Talking with the Sand
- Feb 27, 2016
- 9 min read
DMT is the easy way to say Dimethyltryptamine which is a compound from the tryptamine family that has hallucinogenic and psychedelic traits. DMT was found to exist naturally in the 1950s. Some cultures and religions use Dimethyltryptamine for spiritual and body cleansing. They acquire it from ayahuasca plant root and use it in ceremonial and personal traditions. It is legal to travel to some places and experience a DMT “trip”. It is illegal in the U.S. but it is very easy to get and or make. It is very popular here in the Pacific Northwest. A hippie who does not have good mushrooms and DMT at their summer solstice party is as poor of a host as a 1980s yuppie who could not score some weed or coke….and its gaining popularity every year. Even popular YouTubers such as Joe Rogan or Dusty Smith have talked about or smoked DMT on their programs.
DMT has many appeals. It’s found naturally in plant root and is also found in living plants and animals. In 2013 it was found in some mammals’ pineal glands. Nature makes the stuff and so do humans. Another appeal is that the trips are short and most people emerge from their trip better than when they entered the trip. These healing aspects of a DMT trip are accredited to the “machine elves “of DMT. These little elves may appear in many ways but always seem to be there to help. DMT users describe them as humanoid and even psychiatry journals associate them with DMT trips.
Terence McKenna is an ethnobotanist who coined the name machine elves. He also called them fractal elves and gave them the proper name of Self Transforming Machine Elves. He described them as humanoid helpers a DMT user should expect to encounter and not be afraid of. The machine elves are the ambassadors of the change or repair you are searching for. And let’s face it, if you’re willing to take a drink of ayahuasca or a hit of DMT… you are a searcher.
It was these appealing aspects of DMT and working with someone who made it that convinced me to give it a try. I tripped on DMT three times and bettered myself each time.
The first trip I was with my wife and friends, we were in a clearing at the bottom of a tree covered hill on their property on the Coquille river in Oregon. I took two hits off a joint with DMT rolled into it. Within minutes I felt like I had just taken off an invisible space suit I had been wearing my entire life. In fact, I never knew that kind of shield around me existed but after taking DMT I believe that the shield is always there. I think it’s a perspective our mind chooses to keep us sane. And I truly believe I took my suit off and shut my shield down for the first time ever that morning. The female of the couple trippin’ with us said she felt like she was riding the planet and could feel the solar winds of space blowing on her.
I’ve used hallucinogens and psychedelics before but DMT provided an interaction with what was around me that I had never felt in a trip before. I had just drastically changed my life and I felt the trees around me were completing that change for me. Usually for me this would have been a horrible place to trip because I’m a more “wind in your hair” kind of guy. I like wide open spaces when I’m altered and this little clearing we were in was closed in by trees. However, I felt like there was a breeze but it was not coming through the trees…it was coming from the trees. I felt like the forest around me was scrubbing the old me away and painting the new me upon whom I am. Everything about me from how I think to what I look like changed dramatically over the next few weeks. There was no nausea or unpleasant reaction for me at all and it was all over in about 20 minutes. It was an absolutely amazing experience.
The second time I used DMT I knew a little more about it and I knew I was going to take it. The first trip was a total surprise. Not only did I not know what DMT was but I did not know we were going to take it until that day. This time I knew we were going to take it and I knew we were going to take much more of it. We planned a trip to Bandon and parked out on the beach at Whiskey Run. We set up a day camp in the sand and then I took 5 or 6 hits off another DMT joint. Immediately I felt way more than the first trip. The guy who brought it sat in the sand and his girlfriend collapsed into his lap. He started moving his hand back and forth in the sand.
I became a little uneasy as my stomach started to gurgle loudly. My wife was walking around and said she did not feel it yet. She and another in the group probably had 7 or 8 hits…they finished the joint. I went far enough away from the group and passed gas like I never had before…then my stomach was fine. I never got dizzy or sick but I totally understand why there are puke and poop buckets at an ayahuasca ceremony.
By the time I returned everyone was sitting in the sand and embarking on their individual trips. The guy moving his hand back and forth in the sand was doing the same thing. The sweeping motion of his hand had now made a hole 8 or 10 inches deep. I looked out at the ocean waves breaking on the sand and I noticed that with every wave I could see deeper and deeper into the ocean. It was somewhat unsettling but every time I looked up at the sky I could see deeper and deeper into outer space and that was worse. I realized that we all come with a set of filters as to how we see things and my filters were now off. To this day I use the phrase “taking the filters off” for everything sobriety related. If someone gets drunk they are taking their filters off, if we get stoned we are taking the filters off or if someone is tripping they took their filters off ….you get the point.
I returned my gaze to the sand and realized I could look deeper and deeper into the beach as well. I also realized every grain of sand on the beach was alive and interacting with nature. As my friend’s hand swept repeatedly through the hole there were grains of sand that could not get out of his way. He stopped digging in the hole then clapped his hands together and rubbed them to get all the sand stuck to his hands off. I could hear the sand falling from his hand screaming as it fell back to the beach. The other grains of sand were making fun of those struggling with my friend’s hand. The sand he brushed off his hands started coughing and wheezing like they were sick or winded. I kind of smiled as this was the most vivid hallucination I have had in some time…I even started to chuckle at the sand as well.
When I did the coughing sand became quite angry with me and glared at me. The angry sand told me that its cough was a smoker’s cough….I was a pack and a half per day smoker at the time and had struggled with quitting since my early 20s.
I didn’t feel like I was tripping that bad and needed to regain my senses so I rolled up my sleeve and started digging in the sand the same way. I instantly became a part of the sand the very second my hand touched it and more importantly the sand became a part of me. It even flowed through my veins. The sand replaced my regrets with hope and it replaced my vengeance with understanding and acceptance. I left a lifetime of sorrow and regret on the beach that day.
The entire trip was over in about 30 minutes or so and a very strange thing happened that day when we left the beach. Without provocation or planning I quit smoking. In fact, I had bought a pack of cigs on the way to the beach with no intention of quitting but I never lit up again after that DMT trip. I quit that very second cold turkey with no aids or barely even a craving… I smoked well over a pack a day every day and that was over 5 years ago.
My third DMT trip was the most enlightening of all. By this time I knew the cleansing appeal of DMT and a couple years had passed without me smoking so I was totally sold on its cleansing aspects. There were 7 of us around a huge bon fire for this experience but only 3 of us were tripping. I wanted to get rid of the things that were bad for me. I didn’t really identify anything in particular I just wanted to remove negativity or maybe have a heads up to bad choices….boy, did I ever get what I was asking for.
My boss at the time owned the house I lived in, the crops I grew, the equipment I used and he truly believed that if you have not used LSD you have the mentality of a grade schooler. This wasn’t a comment he made….this was a core belief. He was truly one of the most ridiculous people I had met but if you want to work on large pot farms you’re going to encounter many idiots who tout themselves as a genius. He bragged about holding his composure after taking 800 hits of acid at one festival and often said drugs show us who people really are. He took way too much DMT that night …and then showed us who he really is.
I took more this night than I ever had before. Just the three of us finished a fatty DMT joint. My wife was more comfortable with her trip because she had a bathroom nearby which is often important and an ugly reality of this and some other hallucinogens. There is no shame in getting sick or needing to purge from DMT and it doesn’t mean your trip will be bad, It’s just part of the cleansing and should be welcomed. It’s going to affect everyone different. Epic farts seem to be DMTs gift to my digestive system. I walked far enough away from the fire so no one could hear and let her rip….then picked a comfy chair by the fire and settled in for my trip.
Within minutes the fire was talking to me and my boss was spazzing out making grunting noises and weird outbursts. He then claimed his DMT blew him 400ft out of his body to a humanoid spaceship above us. He claimed he thought he was “chosen” and given his own ship when he found himself alone in the spacecraft but then he realized the spacecraft did not need a pilot because it was alive. As he blurted out his rants and weird grunting noises the fire started making fun of him. Then the fire started asking me questions. Most of the questions were about respect vs hierarchy, convenience vs conviction and money vs truth. The fire would ridicule him and ask me what kind of moron actually thinks he is better at taking drugs than others. I knew what the fire was telling me and my answer to all the questions the fire asked were a resounding “No”. As much as I love the marijuana culture I was working only for housing (no salary) on an illegal pot farm and my boss was a true blue moron for whom I had zero respect.
Again the trip only lasted about half an hour and the filters were back on. Later that week our boss went to spend thirty thousand dollars on a dehumidifier in Oakland California. He bought it for a warehouse full of illegal (over 800 plants), worm infested, bug laced weed that was overgrown because it was supposed to be sold weeks ago. The trip took 48 hours and when they came back we were gone. In that 48 hours we moved our entire existence away from them and have been working happily in the legal marijuana industry ever since.
I had never heard of DMT’s Self Transforming Machine Elves when I used it. In fact I argued with a couple people who claimed that if there’s no elf it’s not DMT you are taking…..I adamantly disagreed. I have always said that if any god was true we would all worship that same god and that if psychedelics were truth we would all have the same trip but the more I have learned about DMT, spirituality and perspective I suppose my views have changed.
The machine elves of DMT did visit me. They were in the limbs and leaves of the trees that told me to let go of my past and painted a new future into my view, they were in the flames of the fire that told me to rid myself of those with bad intentions and they were in the beach that made me quit smoking….after a very long talk with the sand.
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