What’s The Dose of DMT? .DMT is extremely potent — only a very small dose is necessary to have a profound impact on perception and thought. The dose depends on the type of DMT being used, as well as the mode of administration.
Inhalation and injection require the smallest doses, while oral and insufflation require much larger doses to produce similar effects.
It should also be noted that in order for oral DMT to work, an MAO inhibitor should be used at the same time. Ingesting pure DMT without an MAO inhibitor will have little to no effect on the body.
| Type of DMT | Oral Ingestion | Insufflation (Snorting) | Inhalation (Smoking or Vaping) |
| N,N-DMT | N/A | 15–50 mg | 10–25 mg |
| Synthetic 5-MeO-DMT | N/A | 8–15 mg | 5–12 mg |
| Toad Venom (5-MeO-DMT) | N/A | N/A | 30–60 mg |
| 4-AcO-DMT | 8–20 mg | 15-25 mg | N/A |
| Ayahuasca | 0.6–0.85 mg/kg DMT equivalent | N/A | N/A |
What Does DMT Feel Like?
What a question. If you ask anybody who’s used DMT what it feels like, you’re likely to get inundated with stories involving death and rebirth, separation from reality, contact with otherworldly beings, and altered perception of time.
We asked our readers to submit their DMT experiences in order to better understand how DMT feels like. What we learned is that the DMT experience is infinitely random. Everybody’s experience is completely different.
If you’re interested in reading some user experiences of people using DMT, check out some of the posts in the /r/psychonaut Reddit — such as this one involving alien doctors.
The effects of DMT can be intense. Your experience can range from being profoundly positive to terrifying.
Most people who use DMT consider it to be one of the most significant experiences of their life — often prompting a major shift in thinking. People have changed careers, quit drugs and alcohol, or moved abroad as a direct result of using DMT.
Others have experienced scary or uncomfortable visions of alien abduction or ego death.
While the effects of DMT are short (especially 5-MeO-DMT), the user often experiences a decoupling with time during the trip. It’s not uncommon for someone to come out of a 10 minute DMT trip after experiencing what feels like a lifetime (or several lifetimes) within the trip itself.
Common experiences from DMT include:
- Distortions in color, sound, and texture
- Fractal or kaleidoscope vision
- Light trails or double vision
- Out-of-body experiences
- Alien abduction or contact with otherworldly beings
- Ego death and dissolution
- Altered perception of time
- Unexplainable coincidences
How Long Do the Effects of DMT Last?
DMT itself has a very short duration of effects. It’s rapidly metabolized and removed from the body by the joint efforts of the liver and kidneys.
Smoked or injected DMT only lasts about 30 minutes before concentrations drop so low it no longer has any effect on the body. You’ll usually start to feel the effects of DMT in these forms within a few seconds, which peak around the 10-minute mark. You may lose consciousness for a few minutes before being forced back to reality a few minutes later, almost completely sober.
Oral forms of DMT, such as ayahuasca, last much longer because of the added MAO inhibitor that comes along with this form of the drug. MAO is required to metabolize DMT, so blocking the effects of this enzyme prevents it from being metabolized. The duration of effects come down to the duration of the MAO inhibitor, more so than the duration of effects from DMT.
Ayahuasca usually takes about an hour to take effect, peaks by around 90 minutes, and then slowly taper off over the course of about 6 hours.
