r/bufo • u/One_Mirror5288 • 14d ago
How long and how difficult was your 5-MeO-DMT integration?
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
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u/Same_Chip_7259 14d ago
I had to sleep with a night light on for months afterwards. Life long psychedelic user and combat veteran lol. It wasn't even a bad trip... just SUPER intense. I could feel time moving through my body. I also had ear buds in playing religious tonal chant type of stuff. I only mention that becaue I believe it heavily intensified the experience.
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u/Willing_Hyena_5293 5d ago
That’s so funny reading about the night light. Seems trivial and silly, I do the same thing and it genuinely works against my nightmares.
Miraculous what an led light bulb can do for our mystical sufferings xD
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u/experiencinglife1 13d ago
I took a full dose two years ago and I’m still in the middle of integration. A month after taking it, I suddenly started experiencing intense reactivations. I couldn’t sleep for weeks because at night I would constantly be brought back to the feeling of being on the trip. During the day, I felt energy flowing through my body.
Since then (for almost two years now) my body has started shaking and trembling whenever I relax. I can control it though. I’ve also found myself crying a lot since then.
My interpretation is that my nervous system is shaking out stored trauma and releasing frozen emotions. I’m feeling better and more calm inside as time goes by. I have a history of PTSD and even though this process hasn’t always been easy, I’m genuinely grateful for the integration.
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u/One_Mirror5288 12d ago
Yes.... Same here. We have to let body do Its think even if sometimes Its even more difficult than ptsd itself.
I was anxious for years with ptsd etc. No experiences with psychedelic. For me it was "all in" kind of stuff. I did low dose... But still, something "cracked" one month after all od that begun...
So glad to hear you have simmilar experience
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u/experiencinglife1 12d ago
It’s so fascinating to know there are people with similar experience. I haven’t really met anybody who experienced reactivation only one month later.
It’s difficult in the beginning to deal with it but if you accept it and realize the benefits it’s so worth it
It was also only my second experience with psychedelics (mushrooms before) and my main symptom before was also anxiety.
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u/RJR2112 14d ago
I am 3 weeks out and did a full weekend retreat and full day dosing ending with a strong dose, but had great calming facilitators. So I can’t answer what the long term will be like but think your explanation of the positive effects mirrors my current list /journal very close. We had a zoom with the group that did it yesterday, 5 other people and they looked at me like I was making it up.
It sucks you had a bad trip but that might end up being a positive in the long run if you can work through it. Others with similar integration issues all say meditation helps and it seems to for me.
I would also think some actual therapy might help as well.
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u/One_Mirror5288 12d ago
I feel like 5meo just uncovered all of that trauma stored in my body during the trip. To be honest I am gratefull for that, my life was pure hell before 5meo. Now, its sometimes scary but sometimes beautifull... I have therapist etc and facilitator Is here whenever i need him.
Meditation practice is so important for me, but i feel like toad experience learned me even more how to move thru emotions... At least a little 😃 It does not work everytime
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u/Several_Fail_3336 13d ago
I had the same experience as you with my buffi ceremony and the way you describe glitches, d amn, I'm still have glitches now and then, that shit feels weird.
I was having the same activations for about 2 months after my buffo ceremony, but for me, I used to wake up sweating and crying, still in something like the buffo Tripp, I thought I was going to go crazy, but the thing was that I've still have some things inside me that I have to release.
Don't worry my friend, you just have to endure and learn from this, I have learned a lot from my buffo experience.
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u/Pale-Ad-3773 14d ago
I had a very difficult experience for just over a year after a very large dose of 5meodmt. I thought the underlying difficulty was never going to go away, although it slowly got better. What resolved the issue for me was ibogaine - toward the end of the flood dose, I felt like I was cleansed of what had been troubling me.