What is it like to take DMT?

That’s tricky. “Much of the experience is ineffable because it seems to access parts of my brain that I don’t have human language to describe,” said Amy Shula, 40, a Denver-based clinical research program manager. 

Shula said that she’s smoked or inhaled DMT around 20 times total. Like Bell, she said every DMT experience is unique, but she still recalled aspects of her first trip.

“There are levels to it,” she said. “After the first hit, my body gets very relaxed and colors get very vivid.” The second inhale added new layers of experience. “I feel weightless, as if I’m in water but someone or something is holding me,” she said. “And then it’s as if I’m looking at a geometric matrix—a somewhat transparent matrix that encompasses everything.”

Shula said she usually tries to inhale and hold three or four hits, but the force of the trip often prevents her from getting there. At a certain point, the world around her is gone. “I go into a kind of hyperspace, not like a tunnel, but like I’m moving through space at lightspeed, and seeing colors and shapes that I’ve never seen before,” she said. “There’s a sense of oneness with everything—like I’m the universe experiencing itself.”

Other users describe similar sensations. “I died, or at the very least, my soul left my body and arrived in what can only be described as a divine realm,” said Tim Leonard, 39, a Detroit-area entrepreneur. “I saw a translucent human skull with an active brain emitting colors and energy. The brain was connected to the heart, which was also bursting with color.”