My Journey With 5-MeO-DMT
By Jaden Rae
Disclaimer: We do not encourage illegal activity. Check with and adhere to your local laws. We do not claim psychedelics or plant medicine to be a substitute for professional medical care. Always consult with your doctor. The goal of this article is to promote safety and education.
Life has a curious way of catapulting us into uncharted territories, doesn’t it? One moment you’re going about your days, wearing familiar grooves in your consciousness, and the next, you’re flung headfirst into an experience so profoundly impactful, it leaves you forever changed. We’ve all had these encounters—cross-country moves, becoming a parent, the loss of a loved one, finding your soulmate—in these moments, our vision shifts, and the world feels different somehow. My most life-changing moment didn’t involve a person or a place, but a meeting with a molecule—a substance known as 5-MeO-DMT.
Along the path of my psychedelic research, I learned that 5-MeO-DMT was known to provide a more potent and deeply spiritual experience than traditional DMT. While traditional DMT generally comes from plants like the Mimosa hostilis, 5-MeO-DMT is most commonly sourced from the gland secretions of certain toads. This medicine is sacred to many, especially in Mexico where the Bufo Alvarius toad is found.
In time, fate brought the best facilitator I could ask for in the form of Steve Urquhart, founder of The Divine Assembly. TDA is a spiritual community that believes in using magic mushrooms as a way to connect with the Divine. Protected by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, they legally use psilocybin as a sacrament within their practice. Their faith contains no dogma and their members are encouraged to hold ceremonies under the guidance of the community or on their own. TDA regularly holds gatherings where members can come together, socialize, and if they so choose, utilize sacrament at will.
When the right moment presented itself, Steve organized a beautiful space and ceremony that served in reverence of the medicine’s sacred nature. It was nighttime, and I was led into a dimly lit bedroom with candles all around. A friend was also present and she and Steve started by clearing the room with sage and prayer. They sat and prayed with me, as well as over the medicine. Then, all three of us gave thanks for the medicine and for the living creature it was derived from.
My friend began singing to me. I didn’t recognize the song, but her voice was angelic and serene. I put the pipe to my lips and inhaled deeply. The DMT tasted like mothballs dipped in mothballs, but as the smoke filled my lungs, the taste turned to a heavy, musky, aged forest floor. If wisdom had a flavor, this would be it.
I could feel the medicine traveling, swirling through my body, all the way down to my tippy toes. It was at this moment that I was pulled into another realm at an incredible velocity, through a tunnel of starlike streaks very similar to Star Trek’s warp speed. The medicine made its way to the ends of my long, jet-black flowing hair with a tingling energy, and once it had consumed my full being, the hyperspace feeling abruptly ceased. Every cell in my body exhaled a sigh and I was left floating in space, cradled by the chi of the universe.
Following this cellular exhale, any thoughts, worries, expectations all dissipated and I embraced nothingness. That might sound scary, and in many cases, being consumed by the void is, but this was different. The blackness surrounding me wasn’t simply black. It was deep, rich, iridescent, interdimensional purple, almost holographic in nature, and it was this slight nuance that made the darkness peaceful and magical. The iridescence began swirling, and I knew I was on the edge of the galaxy. Within that planetary tornado, I also became aware of the vastness of the universe and acknowledged that everything—the galaxy, the stars, Earth, everyone I’d ever loved—existed within this sea of space.
The voice of my friend’s singing echoed into a choir of women, and I realized these were the collective voices of my ancestors. I witnessed some as portraits, others as working the fields. Some wore the slender, embroidered traditional silk garments of the Qing Dynasty known as cheongsam. Women of the Shang Dynasty stood boldly, the draping sleeves of their long, full Hanfu dresses billowing in the wind. Present were women from every dynasty, some as young as babies, others weathered with age—each wrinkle in their faces held the stories of preceding generations. I had the sense that each of these women were immortalized in time, their image an indicator of who they were when they crossed the mortal plane. They had endured the mid-century’s great famine, the Taiping Civil War, the Haiyuan earthquake and the Yellow River flood. Generations upon generations, a million intertwined threads in the tapestry of my life, and I was at the loom, inspecting the lineage of each one. I could feel their love, sense their energy, knew their failures, endured their hardships, celebrated their triumphs, sat in their gratitude, and absorbed their wisdom. I realized that all of it, everything they were, all of their experiences, every bit of their wisdom, united to birth me. All of their love, joy, sorrow, pain, perseverance, and energy had accumulated to create me. It was me.
The most profound connection I experienced was that of my maternal grandmother, Po Po, who passed from a stroke at the mahjong table. Though she helped raise me in Hong Kong when I was very young, I didn’t get the chance to know her the way I would have liked, and could never remember her outside of family pictures. But now, here she was before me, guiding my way.
“You’re not alone,” she spoke as the images of past generations flooded my mind. Her Cantonese tongue plucked my heart like a zither, and despite my unfamiliarity with the language, I understood every word.
“You’re never alone. The collective power of these women fuels everything you are. You need not rely solely on your wit to solve your struggles. We are here for you. Call upon the strength of your ancestors for guidance and we will lift you up.”
This was a message I so desperately needed to hear.
DMT journeys are relatively short—about 7 to 8 minutes—and it became clear that my time in this realm was coming to an end. When it came time for me to return, I knew I needed something to ground myself, something that would help me make a safe transition back to the familiar expanse we refer to as “reality”. I focused on the ancestral voices all around me, grasped them tight, and wrapped them securely around my hands. The choir transformed back into one singular, angelic voice—that of my friend—and I allowed it to pull me peacefully through the swirling iridescent tunnel of the galaxy while a cosmic breeze caressed my face. Safely on the other side, I remained with my eyes closed for a few more moments, hoping to extend the journey, but the medicine had gracefully laid me back into the safe arms of my friend before it departed.
I opened my eyes. My friend was performing reiki on me while Steve continued to keep guard at the foot of the bed, his back turned to me. It seemed a different room than the one I’d been in just moments before my journey. No, I realized. I was seeing it through new eyes.
After much reflection, I realize I’d spent my whole existence withdrawing from life and hiding in fear to escape the pain housed within. The whole time, I’d been searching endlessly for an answer and a purpose outside of myself. In fact, alcohol hadn’t been my only vice. It was part of a greater addiction—the search for a Band-Aid profound enough to “fix” me. In an effort to numb the pain, I turned to an entire bottle of wine each day. In an effort to be whole, I spent years with my nose in self-help books, courses, and all the motivational mumbo-jumbo I could stomach. In fact, I had a collection of spiritual books I didn’t even read, convinced somehow that I could simply add them in my Amazon cart, and buy my way into enlightenment. But now, in this moment, I knew that I was so much more. The energy and wisdom of the generations of women before me coursed through my veins. It was my answer and my purpose. Who was I to disrespect my ancestors and waste a single day living in fear or engaging in destructive behavior?
Along with these epiphanies, I realized the phrase, “It runs in the family” is truer than we think. The intergenerational trauma we carry is not merely the result of our parents. It’s tied to a long lineage of multiple generations before they were even a thought. Likewise, it makes sense that it may be passed on, not just to our children, but to our children’s children’s children for generations to come. To acknowledge this is to ask ourselves… what unhealed wounds am I passing on to future generations? ****
Aligning with this truth, I reframed the question: What would I like to pass on?
The medicine had helped me understand that my life-long curse was that I couldn’t hear myself. I couldn’t quiet the noise and the static of everyday life, responsibilities, stress, anxiety and depression. I couldn’t turn it off. What psychedelics gave me was the ability to hit the mute button and finally be able to tune into my inner monologue and the wisdom of those who came before. It provided me a profound sense of connectedness to my being and the capacity to trust in myself as the only necessary source for the answers I so desperately needed. Metaphorically, I’d been frantically scouring the house for my keys while they were in my hand the whole time. Everything I needed was in me all along.
About the Author:
Jaden Rae is a Las Vegas resident and best-selling author of the Microdosing Guide And Journal. She hosts a free online community at MagicAndGlow.com, where she leads virtual grow-a-longs and provides tools to enhance emotional well-being, find meaning, create magic, nourish souls and enrich lives. Jaden has been featured on the Today Show, The Early Show, Martha Stewart Radio, Fox Business News and more. You can find her on Instagram @magic.and.glow
