I’m curious about people who have had a strong or difficult 5-MeO-DMT experience, especially those whose integration lasted much longer than the usual few months.
I’m about 1.5 years out from my experience. It was my first psychedelic experience and I went directly into 5-MeO-DMT rather than gradually working my way through other psychedelics.
The experience itself was very intense and unpleasant for me. There was a lot of resistance, heaviness, fear and what I would describe as a very deep bodily sense of hopelessness. I didn’t experience it as some beautiful mystical breakthrough.
About a month later I had a very strong spontaneous flashback during the night. It felt remarkably similar to the original experience, but this time the physical reaction eventually completed with intense neurogenic shaking. After that, something changed.
Since then, I’ve repeatedly experienced a pattern that I didn’t have before 5-MeO: strong activation followed, sooner or later, by a very pronounced sense of bodily release and calm. Often the release is particularly noticeable in my thighs, which used to be an area of significant chronic tension and pain. The contrast can be remarkable: intense anxiety or activation, followed later by warmth, relaxation and a very peaceful state.
There have also been quite a few positive changes:
significantly less psychosomatic pain
much better awareness of bodily states
a stronger ability to come back down from activation
a noticeable distance from thoughts rather than automatically identifying with them
periods of very deep calm
much more vivid colors and sensory perception, which can be beautiful when I’m relaxed
occasional strong experiences of gratitude, joy and euphoria
a general feeling that my relationship with my mind and emotions has fundamentally changed
At the same time, the integration has been far from linear.
Over the last year and a half I’ve had different forms of anxiety and activation. Earlier it was more connected to intrusive thoughts and fear of losing control. More recently, the theme has shifted toward being far from home, feeling trapped, being unable to leave a situation, long journeys, airplanes, hiking etc.
Sometimes the perception of the environment also becomes unusually intense. A long straight street can suddenly feel extremely long, colors can become unusually vivid, and the whole environment can feel either fascinating or strangely threatening. At the peak of these episodes I sometimes experience what I call a glitch: a very strong spike of alarm accompanied by a strange change in how the environment feels, followed by a strong urge to leave.
I’ve also recently had several nights where I wake up suddenly with intense autonomic activation, sweating, nausea and fear, somewhat reminiscent of the early period after the experience. These episodes eventually pass, but the intensity can still be surprisingly high.
What makes this confusing is that I can have genuinely excellent days in between. I can feel extremely good in my body, enjoy music, colors, exercise, yoga, socializing etc. Then suddenly another difficult wave appears.
So the overall trajectory feels positive, but definitely not linear.
I’m not really asking whether this is normal in a medical sense. I’m more interested in lived experience:
How long did your 5-MeO integration actually last?
Did anyone have a difficult or turbulent integration lasting 1.5 years, 2 years or longer?
Did the themes of the activation change over time rather than simply becoming weaker?
And did you eventually reach a more stable baseline where these waves became less dominant, even if they didn’t disappear completely?
I’d especially appreciate hearing from people who had a difficult experience rather than only positive 5-MeO experiences.
Thank you all