaps as large as a coal excavator, moving slowly from one side of an enormous building to another, prompting the quote "Who the f*ck would design something that looks like that!" Others in the room asked "What?", and I replied with "A spaceship that looks like Mick Jagger".
- A being made of chocolate milk drops playing the keys of an invisible piano. No music or sound occured in any of these visuals, but I did recognise it as a piano.
- A cubic room full of black and white tiles, with the corner of each tile holding an eye. The room changed to some trapezoidal shape, and out of the far wall came two large cubic objects, still covered in tiles, with beckoning arms. The two large objects on the far wall split apart to join with the left and right walls, revealing a door on the far side. The door opened, but I couldn't go through and this frustrated me at the time.
I looked at Christian (one of the people present while I was tripping), and then closed my eyes. The afterimage was so real that I thought I still had my eyes opened. All of a sudden, a small 2 inch square trapdoor opened up in his forehead, and I could see into his brain. His brain looked like the red leather of a football (Australian Rules). I knew that the trapdoor had mechanisms which opened it, and I thought about what mechanisms (hydraulics, servo motors, whatever) they were. They were not visible, but I knew where they were and how they worked.
Another similar visual also involved Christian. In his afterimage, I saw his lips and face peel away, exposing his teeth and jaw. A circular metal ring came out of the back of his neck, crossed the front of his face, and joined with the other side of his neck. The metal ring was similar to headgear worn by people with braces on their teeth. His teeth then started snapping out at the ring, withdrawing back into his mouth like Alien.
The next time I did this, each of Christian's eyes split into 8, and then violently bulged out of his head, hanging by their optic nerves, and finally rested somewhere near his chin.
Watching "Dark Star" on video was also quite entertaining. I glanced at the TV, then closed my eyes. All of the objects on the screen at the time materialised out of the TV image and fell into a black void that lived somewhere near the foot of the TV trolley.
4. The DMT universe.
(OEVs)Open Eye Visuals at this stage of the trip were too complicated and too distracting for me. I am unsure of whether I have ever kept my eyes open during this period. I don't think I could remember anyway.
(CEVs)
As with OEVs, the CEVs at this stage became very difficult to describe exactly, but I did spend more time in the CEVs when I was at this stage of a DMT trip. I saw alien beings with elipsoid bodies running around the insane roads, rooms and corridors that seemed to dominate my visuals. They were looking at me constantly. I didn't feel threatened by their presence, I just accepted it and watched them with a curious look.
At this stage of the CEVs I had completely forgotten that I had a body. My mind had detached itself from it and become a point in virtual brainspace. My field of vision increased significantly, and I believe the reason for not being able to remember a majority of these visuals is that there was just too much information to remember; it was too detailed, too intense and was arriving at a frightening rate.
I have only been at this stage once, and that was during my first ever psychedelic experience. I intended to place myself here again on subsequent trips, but never managed to. All I remember from this stage is the alien beings, staring at me, examining me, and allowing me to examine them.
5. DMT reality.
NOTE: I have never reached DMT reality, but I believe I have an idea of what it may be like for me.
(OEVs)
Forget it. I'm not even going to try.
(CEVs)
In the DMT universe, I believe the alien beings exist. I also believe, and from listening to other people's experiences, that it may be possible to communicate with them. I can only imagine the next step past the DMT universe as DMT reality, where you are freed from your body totally and allowed to roam freely through your visuals, communicating with the beings you meet.
One person who took DMT twice was asked by a being during her second trip "Why did you come back? I let you leave last time." Needless to say this has given her second thoughts about taking DMT again.
I find that when I am in the DMT room or universe that I assume that everyone else in the room knows where I am, and that if I talk about something that I am seeing then they will instantly understand. This doesn't happen both ways, of course, so most of the time I seem like a raving lunatic. I believe it is significant that I have had "glimpses" of communication with the beings, and with others in the room, yet on a different level to normal communication. I want to re-enter the DMT universe and see where I can go from there.
