[donut2d]

The most common emotions were "joy (65%), trust (63%), surprise (61%), love (59%), kindness (56%), friendship (48%), and fear (41%) during the encounter experience, with smaller proportions reporting emotions such as sadness (13%), distrust (10%), disgust (4%), or anger (3%)." Interestingly, 58 percent of respondents said the being also had an emotional response, almost always a positive one.

Wow!

[KingFelix]

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[non-entity]

Wow I wonder if this is just luck in the respondents having a good setting / proper preparation, etc. or innate effects of the drug. Ive had other psychedelics kick my ass more than a few times with anxiety / paranoia.

[munchhausen]

The difference to other psychedelics is the nature of the DMT trip - it is extremely "fast", short, and overwhelming. There simply is too little "idle" time in the trip (none, actually) for the rational mind to start developing paranoia or anxiety about what is happening.

It also helps that the whole thing is so otherworldly, the thinking mind is simply awed into silence. It takes a while before you could even begin to develop a conceptual interpretation of what is happening, and by then the whole thing is over and you are back to your sober self.

With other, long-acting psychedelics, there is plenty of time and opportunity for the mind to develop its own "spin" on the experience, and produce anxiety. Not so with DMT - it's like being shot out of a cannon and then coming back to earth just as fast.

It sounds terrifying and it is, when you're reflecting on it outside of the container of the trip. Somehow, while it's happening, you don't even have time to think about how terrifying it is, and as a result of that it ends up being OK. Tells you a lot about the nature of anxiety, really.

[gavinray]

See, that logically sounds like the outcome you'd expect but the time dilation from enough DMT can make the experience feel like hours, or potentially even an eternity if you start looping or time stops.

You are no longer player by the normal rules, so you can throw deterministic time measurements out of the window lol.

[munchhausen]

Might be for someone, but I never had that experience. All my experiences have been very very rapid, and there was certainly no sense of being somewhere for hours or even minutes.

Really I can't even speak of time in this context. It felt more like a series of moment instants, and usually, before I even located "myself" in the experience, it was over.

I'm going to be bold here and say that if someone speaks of experiencing time dilation or loops on DMT, it is more of a question of the rational, linear mind, trying to make sense of a timeless, or non-linear experience of time (which it is not able to comprehend), by imposing familiar, linear concepts on it post-facto.

So, someone might speak of a time loop after the trip, but while you're actually having a DMT breakthrough experience, there simply is no "observer" there to generate the thought "oh, I am stuck in a time loop here". Therefore, the feeling of anxiety or terror, which might normally be associated with such a finding, will not arise.

[loceng]

I just want to add that taking DMT vs. say Ayahuasca in a ceremony setting doesn't mean any potential emotional processing or anxiety that you may feel may simply be restricted, delayed, and processed at a different time - or perhaps never processes as deeply as it otherwise would in an Ayahuasca ceremony.

[y-c-o-m-b]

The potential for anxiety and paranoia are heightened for me since I took cannabis edibles and had a horrendous reaction where I was 99% sure I was dying from a heart-attack or lack of oxygen. I took it at 11AM and I was still slightly high the next afternoon, so it lasted well over 24 hours! It was the worst experience of my life with any drug. This is coming from someone that smoked Salvia over 150 times in one year... I was basically doing it every other day. I only had one bad trip on salvia. I also did shrooms at a rave once and while that experience wasn't great nor horrible, it was just exhausting and I wanted it to be over after a couple of hours. All of this leaves me with a desire to try DMT but a huge fear of dealing w/ the same anxiety and paranoia I got from the edible cannabis ordeal.

[leptons]

You just had too much THC. Edibles are nothing to mess around with - you have to know your dose. You have to know how you will react to the dose. You have to work your way up with a known source to gauge your reaction to it. If you just eat whatever cookie someone hands you, you're almost certainly going to have a bad time.

[kls]

I have the same reaction to THC, smoked the stuff once, and convinced my friends that I was actually dying so they dumped me off at the hospital. Never touched the stuff again. If you have anxiety issue THC can spike them and cause you to go into a full blown panic attack and a full blown panic attack when you are stoned is one of the worst experiences you can have. The one I had was 1000 times worse than any panic attack I have had before or after.

[dalbasal]

Possibly responsible for many of the reported differences between dmt (especially traditional oral varieties such as ayahuasca) and lsd or psilocybin. The latter are often used in recreational (and often irresponsible) settings, while dmt is often treated more seriously.

Even in a controlled test, expectations probably still play a meaningful role. Possible ethical issues with randomizing the active test.

[non-entity]

That's a good point as well, but I wonder if this will change over time as DMT seems to become more known and talked about.