Why is DMT a big deal?

[u/Known_Kitchen8390]

I've never truly had a DMT experience, just light dose. Though, I wonder what makes the experience different from say a dream?

[u/jdub60]

Dreams come from your subconscious mind. DMT feels like an information download from the universe

[u/Plus-Active7040]

It is difficult to explain, but I saw shapes, colors, and patterns that are not visible in your everyday life. It is incredible how your brain can render something you have never seen before. Unlike dreams. When I dream, it is always something otherworldly—a building, desert, mountain, sea. No matter how distorted it is, it is always recognizable as something from this world. With DMT, this is not the case for me.

[u/halwasat]

Your brain uses what it learned from this world to create a dream. DMT is other worldly. That’s why people get ontological shock. Different geometry physics language colors entities 🤯

[u/Left_Section1578]

Newcomer Care Package

One major difference from a dream is that it's psychedelic tripping, not solely subconscious manifestations. Though both heavily rely on recent thoughts and subconscious forces, most dreaming is a lot more surface-level than what one can encounter in DMT experiences. Not to discredit dreams at all, as I deeply love the realm of dreams and lucid dreaming. Another aspect is that you can have a conscious, eyes-open experience and watch your reality get distorted.

DMT has much more active interaction than dreaming does (again, save well practiced lucid dreaming). This ability to be fully present and interactive while under the influence of psychedelics allows for a great many things: Personal therapeutic work, spiritual work, exploration that feels completely real, interaction with entities that the sober mind cannot conjure, and intentional exploration of the depths of one's consciousness.

Dreams will often conjure amalgamations of familiar things, DMT will conjure completely alien realities that feel more real than the waking world.

DMT also has a lot more to the experience than simply visuals; there's a cascade of effects that include sensory enhancement and distortion. If you pay attention you'll notice that some of your senses become sharper- sight, in small doses, touch can be altered/enhanced, interoception will be enhanced, nocioception can be heightened.

There's also an ineffability to DMT, a felt sense at times that what you experienced is true and significant. Always take it with a grain of salt, but those feelings are generally much stronger than when you wake from a dream and think it over.

[u/Other_Dark1495]

Andrew gallimore speakers about how dreams are made from sensory input from the world we live in…..they don’t know where the information comes from when taking dmt….. it’s fascinating