Fear and Healing on 5-MeO-DMT

Or: how I learned to stop worrying

This post is part of QRI’s HEART program. You can also read it on heart.qri.org.

About nine months ago, I was invited to join a group of brilliant psychonauts at a retreat center in British Columbia. The mission: a deep exploration of 5-MeO-DMT.

I’d never encountered “five” (or even its distant cousin, NN-DMT), and was a bit nervous. Michael Pollan calls 5-MeO is “one of the most potent and fast-acting psychotropic drugs there is.” He also notes that a friend of his calls it “the Everest of psychedelics” and that some Amazonian tribes refer to it as the “semen of the sun”.

Was I really prepared to mount Everest?

Outline

• The Fear

• Misfire

• Return

• Preparation

• Experience

• The Third Hit

• After

The Fear

My hesitation was reasonable: I’ve had adverse reactions to psychedelics in the past, with years-long consequences.

But I’ve also been working through a more irrational fear associated with all mystical experience. Whenever I begin to dissolve my ego—whether it’s through psychedelics, meditation, or dreams—I tend to clench back into normative reality.

This reaction is common. The sensation of dissolution is terrifying—it literally feels like you’re dying. And I still carry a lot of Catholic¹ programming from my youth; I often find myself frightened that self-exploration is somehow sinful, that I might do permanent damage to my soul. That I might wind up in hell.

And so whenever I start to relax into that non-egoic state espoused by every mystic, the fear response kicks in, and I clench back into my normal waking self with a feeling of both frustration and relief.

I’ve been working though this fear for a few years—through therapy, meditation, dreamwork, and all the other tools in my psychological kit—with incremental progress. In the months leading up to the retreat, I found I was able to regularly enter a semi-dissolved state and calmly abide there. But still, if I managed to go one step deeper, the fear response would kick in.

And that’s definitely not the reaction you want after launching into DMT-space.

Misfire

In the weeks leading up to the retreat, I felt the fear of 5-MeO mounting. So I confronted it the best way I know how: through dreamwork.

I specifically remember one dream, where I found myself in a moldy basement, being offered a strange substance by a group of dark strangers. I took the drug, despite my misgivings—and the fear melted away.

I had dreams like this most nights for about a week. Sometimes I acted with poise, and was rewarded; other times I reacted out of fear, and ended up in a nightmare. But as the days went by I was feeling increasingly confident. I made up my mind to take part in the 5-MeO sessions.

But the night before my departure, I had a new dream. I saw my bamboo plant² placed underneath a brilliant light, and it bloomed into a massive, beautiful flower. But the weight of the new growth was too much—the bamboo reed snapped. I was then given a birds-eye tour of a never-ending hell realm—a many-roomed concrete basement full of blood, excrement, and dental tools.³

The dream held a deep numinosity. I’d put it in the top 1%, the sort of dream I only have a few times a year. Its message was clear: you’re not ready for this, and you’ll suffer if you keep moving forward.

With my plane ticket purchased and my room already reserved, I still proceeded on to Canada, where I watched with mild envy as my colleagues engaged in deeper and deeper explorations of the most intense psychedelic known to man.

The trip itself was delightful—I got to form intimate connections with brilliant people, all of whom share my interest in exploring and mapping conscious states. I learned a great deal from them and from their 5-MeO experiences, even if I couldn’t always understand what they were talking about. And the retreat center itself was gorgeous, situated along a massive shimmering lake, and surrounded on all sides by sprawling mountains. It was literally one of the best weeks of my life.

I returned home deeply satisfied, both spiritually and intellectually. I had no regrets about listening to my instincts. But I knew I’d missed out on something special.

Return

Nearly a year later, 5-MeO found me again. A friend of mine happens to be an experienced 5-MeO guide, and invited me to participate in a small group ceremony. There’d be about ten of us, and she and another friend would serve as guides as we explored the drug individually or in pairs. A very similar setup to the psychonaut retreat.

Naturally, I was hesitant—was I ready now?—but I gave her a tentative “yes”.

Despite the surface-level similarities, the vibe was very different from the explorations in Canada. The goal now was spiritual, not intellectual. We were here to grow and heal ourselves, not to conduct a scientific expedition. Each of us stated our intentions at the outset, and requested any support we’d like to receive from the group.

I immediately knew what my intention would be: I wanted to work through the fear.

Over the previous year, I’d reified my fear as a knot, buried deep in my belly. Whenever I get pulled out of a mystical state, the pull starts from my lower abdomen. In fact, this is where all my anxiety resides, regardless of the cause; if I’m feeling any emotion along the lines of fear, dread, regret, or guilt, I can usually locate it as a throbbing or tension about two inches behind and below my navel.

What’s more, the previous few weeks had been some of the most stressful of my professional life, and I could sense the knot getting harder and tighter. I’d been working through it with meditation (and small amounts of cannabis), but things were still getting worse.

I told the group about my knot, and my desire to work with it. They heartily approved.

Preparation

I still wasn’t sure I’d have the guts—or the internal permission⁴—to participate. I chose to sit out the first day, so I could give my system some time to process what was about to happen. At the very least, the dream gods would have one night to make an appearance and guide me, one way or the other.

I sat along one side of the ceremony room (a beautiful, circular space, decorated with the help of our hosts). We all sat ready to hold space as the first participant laid down in front of us. He inhaled a fairly small dose, and laid back.

He then proceeded to weep for an hour.

Strangely, this didn’t frighten me much. The weeping seemed cathartic—he was clearly working through something difficult. I sat there meditating, feeling each of his sobs course through my body.

About forty minutes in, I felt something shift: a sudden opening in my lower abdomen. It felt like a small bubble popped, and a bit of tension was released. I walked out of the ceremony feeling a touch lighter. He and I got a few minutes to chat afterward; he affirmed that, internally, it had been a wholesome experience.

That night, I didn’t dream much, but I woke with a single memory: a dream character saying that I’d “find my faith by October.” I’ve learned not to trust specifics in dream messages, but the overall vibe was that I was moving in the right direction. So I spent the morning meditating and walking, preparing my mind for my first encounter with 5-MeO-DMT.

Experience

On my way to the ceremony, I was stung by a bee. I’d stepped on a flower he was pollinating. (Sorry, bee.)

The pain was searing, but I reacted calmly. I poured some cool water on my foot, and found a bench to sit on. I felt this was a good omen: I was capable of handling intensity. Even if the experience was hard, I’d get through it.

I took the first session that day. I laid down on the mattress, and asked my friend to place her hand on my abdomen. I wanted my focus to stay there, so I could work with whatever energy was trapped in my gut.

I placed the 5-MeO vape⁵ to my lips, and drew. I was told that pulling 2-4 seconds would be a small “handshake-level” dose (as opposed to a “hug” dose or beyond). But the second I felt the smoke hit my throat, I stopped inhaling and laid back.

Nothing happened.

That’s not entirely true—I felt a slight tingle throughout my body, something obviously foreign, but strangely familiar. There was a uniformity to it: the tingling seemed to spread evenly through my tactile field. But it was barely noticeable.

I took another draw from the pen, this time longer. I held it for a count of ten. And this time it worked.

Within seconds, the weight of my body fell away. The phrase “unbearable lightness of being” echoed through my head, but the feeling was far from unbearable—in fact, it was the most bearable thing I’ve ever experienced. A vague half-articulated thought entered my mind: “oh right, I remember now, this is what heaven feels like.”

My sense of self flattened into a rippling two dimensional sheet. Bits of light streamed through my closed eyelids, but my visual field and tactile field had synesthetically merged—I could feel the light streaming through my entire being.

I no longer had a body, was no longer located in a room, was no longer surrounded by friends. I was simply a two dimensional vibrating surface, extended infinitely in all directions. My thoughts went back to a day of kayaking on the lake in Canada. I felt like the shimmering surface of that lake, but without any shores to lap up against. I was nothing but a calm, infinite ocean.

The uniformity from that first tiny hit was still there. I vaguely recall a sort of lattice guiding my tactile sensations. The best image I can conjure is the flower of life:

To be clear, this was not a visual impression—it was a tactile sensation. And yet “light” feels like the best word for that tactile experience. It glistened with the same playful regularity as sunlight on the surface of the lake.

And here’s the strangest part: this light had precisely the same texture as the light from my dream, the light that broke my bamboo plant. It was, as far as I can discern, the same light.

That sounds more prophetic than it is—in truth, I’ve had tastes of this sensation in meditation, in dreams, and on other substances. I’d never felt it isolated with this level of purity, but the feeling was deeply familiar. So it’s not entirely surprising that my dream-self used it to represent its understanding of what 5-MeO might feel like.

But I still get chills when I think about the connection.

The Third Hit

I started to come down from that second hit after a few minutes. It maybe felt a bit longer in subjective time, but not by much.

I wasn’t done yet. I asked for the pen back, and took another sip. Within seconds, I was once again the surface of a shimmering lake.

But suddenly a third dimension burst forth from that two dimensional field. It felt like a wave suddenly rising, pointed outward. Suddenly I was working in a much bigger, more complicated space.

I felt the hand on my abdomen, and covered it with my own. The somatic work was about to start.

My knot came up, and I could feel it in front of me. There still wasn’t much visual sensation, so I was deeply immersed in the tactile. The knot became bigger and looser, and I could feel its twists and turns. Over the course of a couple minutes, it came in and out of view, usually dissolving, sometimes intensifying. I sat by passively, feeling the scene unfold.

As the knot unwound, my experience began to spread and flatten again, and soon I was back in the calm, two dimensional waters where I started my trip.

I came back to reality with a sense of peace and awe. A single sentence passed through my mind: “I’m not ready yet.” I couldn’t tell you exactly who uttered this sentence; it didn’t quite feel like “me”. But I was quickly sobering up, and some other part of me decided that we’d had enough transcendence for one day.

I remembered the space and the people around me (oh! right! there’s a whole world out there!) and thanked my guide. She sat back as I started to feel my way back into my body, curving my back and stretching my limbs. I was filled with gratitude.

I got up and took my original spot against the wall, still basking in a tremendous afterglow. Without thought or hesitation, I touched the knee of the friend to my left and thanked him.

I started to say something to the group—something about how wonderful and healing the experience had been—when suddenly, I felt my “sense of self” click back online. I stumbled over my words, worried that I might say the wrong thing. For a minute I’d been moving through the world as effortlessly as water flowing downstream; now, in the afterglow of my experience, I was coming back to my normal, self-conscious self.

A minute or two later, while sitting quietly with my eyes closed, I felt two waves of tactile sensation circling around one another, in the shape of a rotating yin-yang⁶.

Suddenly the waves collided, and the waters became choppy and irregular. I felt my knot re-form.

But now it was a bit looser, and a bit higher up in my abdomen. Progress, perhaps.

After

In the days since that experience, the shift in my knot has persisted. It’s higher up in my abdomen, and easier to notice. And it dissolves much faster with focused attention.

More importantly, I’ve learned how to work with it. I can enter that same semi-dissolved state that I’d already gotten used to—which has some resonances with the 5-MeO state—and the knot starts to loosen and untangle itself. I can use my attention to jostle it here and there, causing it to unfold even more.

This is the biggest gift I’ve gotten from my 5-MeO-DMT experience: a deeper facility for somatic work. Suddenly I have a whole new set of tools for working with this knot, and for working with fear and anxiety by extension. I’ve been picking it apart bit by bit every day. The knot does tend to re-form, especially under stress. But finally it feels like two steps forward, one step backward, and not the reverse.

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When I had the bamboo dream, I thought it was warning me against the dangers of a bad trip. I thought maybe it’d reinforce the fear, rather than melt it. I was afraid it might set me back considerably on the spiritual path.

But now that I’ve had the experience, I think the danger was quite different: I’d have gone wild with unfettered access to 5-MeO for a week. The retreat was only a few months after my deep exploration of nitrous (arguably my favorite substance), whose dissociative effects are not unlike 5-MeO. I likely would have pushed too hard, and jeopardized my mental health. Too much light, indeed.

I’m still digesting and integrating that first handshake⁷ with 5-MeO. I’m resisting the urge to buy a pen of my own (for now!), because I’ll likely have months worth of insight to build on here.

But if that was a handshake, boy am I looking forward to getting a hug.

Many thanks to the QRI HEART team, as well as my guides and fellow participants in the later sessions, for creating these spaces and for early feedback on this essay.

1. At my most cynical, I see this fear as a memetic weapon of the Catholic Church, a defense of their monopoly on spiritual authority. The Church has always insisted that only their ordained clergy are capable of having a direct connection with God, and that anything else is heresy. I absorbed this message as a young child, and it continues to subvert my healthy and genuine desire to connect with the divine.

2. For the curious, his name is Bambooie Armstrong

3. I was reading Blindness at the time. You too can have dreams like these by reading José Saramago.

4. Several people spoke about their relationship with 5-MeO in this way. They talked about the need to “get permission” from something other than themselves (an internal “part”, or perhaps the drug itself), e.g. by taking a low dose before any deeper explorations.

5. Mixed in a 1:4 ratio of 5-MeO-DMT to solvent, i.e. 20% of total weight

6. I seem to recall that they were rotating clockwise, like in the picture. But I’m not certain.

7. When I shared this essay with my guide, she said my experience sounded much more like a hug than a handshake. I’ve become very sensitive to psychedelics since starting a meditation practice, so I’m not super surprised. But given how quickly the drug left my system (less than 10m), it was probably a small dose.