He Dabbed Way Too Much DMT. Here's What 'Breaking Through' Actually Feels Like

DMT is the psychedelic people can't stop talking about: a compound so potent that a few minutes can feel like a lifetime in another place. A veteran creator we interviewed told us about the night he found out what that really means — by taking far, far too much of it at once.

Working up, slowly

It started responsibly enough. In 2017, he and a friend bought a gram of DMT — and a gram, he notes now, is a lot. "You don't need a lot to get off on DMT." They experimented with the smallest little specs, using an e-nail because the temperature stays consistent. DMT burns if it gets too hot, so they kept it low, somewhere in the 400s.

For about a month, every time they hung out, they'd try a little more. Small amounts, sitting there, looking around, not passing out. "We slowly increased the amount."

The night he went too far

Then one night, he decided to jump the gap. He had a square of parchment paper, took the hash jar of yellow powder, and "dumped like a good amount" into it. Folded it like a taco. Slid it into the nail.

"It's milking up like a fat [expletive] dab," he remembers thinking. He went for it, leaned back — and was gone.

"It was the most intense experience that I've ever gone through in my [expletive] life."

What it felt like

He describes it in fragments, because that's how it comes back to him:

• The frequency. He confirms the buzzing people talk about on the come-up — not just a sound, but something he felt. "My whole body was like vibrating."
• The entity. No demons, no dark figures. "I had a nice entity that was trying to calm me down, trying to tell me that everything is okay."
• No time. "There was no comprehension of time. I didn't even know who I was almost."
• Coming back. He came to in the fetal position, dry heaving, energy "shooting up into my sternum," drenched in sweat, unable to speak to his friends for ten minutes while he gathered himself. Everything after was hyper-saturated — colors brighter, more contrast, like someone turned up the saturation on the world.

He's careful with the word "bad." "I wouldn't consider it bad. Just so extreme." He compares it to a roller coaster that was too much — "that was crazy, but I don't want to get on that again." It wasn't traumatic like the bad trips people describe, but it lived in his head for a year: "It was all I could think about. Not every day, but for like a year. What the [expletive] was that I just saw?"

The honest check

He'd done DMT 30+ times by then, mostly small doses — the breakthrough was the outlier, and it's his account of a subjective experience we can't verify. What is consistent across countless trip reports is the shape of it: the buzzing, the entity, the loss of self, the return. What's also consistent is the harm-reduction lesson, and he states it himself: a gram is a lot, and the way to find your level is not to dump a heap of powder onto a nail in one go.

What to take from this

• Dose matters more than anything. DMT is active at tiny amounts — start small and work up over sessions, not all at once.
• Temperature matters. Too hot and you burn it; a consistent low-temperature vaporizer (like the e-nail he used) is the standard approach.
• Have a sitter. He had friends in the room — people watching, grounding, being there when he came back. He needed them.
• Set and setting count. "I could sit there, I could look around, I'm not passing out" — that's what a manageable dose feels like.
• An intense experience isn't automatically a bad one, but it can rattle you for months. Give yourself time and space to integrate before repeating.

Asked if he'd do it again, his answer is a gentle no: "I don't need to go back. I'm good." He's not scared of it. He just knows exactly how big that door is, and he's fine leaving it closed.

This article is for educational purposes only and is not medical advice. Psychedelics are illegal in most jurisdictions and can be dangerous, especially at high doses or for people with underlying health conditions.