Experience:20mg 4-Aco-DMT - Intense Fear and Terror

Background
I have previous experience with LSD (100ug, 150ug), and Psilocybin mushrooms (2 g Lemon tek) and have only had bad experiences on LSD. I also consume THC edibles on a regular basis (10 mg, 2 times a week on average over the course of 4 months). Having enjoyed my shrooms trip and having little access to shrooms, I turned to 4-Aco-DMT. I knew that it has a similar effect as shrooms, so I was confident that I would enjoy it. My roommate and I decided that we would take it on a night where we had little to do the next day.

4:50 PM
My roommate and I ingested 20 mg 4-Aco-DMT after a light meal and water and having cleaned the house. I started a playlist of music and turned off my phone so that I wouldn’t be tempted to use it during my trip. I generally have a faster uptake than my roommate so I started to feel effects around 20 minutes after ingestion. The first thing I noticed was a common hallucination for me: the texture on the wall seemed to detach and I could see a semi-transparent version of it moving around. Any patterned or textured surface does this for me, including carpet or tiled floors. Lights on my computer became extremely vibrant and I started to feel like my hand were farther away than normal. My vision became warped in such a way that I could see a fishbowl effect.

5:30 PM
At this point internal and bodily hallucinations were in full swing. My body felt ridiculously light, and my entire body was numb. I felt as if I was a sphere of consciousness and that my senses were merely piercing the veil in between my mind and reality. I was euphoric and felt good, this is normal on my come ups. As expected, I would forget to breath for some periods of time and begin to yawn. Time began to dilate intensely, similar to how I feel on marijuana where I just find myself in a new situation 20 minutes later or that what I thought was 20 minutes was actually 10 seconds.

6:00 PM
I then chose to lay down on the floor and look at the ceiling. This has often yielded some of the most impressive hallucinations of any of my trips. Immediately after lying down I relaxed and began to see my surroundings fade away as intricate cogwork and geometry filled my vision. These are some of the most profound moments of my trips, as I begin to feel as if Im seeing the machinery of reality itself, or just a new reality altogether.

6:10 PM
My first inklings of where my trip would later lead were when I realized that I couldn’t control the trip anymore and that I would have to deal with it for at least 2-3 more hours. I have used melatonin in the past to calm myself down and I went to grab it but my roommate implored me to not take it. I supposed that he realized that I was trying to escape my trip and that by forcing me to accept it it may turn into a good trip. At this moment he was also on the come-up. Immediately after this moment I was in a good mood and filled up on water to make sure I was staying hydrated.

6:30 PM
I start talking to my roommate about our different experiences and my roommate was beginning to feel the major effects, having hallucinations similar to mine. He suggested that we watch some kaleidoscope videos, and I obliged. After a couple minutes of this I was hit hard by feelings of ego loss, or rather ego suppression. I felt like I was controlling myself from a different point of view, almost like my body was a robot. My normal emotional state had vanished completely and I was able to see some of the flaws in my character, such as the tendency to push others away, an overwhelming fear of inconsistency and unpredictability, and the mask of hardened rationalism that I wear to hide myself from being emotionally vulnerable.

6:45 PM
I begin feeling intense feelings of dread and that I was no longer in control of the situation or that I was enjoying it. I was scared that I would end up throwing myself off my balcony or that I might slit my wrists open due to the horrifying dread I was feeling. I felt as if every moment stretched on for years while I internally writhed in pain and agony. I felt myself getting closer and closer to a place where I would be pure impulse, and that impulse was the impulse to commit suicide and to end my suffering. In a moment of clarity I realized that this may be a moment that could lead to something good, so I calmly said to my roommate “I’m having a terrible time right now and I need help out of it”. He came over and began speaking to me about my terror and assured me that I was in no danger and that my mood was purely a figment of my imagination. I lapsed in and out of belief before he simply said the phrase “Why?” and I was filled with ecstasy. For some reason I felt as If that thought had never occured to me before, and it washed all my fears and dread away.

6:55 PM
I became filled with visions at this moment, having overcome the hell that had been my reality before. I saw several different timelines, each of which was me having made a different choice. I saw myself committing suicide from a 3rd person perspective in several of them, but knowing that there were an infinite number of other realities calmed me. The entire future and past was open to me, and it felt as if I was scrolling through infinitely thin sheets of paper, each being a different reality. I voiced this to my roommate and he acknowledge he felt it too. The timelessness of the moment led me to the thought that everything that could occur had occurred and that it had always been that way.

7:00 PM
The moment had passed, and I again descended into the terror of before. I pleaded my roommate to help me out, and he consoled me by trying to rationalize the feelings I was having. This continued for the greater part of 20 minutes.

7:20 PM
My roommate started telling stories about things that hadn’t actually happened but we felt had both happened. It felt as if we were recalling memories from a different timeline where we had met earlier than before and had gone to Japan.This calmed me quite a bit, as I was distracted from my mental pain. Every time he left the room I went back into a bad trip until he could bring me back out.

7:40 PM
I started to feel the come down while my roommate was peaking. He spoke about how he was nothing but “flow” and that he could feel the universe pressing on his body. Somewhat seriously I said that I was then “quench”, as I was his other half. By this I believe that I saw myself as something like "the completion" of my roommate in that moment, being that he was flowing and I was quenching. This became an enduring theme of the rest of our trips, that of being two halves of the same person. We could feel each other’s moods and thoughts with astounding accuracy.

8:00 PM
Having come down enough to think again, I began writing down my thoughts from the trip. I realized that the way my brain worked to my detriment was due to the way I treat daily life. I first suppress and conceal emotion, then work out a plan to navigate a situation. In a situation such as a psychedelic one, this strategy completely failed and only brought me confusion. I also had the distinct sense that my consciousness was actually happening before I experienced it, almost as if I had memories of a specific window into the future and the past at the same time. After writing down my thoughts me and my roommate head to bed, taking 3 mg melatonin each to induce sleep.

Next Day
The next day I was afflicted with intense headaches, which would not go away even though I drank caffeine and took some ibuprofen. I also had lasting after effects such as a general emotional detachment and seeing lights as brighter than normal. The headaches and other effects ceased that night.

Submitted by B.orp