I think this paper is about N,N-DMT. 5-MeO is a different beast. Although I've run across N,N in vape pen form so this is still a relevant delivery mechanism.
In terms of ergonomics pens can't be beat, though if you'd rather go from 0 to escape velocity on a single hit, "the machine" is the way to go (https://wiki.dmt-nexus.me/The_Machine)
> We find that DMT shifts the normally dominant alpha oscillations towards a quieter subcritical state, increasing entropy while reducing complexity, and that this shift correlates with intensity of disruption of the sense of self.
Wait, is this a good or a bad thing? Asking for a friend.
1) Absolutely nobody is going to take heavy psychedelics if they are driving or operating heavy machinery, and if they are, they are either very misinformed or simply don’t care to the point of malice. Driving or operating while impaired is a crime in itself.
2) The effects of DMT wear off in 15-30 minutes, which is why it’s called ”the businessman’s lunch”. Subjectively, however, a person may experience decades of time pass.
Not everyone reading these discussions is going to be expecting humor, and will take any commentary affirming their prior indoctrination at face value.
That sounds like a YP not an MP though. Everyone jokes about the sarcasm font being hard to use, but the printed word has been around for a long time, much longer than the internet, yet the sarcasm font complaint has only been an internet thing.
I did a LOT of that. We made our own in undergrad; depending on audacity and effort we made stuff ranging from beautifully clear, crystalline needles to stuff that looked like satans' earwax. Extremely memorable stuff, that at that moment in life, was a very good thing to happen to me in order to learn how to connect with my feelings.
I did it once. Felt like my consciousness rocketed "up" out of my body, but not up through physical space, through some 'adjacent' space. Then I saw/felt "infinity". There was no time, and I saw a hundu-esque god/goddess with infinite arms. I had no interest in eastern religion prior. Not disinterested either. I just didn't think about it, the way I don't think about golf.
I saw exactly the same infinite arms thing with zero prior interest in religion. It took me to place “I was once before and should know well” other entities protested because why bother when he needs to go back soon. Then I came back to my room and had no idea what to do with that experience.
These stories never fail to astonish me. Why the same deity? It’s so interesting.
The fact the mind is able to create these powerful visions and patterns and other realities is really incredible. We have this machinery for perceiving the world and moving though it, but that machinery is capable of so many other insane and beautiful and terrifying things - capabilities which are inaccessible except in rare instances.
It’s really quite remarkable. Underneath our prosaic experience of consciousness is something that can generate infinite fractals, awe-inspiring visions of otherworldly creatures, dream landscapes of colour and shape. Why? Where does it all come from? Is this what life would be like all the time without us filtering the information coming into our senses?
May I suggest "Man And His Symbols" by Car Jung? It was his final writing and, I believe, his only one that focused on the common(ish) reader as the audience. The basis of the book (and generally his studies and beliefs) is that the subconscious is as meaningful as the conscious, it just communicates in ways that are harder to access in modern society, and therefore it's been pushed away and ignored.
I have done Ayahuasca. I think it's dangerous to say it is "healing"... it's a window not a door. You have to be careful, some personalities will develop psychosis and disconnection from reality. You will certainly end up above where you started but there may be a deep trench you have to walk through. Especially amongst type-A highly IQ and rationality driven people this is very likely IMO.
I assure you this is mostly a set/setting problem and why it's recommended to do with experienced (and more importantly, grounded) facilitators. It can leave you pretty open and suggestable, drinking with a group of lost souls and escapists is not recommended especially if you're new to it. (I've worked at traditional retreat centers and have drank hundreds of times; it's a little funny when someone comes in expecting to be able to build a story and further their escape then have their bubbles burst by a grounded point of view)
IMO This is a dangerous way of thinking. This is the Timothy Leary adage that you are stating. It is not just a "set and setting" issue. Whether or not you have a good or bad trip, or whether you are alongside kind empathetic people or whether what you see is positive or negative does not matter. It has a lot to do with the person individual makeup, sensitivity, ego-centricity, and pre-ingrained beliefs. They do not automatically go away after the trip and the realization. The realizations come into conflict with them. This can very easily be a catastrophic event for some.
I personally think Ayahuasca gives an amazing capacity to see the potential within the universe and within ourselves... it is nearly infinite. However if you deeply understand the world and how mis-aligned it and yourself are from that potential it can create tragedy. If you believe you are responsible for this tragedy it can create catastrophe. I don't mean to over-extend my own experiences too far.
What if there is a book that when you read it you would know for 100% certainty when you die there is no hell, and only infinite peace, unless you wanted to go back into hell. Should everybody read that book?
That's what taking Ayahuasca felt like for me. I don't think it is great to do for everyone. I'm curious to hear your thoughts as you have much more experience than me. I had a lot of challenges after taking it.
I think you're right that those "type-A" folks with more rigid minds have some trouble with integration ("catastrophe"/"tragedy"). Our (what I'd call the traditional) approach is very holistic- this path is a whole modality and lifestyle of its own, it's not a haphazard magic pill you do once but a tool to look under the hood every once in a while to see where you're at and what energies are influencing you the most. The earlier sessions can seem catastrophic without the right context (that is, there is usually a lot of low-hanging fruit that comes off when you first come to ayahuasca- you usually have to feel/fully experience these energies to process them before they can be released). You might see/realize that you have a lot of work ahead of you which can be discouraging/overwhelming for sure. More serious cases (long term depression etc) might even want to start out with very small doses (or not at all) and let the ayahuasquero do their work (via icaros, and/or other plants/methods) for a few ceremonies first. (How do you drink the ocean? Sip at a time) In the tradition we work in, drinking ayahuasca is only one part of it. Signing up for a weekend retreat without a well-trained healer can be...counterproductive. The biggest tragedy is casual/new seekers not knowing the landscape- there are many pitfalls and a lot of charlatans, it's probably going to get worse before it gets better with legalization efforts to be honest.
It's self-indulgence essentially, and being around other "drop outs" (I don't really like calling anyone that) can make it seem like it's the right thing to do and you're somehow making progress by just drinking (when you're really just lying to yourself). It's a big trap- spirituality as a fad/fashion. I don't like to blame anyone stuck there (we really all are on our own journey, who's to say if it's right or wrong even if it looks like a big detour to me. Some people just aren't ready to face the truth, but at least being with the medicine will give them ample opportunity).
I’ve sat with 5MeO-DMT over a dozen times, always in the form of Bufo flake from the toad. It has been one of the most transformational and healing modality I’ve encountered. I have a low dose Jaguar (synthetic) pen that I use occasionally.
I’ve also used NN from a pen. It gave me a strange body load and intense kaleidoscopic visuals.
Small doses. Never enough to disassociate. Only lots of LSD and 4-HO-DET ever did that to me.
The most striking memory with DMT was at night seeing a moonlight cloud full of skulls staring back down at me. I frequently saw skulls in any texture.
It was very long ago. Unfortunately the dealer was raided.
It left a noticable residue in the simplistic vape we had and a few subsequent uses still carried traces of it.
Haven’t tried it, but I’ve been told by decades of research that it is present in many common plants, mostly in low but in certain cases substantial quantities, and merely needs to be extracted and purified via recrystallization.
A long time ago now, the short of it is that instead of pulling the trigger, I put the gun down and smoked DMT.
I went somewhere. Hard to explain where, but it was more real than here. I remembered this life, but I also remembered an innumerable amount more. The time was different there. I don't remember many specifics but when I came back, I remembered that I want to be here on a level that transcends this life. That ending my life here would not be what I want on some other level that is more real than here. And that this lifetime is but a spark amidst an endless flame.
TL;DR: DMT makes brainwaves simpler and more disordered. I have a scientific background and I'm quite familiar with DMT, but I'm struggling to take anything meaningful from this.
They found that DMT disrupts the brainwave patterns that, if you squint a bit, belong to what Hofstadter calls the "strange loop" of consciousness. In a sense it is as you'd expect.
You can find Bill Atkinson's open-source instructions for Jaguar (5-MeO-DMT) Vape Pens from a link here: https://boingboing.net/2025/07/10/apples-bill-atkinson-creat...
I think this paper is about N,N-DMT. 5-MeO is a different beast. Although I've run across N,N in vape pen form so this is still a relevant delivery mechanism.
In terms of ergonomics pens can't be beat, though if you'd rather go from 0 to escape velocity on a single hit, "the machine" is the way to go (https://wiki.dmt-nexus.me/The_Machine)
> We find that DMT shifts the normally dominant alpha oscillations towards a quieter subcritical state, increasing entropy while reducing complexity, and that this shift correlates with intensity of disruption of the sense of self.
Wait, is this a good or a bad thing? Asking for a friend.
Its terrible if you’re trying to drive or operate machinery
... Unless said machinery is provided to you by the machine elves, of course.
Ah you mean the bewjewelled self-dribling basket balls
... It comes with a free frogurt!
... the toppings contains potassium benzoate
Is that bad?
1) Absolutely nobody is going to take heavy psychedelics if they are driving or operating heavy machinery, and if they are, they are either very misinformed or simply don’t care to the point of malice. Driving or operating while impaired is a crime in itself.
2) The effects of DMT wear off in 15-30 minutes, which is why it’s called ”the businessman’s lunch”. Subjectively, however, a person may experience decades of time pass.
Wheres the wooshing joke jpeg when you need it
Not everyone reading these discussions is going to be expecting humor, and will take any commentary affirming their prior indoctrination at face value.
That sounds like a YP not an MP though. Everyone jokes about the sarcasm font being hard to use, but the printed word has been around for a long time, much longer than the internet, yet the sarcasm font complaint has only been an internet thing.
Books were notoriously bad at two-way communication, though.
> Subjectively, however, a person may experience decades of time pass.
I swear people claiming this are just trying to impress others.
[dead]
Well, just by reading the abstract I can’t tell if the results are positive or not. But glad to see more research being done on this area.
Who over here in HN has tried DMT?
I did a LOT of that. We made our own in undergrad; depending on audacity and effort we made stuff ranging from beautifully clear, crystalline needles to stuff that looked like satans' earwax. Extremely memorable stuff, that at that moment in life, was a very good thing to happen to me in order to learn how to connect with my feelings.
I did it once. Felt like my consciousness rocketed "up" out of my body, but not up through physical space, through some 'adjacent' space. Then I saw/felt "infinity". There was no time, and I saw a hundu-esque god/goddess with infinite arms. I had no interest in eastern religion prior. Not disinterested either. I just didn't think about it, the way I don't think about golf.
It was a neat thing to experience.
I saw exactly the same infinite arms thing with zero prior interest in religion. It took me to place “I was once before and should know well” other entities protested because why bother when he needs to go back soon. Then I came back to my room and had no idea what to do with that experience.
These stories never fail to astonish me. Why the same deity? It’s so interesting.
The fact the mind is able to create these powerful visions and patterns and other realities is really incredible. We have this machinery for perceiving the world and moving though it, but that machinery is capable of so many other insane and beautiful and terrifying things - capabilities which are inaccessible except in rare instances.
It’s really quite remarkable. Underneath our prosaic experience of consciousness is something that can generate infinite fractals, awe-inspiring visions of otherworldly creatures, dream landscapes of colour and shape. Why? Where does it all come from? Is this what life would be like all the time without us filtering the information coming into our senses?
The night hag comes to mind, a cross-cultural supernatural creature with a mundane physiological origin:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_hag
So, some common sensory interference might suggest many-limbed things, maybe. Like how LSD makes things wobble and crawl about.
May I suggest "Man And His Symbols" by Car Jung? It was his final writing and, I believe, his only one that focused on the common(ish) reader as the audience. The basis of the book (and generally his studies and beliefs) is that the subconscious is as meaningful as the conscious, it just communicates in ways that are harder to access in modern society, and therefore it's been pushed away and ignored.
Absolutely ground breaking and mind shattering book!
I have done Ayahuasca. I think it's dangerous to say it is "healing"... it's a window not a door. You have to be careful, some personalities will develop psychosis and disconnection from reality. You will certainly end up above where you started but there may be a deep trench you have to walk through. Especially amongst type-A highly IQ and rationality driven people this is very likely IMO.
I assure you this is mostly a set/setting problem and why it's recommended to do with experienced (and more importantly, grounded) facilitators. It can leave you pretty open and suggestable, drinking with a group of lost souls and escapists is not recommended especially if you're new to it. (I've worked at traditional retreat centers and have drank hundreds of times; it's a little funny when someone comes in expecting to be able to build a story and further their escape then have their bubbles burst by a grounded point of view)
IMO This is a dangerous way of thinking. This is the Timothy Leary adage that you are stating. It is not just a "set and setting" issue. Whether or not you have a good or bad trip, or whether you are alongside kind empathetic people or whether what you see is positive or negative does not matter. It has a lot to do with the person individual makeup, sensitivity, ego-centricity, and pre-ingrained beliefs. They do not automatically go away after the trip and the realization. The realizations come into conflict with them. This can very easily be a catastrophic event for some.
I personally think Ayahuasca gives an amazing capacity to see the potential within the universe and within ourselves... it is nearly infinite. However if you deeply understand the world and how mis-aligned it and yourself are from that potential it can create tragedy. If you believe you are responsible for this tragedy it can create catastrophe. I don't mean to over-extend my own experiences too far.
What if there is a book that when you read it you would know for 100% certainty when you die there is no hell, and only infinite peace, unless you wanted to go back into hell. Should everybody read that book?
That's what taking Ayahuasca felt like for me. I don't think it is great to do for everyone. I'm curious to hear your thoughts as you have much more experience than me. I had a lot of challenges after taking it.
I think you're right that those "type-A" folks with more rigid minds have some trouble with integration ("catastrophe"/"tragedy"). Our (what I'd call the traditional) approach is very holistic- this path is a whole modality and lifestyle of its own, it's not a haphazard magic pill you do once but a tool to look under the hood every once in a while to see where you're at and what energies are influencing you the most. The earlier sessions can seem catastrophic without the right context (that is, there is usually a lot of low-hanging fruit that comes off when you first come to ayahuasca- you usually have to feel/fully experience these energies to process them before they can be released). You might see/realize that you have a lot of work ahead of you which can be discouraging/overwhelming for sure. More serious cases (long term depression etc) might even want to start out with very small doses (or not at all) and let the ayahuasquero do their work (via icaros, and/or other plants/methods) for a few ceremonies first. (How do you drink the ocean? Sip at a time) In the tradition we work in, drinking ayahuasca is only one part of it. Signing up for a weekend retreat without a well-trained healer can be...counterproductive. The biggest tragedy is casual/new seekers not knowing the landscape- there are many pitfalls and a lot of charlatans, it's probably going to get worse before it gets better with legalization efforts to be honest.
> build a story and further their escape
Can you explain what this means?
Like do they come in hoping to bring back a narrative?
It's self-indulgence essentially, and being around other "drop outs" (I don't really like calling anyone that) can make it seem like it's the right thing to do and you're somehow making progress by just drinking (when you're really just lying to yourself). It's a big trap- spirituality as a fad/fashion. I don't like to blame anyone stuck there (we really all are on our own journey, who's to say if it's right or wrong even if it looks like a big detour to me. Some people just aren't ready to face the truth, but at least being with the medicine will give them ample opportunity).
I’ve sat with 5MeO-DMT over a dozen times, always in the form of Bufo flake from the toad. It has been one of the most transformational and healing modality I’ve encountered. I have a low dose Jaguar (synthetic) pen that I use occasionally.
I’ve also used NN from a pen. It gave me a strange body load and intense kaleidoscopic visuals.
Did you make the pen yourself? And is it possible to have a breakthrough with it?
Small doses. Never enough to disassociate. Only lots of LSD and 4-HO-DET ever did that to me.
The most striking memory with DMT was at night seeing a moonlight cloud full of skulls staring back down at me. I frequently saw skulls in any texture.
It was very long ago. Unfortunately the dealer was raided.
It left a noticable residue in the simplistic vape we had and a few subsequent uses still carried traces of it.
Haven’t tried it, but I’ve been told by decades of research that it is present in many common plants, mostly in low but in certain cases substantial quantities, and merely needs to be extracted and purified via recrystallization.
DMT saved my life.
How do you mean? Can you go into detail?
A long time ago now, the short of it is that instead of pulling the trigger, I put the gun down and smoked DMT.
I went somewhere. Hard to explain where, but it was more real than here. I remembered this life, but I also remembered an innumerable amount more. The time was different there. I don't remember many specifics but when I came back, I remembered that I want to be here on a level that transcends this life. That ending my life here would not be what I want on some other level that is more real than here. And that this lifetime is but a spark amidst an endless flame.
Speechless. Thank you for sharing that.
TL;DR: DMT makes brainwaves simpler and more disordered. I have a scientific background and I'm quite familiar with DMT, but I'm struggling to take anything meaningful from this.
They found that DMT disrupts the brainwave patterns that, if you squint a bit, belong to what Hofstadter calls the "strange loop" of consciousness. In a sense it is as you'd expect.
I think the terminology is hacked to produce the most scary looking headline while saying the most mundane and expected things.
I think they're using technical language that you're aware of, and you're misinterpreting the title of a research paper.