<---first post maybe?
Very interesting folks! Been a good read thus far, and to start I have to declare that my neurochemistry knowledge is severely limted in comparison to yours....what I do know has been gleaned from the internet, and although I likely undertstand the machinations better than your average joe, I won't even try to get into the nitty-gritty of the brain chemistry. Goes right over my head, though I do love reading about it, and I do learn quickly.
The only reason I'm posting is because I have a significant amount of 'experimental' experience with DMT, 5MeO-DMT, salvia divinorum (host to several forms of DMT, i believe, no sources, heresay only), and other psychedelics.
My DMT experience was a shaking one. I have never had a NDE, so cannot compare it to that. However, I have tried other substances, from LSD, to mushrooms, mdma and mda to salvia.
We used a volcano vaporizer, and 0.04 grams of N-N-DMT. If you've never seen a volcano, it fills a large plastic bag with vapour, from which you draw. It blows heated air through your product, trapped between two screens, at a steady pressure, with easy to control steady heat. I took a full inhale, held it, released, took another full inhale, and 'sat' on it, only releasing it when hallucinations began.
Hallucinations first crept in from the edges of my vision, similar to the 'eyeball pressing effect' mentioned above, but with significantly more definition and detail. At first, these hallucinations resembled a shifting snake scale patter, like on diamond backs. In trying to see what they were, i thought to myself that they looked a lot like fractals, at which point they seemed to assume a form closer to what I have seen the mandlebrot set visually represented as. Definitely self influenced.
Upon release of the vapour, I felt that the bed I was lying on was rising, similar to an elevator.
(aside: as I recall these experiences, sources of contrast in colour and light levels are giving me slight recall hallucinations, happens everytime i spend a lot of time thinking about these experiences)
Gradually, as I was rising, the fractal hallucnations covered my visin to the point that I could no longer see anything else, and I rose out of these visions like out of a cloud bank, with a vision of a monolithic wall stretching from horizon to horizon, and near as high as I could see. This wall rose up from a barren landscape similar to the moon but more geologically diverse, with much less uniformity in rock types. There was a sensation of a structure to my right, and as I turned to look, I was pulled through an open wall into a large laboratory, or control room.
Immediately I noticed I was somehow restrained. Tight enough not to be able to struggle free, but loose enough to be comfortable, to a degree. The restraints were like a giant three-fingered hand, gripping over each shoulder, and one through my legs, gripping the crotch (yeah, uncomfortable) and "plugging in" at my belly button. The room had some panels, with some screens and lights, although that was all out of focus. The main focus was a channel cut into the floor. The floor was made of what looked like concrete, but with inscribed figures around and in the channel. The channels itself was straight, and about six feet deep, and ran straight out of the building, parallel to that monolithic wall, and, I had a sense, right off the planet. There was nothing in it to see directly, but when looking else where, my periphery would pick up currents, like some sort of fast moving stream. I could feel these currents, this stream, as vibrations of the air. This stream kind of scared me, more out of a feeling of not being ready for it than anything else.
This is when I noticed the beings. Like the stream in the channel, I could not see them by looking directly, yet my peripheral vision picked up shimmering, iridescent figures, much larger than I, with hunched shoulders, and a tail. Their shimmering was very undefined, shape wise, and was limited to pinks, blues, violets, and ultra-violets (I know, can't see that spectrum, but in the vision, I could). I could 'feel' these beings, just as I could still feel the presence of my girlfriend on the bed beside me, and my friend in the other room, doing his own dmt vision. The feeling from these beings was very comforting, very supportive. I could also feel that they were scaled. No tactile info, but a detached realization. Again, this could be a result of hints at lizard people from talking to others about their trips prior to my own.
These lizard beings were speaking directly to my head, with words, images and emotions. The gist of their communication was: "It's okay, trust us. We want you to come "somewhere' (This somewhere was desribed, all at once, but the description was akin to telling a five year old every detail of physics from dynamics through Standard model into theoretical GUTS, string theory etc all in about a second. It was lost on me), and when we get 'somewhere', all will make sense, and we can answer your questions. You just have to let go of everything. Your sense of self, your hopes, dreams, your individuality, your fears. Everything." I immediatedly understood, and feared letting go of myself.
I was then swung over that stream, suspended face first over it, by whatever was gripping me. I felt senesations of warmth wherever I was touched by that grip, and then was dipped into the stream. I felt it dragging.....well, dragging at my soul, for lack of a better description. It felt like every nerve was being pulled from my body, not painfully, but slowly and unstoppable. I was bombarded by that communication from those beings.
"Let go. It will be alright. Trust us. Free yourself. Leave your bonds behind." It was like being yelled at by a dozen people, all within a foot of myself.
I noticed my hart rate and breathing picking up, like I had just hit my second wind in a long sprint. I was trying to let go, but everytime I came close, something important to me, to my personality would pop up, and anchor me into my body. A tone of urgency crept into the communications. "Hurry!" They were saying. "You cannot come with us until you let go!" It started to spped up....my heart, my breathing, the urgency. Everything was building to some sort of climax. There was an auditory tone, ringing through my whole being, and the stream was rushing past me faster than before. I felt like every thought I had about reality was the slippery rock I was holding onto in themiddle of a river. I was exhausted, and just when I felt I could no longer hold on, that I would be swept away, it all stopped.
The stream disappeared, and I was swung up out of the channel. The grip disappeared. A sense of disappointment was all I could feel from those beings as they slipped away in the direction of the stream. but also a feeling of "we'll see you when you're ready". Everything slowly melted, like timelapse photography, and I was back in the bed, looking at these scale/fractal hallucinations till they receded completely. The whole experience had a relative time of about an hour of so. In reality, i was only 'gone' from my body for about 10-15 minutes, with about five minutes afterwards to think through it all.
Like I said a very shaking experience, and one that I will have to repeat. I've dreamed some strange stuff before, but never before or since anything so vivid, detailed, and well, convincing. My girlfriend has since reported a slight increase in how often I talk in my sleep, and how I now hold more intelligible, if nonsensical, conversations while sleeping.
My experience with salvia divinorum was mush worse, and just as powerful, but since my little story there was so long, I'll hold off unless someone wants me to describe it.
disclaimer--good idea! I officially don't recommend this. if your experienced with psychedelics, try n-n-dmt. 5Meo-DMT made me feel like a bell that someone had hit with a sledge hammer. no fun. Salvia felt lik I had downloaded a program that was supposed to be n-n-dmt, but was written for alien hardware. Don't do it!
: Sounds much more like a dream than most other entheogens, thats why DMT has been linked to dreams.
It could be part of the chemistry, but not a lot is actually known scientifically.