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A Week in Etherea
DMT
Citation:   toppestramen. "A Week in Etherea: An Experience with DMT (exp107029)". Erowid.org. Nov 6, 2020. erowid.org/exp/107029

 
DOSE:
4 hits vaporized DMT
BODY WEIGHT: 180 lb
I took a hit. Nothing. I take a second hit. Exhale. At once the familiar faint whisper can be heard in the distance. It slowly grows in volume. A third hit. The pace quickens, the sound now a roar. I now feel confident in my trajectory towards a breakthrough, yet I feel the compulsion to go deeper. I uneasily take a fourth and final hit. The whisper has becoming deafening, yet it continues to intensify at an accelerating rate. It grows to unbelievable intensity, breezing past the physical limits of hearing unfazed. Physical limits no longer had jurisdiction.

With a bang I find myself thrust instantly into a reality far stranger than the one I had left. The material world is gone; I can not see, hear, or feel anything within it. The roar continues, but I do not notice it. Still reeling from the quickness with which home had disappeared I begin to observe my surroundings. It's a pleasant place. A sense of warmth and relaxation washes over me. The atmosphere exudes happiness and love. An infinite landscape of geometric perfection lies before me. This world is not confined to the laws of three dimensions; one is not limited to two axes of movement when walking along the ground. The world itself was composed of billions of discrete structures, folded, contorted manifolds of shifting colors and immense beauty.

I come to notice the roar once again, it is rapidly disappearing. The alien dimension before me begins to fade and I can make out some features of home. Grass, hills, a fence. Before I could find disappointment in what seemed to be the end of a very short trip, I find myself solidly in the alien dimension once again. Little did I know, these brief glimpses of the familiar world would occasionally return and prove crucial in the struggle to maintain my sanity.

I explored for what seemed like hours, passing through and over the strange topography. Occasionally I would sense the presence of an immense intellect, a noncorporeal being of warmth and positivity. A grouping of seemingly distinct objects in the distance began to shimmer, then coalesce into an incomprehensible form which I intuitively recognized as the physical manifestation of such a being. It did not seem to have any interest in me. I could understand such disinterest, I must be the least notable thing for miles in this place. As I continued to explore I noticed the realm began to darken. It darkened. It darkened more. It reached perfect blackness. It darkened more.

This was night. I did not like night. Darkness extended into infinity. This was not black as a color, it was black as the utter absence of light. This was advanced darkness. I found myself in incredible discomfort. Hopelessness, terror, and despair emanated from the depths of the infinite blackness before me. An indistinct shape, equally black, lurked in the depths deep below me. Without warning, a humanoid figure the size of a skyscraper lunges up towards me. Its entire head unhinges, a gaping maw shimmering with millions of spiralling, white, razor sharp teeth. It lunges upward and snaps at me relentessly. More of them appear. There are now five of these monstrosities of unimaginable evil attacking me from the invisible depths below. I endured this abject terror for hours. Eventually, light and color began to gradually return to this plane.

The dawn of the second day was bittersweet. Intense relief to have survived the night was countered by questions of how much longer this could last. I was already 24 hours into a 15 minute trip and I had no way of knowing how much was left.
I was already 24 hours into a 15 minute trip and I had no way of knowing how much was left.
On the second day I once again found myself a wanderer in the same land of awe-inspiring beauty. Again, I could sense the presence of beings around me, and again they coalesced into material forms. Today was different; they were now interested in me. They swarmed around me and I felt the glow of incredible wordless empathy and infinite kindness. They knew what I had been through. I enjoyed the beauty of this world and unspoken comradery of these beings for hours. Darkness began to fall once more. I panicked. My friends offered wordless support and affirmations of my safety.

Night had fallen once more. I was alone. Immediately the physical onslaught from below began with the same voracity as the previous night. Tendrils of darkness reached from the depths of all directions and wrapped around me, trapping me. They worked their way into my mind and began to infect my thoughts with negativity. You are going to die. You will suffer here for eternity. There is no hope. In a surprising moment of clarity I realized that the body I left behind on earth was hyperventilating. I spent the remainder of the night focusing on slowing my breathing. This could not bring me back to earth, but it served as a reminder that this realm of suffering was not all existence. Dawn.

The third day was relatively uneventful. Or at least as uneventful as exploration of ineffable realms of infinite beauty could be. I had stopped seeing flashes of reality; the last one had been near the end of the second day. As darkness began to fall I found myself worrying. Up until this point I had an unfaltering confidence that this was a trip and that it would end. After three days this began to wear thin. Would I be trapped here forever? Am I dead? I remember that on Earth I had seen and heard of people enduring equally intense trips and returning, but that was from the perspective of a third party viewer. The trip had already extended what I knew could be no longer than 15 minutes into a full three days, was it not reasonable to believe that it could stretch that 15 minutes into eternity? I remained confident that my friends would see me return in 15 minutes, but how long would that seem to me? A week? A month? Years? Eternity? Darkness fell.

Night brought with it its usual cohort of monstrosities and terror. I was able to fare much better this night, however. Rather than simply endure, I began to cope. I focused on positivity. I spent hours enumerating everything good in my life and expressing gratitude. Identifying each person in my life and the good things they have to say about me provided an enormous comfort. The darkness faded.

I was unable to appreciate the fourth day. Instead it served as a reminder that I was not done, that another night would come. I was stuck here. I could not leave. I did not have control. I did not know when I could leave. I did not know if I could leave. Darkness fell.

On the fourth night I broke. I could not accept that this was happening to me. I could not refute that this was happening. It was easier to accept that I did not exist than to accept that this was happening to me. Ego death. Instantly, the concept of me shattered. I had no mind, I had no thoughts, I had no body, I had no emotion. There was no me.

The loss of self proved a useful coping mechanism. The final three days and nights occurred. Visually, they were much the same as the previous days. I did not experience joy or terror because I did not exist to feel them. I wish that I could describe this portion of the trip better, but ego death is simply unrelatable. It cannot be described in terms of how I felt because I did not exist to feel it.

On the seventh day my sense of self began to return. The periodic flashes of reality returned and gradually became longer and more frequent over the course of the day. Eventually I found myself back on earth full-time. I was still having intense hallucinations; the views around me shifted and undulated, but they were familiar. Within a few minutes, all hallucinations had stopped. I was done.

15 minutes had passed.

Exp Year: 2014ExpID: 107029
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: 20
Published: Nov 6, 2020Views: 1,312
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DMT (18) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Entities / Beings (37), General (1)

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