5-methoxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine
"Bufo"
These ratings are my subjective opinion. It is based on years of first-hand experience with the substances and being in the psychedelic community. (Hover to see details)
My Personal Experience
I've only tried the synthetic 5-Meo_DMT, not the venom from the Bufo Alvarious toad, one of the few naturally occurring sources. I hear they are very similar, though. This was a new addition to my psychedelic toolkit and I regret not adding it sooner. 5-MeO is profoundly important from both a therapeutic perspective and a spiritual one. It showed me parts of my consciousness that no other psychedelic ever had. Many say it's the most powerful psychedelic and I believe it is because (short of total anesthesia) it disables more of our default ego-filters than anything else can. In the higher doses, there's no appreciating the pretty colors, questioning it's realness, or controlling its trajectory. It's the most complete experience of oneness I know of.
5-MeO takes you home, but not the home your body lives in. It's an assumption that will never be empirically validated, there's no way to quantify or measure the source of creation, but sheer anectdotal agreement about what this molecule makes you feel is hard to argue against. Besides, the alternative assumption that it's meaningless or fake doesn't do anyone any favors. Treating this drug like a toy or a science experiment is a mistake. This simple molecule is everyone's birthright and respecting it as such yields profound benefits.
These benefits are maybe impossible to understand until you experience it. However, I am familiar with non-drug-assisted practices like meditation and breathwork that provide a similar experience. It is much harder and much more time-consuming to achieve it, but I am certain there are ancient cultural parallels to this state of consciousness. It's what all the religions write about and what all the boldest truth-seekers strive so hard to achieve.
For those new to this psychedelic, taking some time to warm up to it may be wise. The principles of respecting the process that I coach my clients on are probably more important here than for any other psychedelic I am familiar with. I don't personally know what it's like to resist 5-MeO since I had done so much integration work before trying it, but I can imagine it would be hell. The confusion of losing all your critical faculties within seconds would be enough to destablize absolutely anyone that isn't prepared. Mike Tyson is on record saying this psychedelic permanently changed him for the better after completely breaking his entire concept of reality. If it can break that guy, imagine what it could do to you.
I'm not at all shy about making this sound dangerous. Don't do this without lots of preparation, it's not worth it. With preparation, however, it can be one of the best decisions of your life. And you only need to do it a few times to achieve most of the benefits. Once that door is opened, you can learn to walk through that door via other means. It's always with you, 5-Meo just reminds us of that fact.
So what is there to gain? It's flow. It's your purpose.
It's that feeling you get when you know you are doing exactly what you need to do in the right way in the right place at the right time. It's effortlessness, divine guidance, it's liberation. It allows us to let go of the self-doubt, self-criticism, self-sabotage and all self-limitation. The rest is just integration into the external world.
Some Facts
This chemical compound is one of the most potent of all psychedelics and is also prolific in nature, so much so it agreed upon that humans and other animals can create their own DMT [26]–[29]. However, it is still up for debate how much DMT is created and how it is used [29]. Strassman and colleagues have stated the key enzymes for its production is supplied in the both the pineal gland and the retina, which may say something about the intense visionary nature of experiences reported by test subjects [27]. More recently, it was proven that many other parts of the mammalian brain are capable of producing the necessary enzymes to synthesize the surprisingly simple molecule, N,N-DMT.
The DMT experience is particularly dependent on the method of induction. In extracted forms, it is intravenously injected or smoked and the user immediately feels the effects for about 15-30 minutes. In brewed forms of ayahuasca combined with plants containing mono-amine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs), it becomes orally active and lasts for several hours [9], [25], [30]. In early clinical trials of intravenous DMT, users reported seeing bright moving colors, a loss of control, dissociation, and alternating between feeling euphoria and anxiety [31][32].
Around the 2-minute mark the drug reaches its full potential and in high enough doses the user experiences “a sense of tremendous acceleration and psychic and somatic tension,” then totally dissociates out of waking state consciousness into a world of extremely complex visions. This lasts for only about 20 minutes before gradually returning the traveler to normal waking consciousness [27].
Dr. Rick Strassman and colleagues oversaw dozens of these clinical tests with intravenous DMT, recording detailed accounts of the experiences. According to them, the nature of this dissociated vision-state seems to feel like a world totally autonomous from dreams and waking life, but somehow more real, unlike a hallucination [27].
These researchers reported a similar side-effect profile to other classical psychedelics: minor increase in blood pressure, heart rate, pupil dilation, and body temperature. It should be noted that the volunteers getting injected with DMT were all experienced psychedelic users already, so side-effects in the general population are likely to be further-reaching and less predictable [27], [31]–[34].
Nonetheless, compared to the uncanny psychological and visual effects of DMT, this drug can be administered with relatively few physical risks. Furthermore, because of the unique nature of its tolerance in the body, the low side-effect profile contributes to another unique property among the classical psychedelics, an absence of psychological tolerance [27], [34], [35].
Gallimore and colleagues discovered that as the minor physical side effects like blood pressure and pupil dilation do build a tolerance and, thus diminish across repeated doses, the intense visionary and psychological experience does not. This phenomenon is very unusual to classical psychedelics, especially compared to the fast-building tolerance of LSD and psilocybin mushrooms. Gallimore and colleagues took advantage of this characteristic and calculated how to successfully infuse DMT in the blood using target-controlled intravenous infusion modeling, the same method used to keep surgery patients unconscious with anesthetics. This would allow for subjects to remain in the dissociated visionary state indefinitely with ease [27], [34]. The implications of this discovery have only begun to be speculated about, but it is safe to say there is something profoundly significant about the human body being capable of this feat.
References
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