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The Power and The Glory - Harmaline, 5-MeO-DMT & DMT - by Netrunner
This extract is from is a rather long account of two extremely potent experiences with two forms of DMT.

Pharmahuasca was what they were calling it. Two 75 mg. harmaline tablets (MAO inhibitor) with four 10mg 5-MeO-DMT chasers totalling 40mg. What the hell, I thought; I'm in the jungles of Mexico (in Palenque), I'm surrounded by experienced psychonauts (at an ethnobotanical conference), what's the worse that can happen?

'Be prepared to die,' our source told me, grimly earnest.

Yeah, I thought, like a major mushroom trip, right? I felt I was ready.

Not quite.

In all, there were nine of us forming a circle in one of our rooms, with mattresses and pillows laid out for all of us. My brother sat across from me. Two of the nine were experienced with ayahuasca and become our leaders. Before consumption, each one of us stated our intent, out loud or to ourselves. Mine was 'to experience spiritual consciousness.' Rather vague, this being my first time with this class of substance. Unsure of how long to wait between harmaline and 5-MeO, we decided 20 minutes should be plenty. (Later we were told the quantities were designed for simultaneous consumption of the both the harmaline and 5-MeO tablets.) Some of us took the entire dose, some took half. I was 24, 5'10', 115 lbs, and decided to take the entire dose, being my first and perhaps only opportunity. 'When in doubt, double the dose,' to quote Terrence McKenna; a well-loved, experienced shroomer. (Oops.)

The effects of the harmaline were subtle, energizing, like a betelnut buzz. 20 minutes later, I ingested all four 5-MeO DMT tablets.

What follows is both from memory and the account of others.

It came in waves. Strong, soporific, deep, intoxicating waves, building in intensity, like watching storm waves build up on shore. Stronger, stronger, stronger. Some of us started chanting, singing. Some softly moaned with pleasure or insight. I felt queasy, nervous, not quite nauseous at this point. I remained silent, focusing on my breathing to calm myself. I started trembling, cold, gradually warming up, feeling her, the spirit of ayahuasca, calling, wanting to take me. I felt myself slowly giving in, retreating, giving in, unsure of where I was headed. What have I got myself into?, I asked myself. This was not what I expected at all, this was much much much deeper and unlike anything I'd ever experienced (x, mushies, lsd, thc). This was only the beginning, I was soon to learn; the experience had not really started fully yet.

…………. I started to sink, sink, sink through my body through the ground, my body going limp, numb. …. My thinking mind, my inner voice began to fade, I couldn't concentrate on words but rather only abstractions of very deep, complex ideas. I just knew things without thinking them. Like ideas were being fed directly to me. From me? I fell … into the inky black void, like a deep dreamless waking sleep, drifting, swimming, sinking. I drifted for what felt like an eternity, my mind disassociating, deeper, deeper, the deepest of dreamless sleeps.... It lasted for an eternity, me swimming in and out of it, vaguely aware, numb, drugged...

...and then I woke. I sat up, and everyone around my was laying down, quiet, still, seemingly asleep.

Only 15 minutes had passed. …………

Uh oh, I thought. That was just the beginning, the first wave. I wasn't sure quite what to do. Lay down, walk around, what. I stood up, and nervous anxiety started to creep up on me… I went to the bathroom, sat down, relaxed my bladder and stared through the wall... My brother turned the corner, checking up on me. Hi, he said, how you doing? He seemed almost alien, I almost didn't recognize him, ….Good, I responded. Holding my arms tight against me, cold again, nervous. Impulsively, I hugged him, tight, almost clinging. I didn't realized how scared I was until then. Wow, I said.

I made it back to my pillows, laid down.

She took me fast, much stronger, much harder than the initial wave. The first wave was nothing. I lost all awareness of my body, my surroundings, everything around me. I felt myself fall right through the earth, like a neutrino, like the earth was nothing but empty space. I left my body completely and dissolved into the universe. My mind became placed into the mind of the universe, expanded into it, knowing everything to be known, but completely unable to think in thoughts, words, my mind-voice was completely gone, yet I was completely aware of ideas knowledge, wisdom, abstractions which were so perfectly clear and understandable to me outside of any known constructs of language, way beyond language, completely nonlinear thought and yet not-thought. Just knowing. Pure knowing. My mind, my consciousness, my poor little brain struggled to keep up with it, struggled to keep up with everything streaming in, struggled to fit the mind of the universe within in. She spoke to me, tried to calm me, tried to explain.

You're dying, she said. You're dying. Isn't it beautiful?

And it was. I felt myself, my mind, me, turn inside out, again and again; it came in waves, slow imploding inward waves which twisted and folded me inside out again and again, and each time was a death, a shocking, terrifying, incredibly beautiful, intense, joyful, incredibly profound death. I died over and over and over, hundreds of times that night, all while she tried to coax me, show me, teach me, love me. I felt like Arjuna in the Baghavad Gita, when Krishna reveals himself in his full glory, only the brilliance was all in thought; there were no visuals, just pure inky black emptiness, void. Something in me wouldn't break, though, something in me held back, even still, after all those deaths; it wasn't just fear, it was love, I wouldn't give her my heart, my emotion, my pain, my core. She gently pulled and tugged, let go, she said, just let go. …………….

The other leader who had a gift for reading into people told me afterwards that he saw my heart swollen, huge, like it was ready to burst. He asked me to think about anything in my life that I needed to let go of or deal with. I was actually in the extremely intense, painful, and drawn-out process of breaking up with my girlfriend of several years…………………..

All in all, I consider the experience a positive and necessary one, .... I am still processing this experience, many months later, as little by little, my mind lets me remember more of it (curiously, the distinct chemical flavor returns with the memories). Immediately afterwards and for several weeks, my mind wouldn't let me think about it, a strange and unique phenomenon for me. It was a full-blown psychological near-death experience, and that's how my mind remembers it--with trepidation.