In Central and South America, some of the best known 5-MeO-DMT sources are Anadenanthera peregrina (yopo or cohoba) and Virola theiodora, both of which are traditionally harvested to make psychoactive snuff. It’s also found in the milky white venom of the Colorado River Toad (Bufo alvarius/Incilius alvarius) native to the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico.

In keeping with its ceremonial use among indigenous Amazonians, 5-MeO-DMT shows great promise in the treatment of certain medical conditions. Many people also find its effects to be personally useful or even life changing.

THERAPEUTIC USE

5–MeO–DMT and DMT or N,N-DMT is sometimes used alongside ibogaine treatment to help patients integrate what they’ve learned. they’re also routinely used to alleviate:

  • depression
  • anxiety
  • symptoms of PTSD
  • negative thought patterns
  • negative behavioral patterns
  • addiction

WHAT TO EXPECT

Effects come on strong, often with a loss of physical coordination and control. Users experience bright colors, moving environments, or recursive patterns, and perhaps even “environmental orbism” at higher doses. However, visual effects are limited. Unlike DMT, 5-MeO-DMT isn’t known for its visionary properties. The experience is more often described as a “perspective shift” characterized by physical, emotional, and conceptual effects.

One of the most common features of the 5-MeO-DMT experience is an enhancement of tactile awareness to the point of sensory overload. The body may also feel heavier. Intense emotions are typical.  It’s common to experience an overwhelming sense of oneness with the universe, or a sense of being outside of time and space while seeming to experience the totality of both. The concept of the ego as a separate entity is typically lost. Other effects include auditory hallucinations, and time distortion.

Inducing Transformative Experiences

The compound is clearly an example of the essence of transformative psychopharmacology, as it is well-known that this compound can be of great personally use, or even can lead to changing one’s perspective off life. 5-MeO-DMT induces mystical experiences, which has been suggested by a number of users to possibly lead to long lasting beneficial effects. The general common transpersonal effect is described as experiencing ‘an overwhelming sense of oneness with the universe, or a sense of being outside of time and space while seeming to experience the totality of both. The concept of the ego as a separate entity is typically lost. The latter is the major driver for transformative experiences. After taking the compound there is no way back into gaining control over the moment, and one is forced to let go of our grasping to the normal experienced reality. It is like creating a crash course into the essence of Advaita (Vedanta philosophy). In the Advaita one discovers during meditation that in the center of one’s consciousness there is not such a thing as an “ego”, but rather an egoless awareness, referred to sometimes as ‘the watcher’. The ego-dissolution induced by 5-MeO-DMT may also help to overcome the fear of death and bring about new inspiration for living in the now, without too much planning, fears and anxieties for the future, while letting loose of the past. In states of awareness free from the ego mystical insights may strike and act as a catalyst, transforming the person instantaneously. For instance, one such insight might be: ‘God is to the universe what I am to my body’, giving rise to the insight that I am a direct part on the divine, not even a part but an intrinsic aspect of it. Such insights are documented I many esoteric traditions, but experiencing it via a transpersonal state of awareness has a total different impact than reading about it in mystical texts.

Nowadays it is easy to find many testimonies of the internet, at Blogs and on YouTube, from people describing the transformative influences on their life after having taken a compound such as 5-MeO-DMT or related tryptamines. The power of transforming old fears, anxieties, projections and observations, leading to a fresh start and a letting go of old destructive social behavioral patterns, is clearly appreciated by many users. This all points to a deep wish for healing by participants of such healing rituals, and there should be more space and understanding for such healing aspects in modern medicine. Especially since within the philosophy of modern medicine it is often stipulated that although there is much attention for curing aspects it is also the healing aspects which bring satisfaction to people. Even on a deathbed healing remains possible, while reaching wholeness.