Dmt Overview

DMT, or N,N-Dimethyltryptamine, is a psychedelic chemical that occurs naturally in both plants and animals from underwater organisms to land mammals. DMT is also the active hallucinogenic compound in ayahuasca, a tea brewed from the shrub Psychotria viridis used for ritual purposes by indigenous people in the Amazon. See our ayahuasca guide for more on this psychedelic brew.

People also ingest DMT in crystal form, smoking it in a pipe or bong, as well as vaporized. This form of ingestion produces a powerful but short-lasting hallucinogenic state, considered to be one of the most intense psychedelic experiences in existence.

It can also retain its psychoactive properties in other forms, including psilocybin (4-PO-HO-DMT, found in psilocybin mushrooms).

Many often confuse DMT with 5-MeO-DMT, or 5-Methoxy-N,N-Dimethyltryptamine, which is also a hallucinogenic compound. 5-MeO-DMT looks exactly like DMT on both a macro and micro level, but the latter has a few extra atoms attached, which is enough to change the experience. While the DMT experience tends to be highly visual, 5-MeO-DMT is more like a perspective shift. For this guide, we’ll focus on DMT.

Many factors contribute to the DMT experience, including dose, mindset, setting, and your body’s personal chemistry. With that in mind, each individual journey will be unique to the person, time, and place, and there’s no way to predict exactly what will happen. That being said, DMT does induce some common experiences and effects that can help you prepare for your journey.

 

What to expect

DMT-induced psychedelic experiences occur when a dose of 0.2 mg/kg or higher is ingested. When smoked, DMT is a very fast-acting substance with peak subjective experience occurring around 2 minutes after ingestion and completely resolving within 15 to 20 minutes.^[1] When taken as an ayahuasca brew, the effects can take up to an hour to appear and may last for several hours.

Mixing DMT into the liquids found in vape pens is a newer form of ingestion. The benefit of this is the ease of consumption. And because the intensity of DMT depends on the dose, vaping it can cause hallucinations that are as or more intense than consuming it in more traditional ways. This can be a good or a bad thing. However, some believe that vaping DMT isn’t the safest way to consume the drug and should be approached with caution.

Low doses (0.05 to 0.1 mg/kg) of DMT primarily affect physical and emotional states with few to no perceptual hallucinations. Higher doses typically produce rapid kaleidoscopic images full of intensely “techno-colored” abstract and representational displays. Auditory hallucinations are less common and usually aren’t a very prominent feature of the experience. Some people experience alternating sensations of hot and cold.