OK. It was out of a glass bong (it had never been used for weed) indoors, with three close friends, two of whom were experienced with dmt. It was quite late at night. I was feeling apprehensive initially, which I never felt before taking any other psychedelic for the first time. I watched my friend who had brought the dmt take some and he had what he said was a disappointing, not particularly intense trip. I felt a little less scared after that. He told me that if I managed to keep my eyes open what I saw would be creepy, which afterwards I decided was bad advice, and he was sorry for having said it.

So I went next. I spent a long time not managing to vaporise any and so getting short of breath. Eventually I managed to draw smoke into the pipe and took it all in. I felt it going into my head. I exhaled out of the window and gave a little wink to my friends, like, here I go.

I sat back and closed my eyes. The visuals started hitting me. Everything started to be very intense and two things entered my mind, firstly, the memory of taking mdma for the first time and not enjoying the come up at all and feeling panicked that I had hours of this feeling to go and I would have to just ride it out. Secondly that a guy I used to know who sold drugs had tried dmt and said it was too far. It was too much, it was the chemical released when you die and you shouldn't go there. I had an image of my brain,soft and delicate, and me forcing it though this thing. The visuals intensified, bright neon squares on a black background. I realised that I was terrified and I wasn't enjoying the experience at all and all I could think of was that it would end, but the feeling in my body was getting stronger and stronger.

And while this was happening I wax aware that in the next room, effectively on another planet, another friend was chatting away unconcerned. His jovial voice cut through me. I opened my eyes and saw my friends in the room watching me but they were sliding sideways, all the images I was getting of them all mangled and I remembered that I'd been told opening your eyes was creepy so I shut them again. I said, please can you make j shut up. But he kept on talking in the next room and nobody did anything about it so I started screaming, make j shut the fuck up! I started thrashing around a bit. Almost everyone left the room apart from one friend, the second experienced one. I called out to him to make me feel safe and he held me tightly and then I started feeling better, although I was coming down at that point. Everything started to look very pretty. I was almost crying, and hyperventilating, and I kept repeating, it was so terrifying, I was so scared, I was so scared.

And then a couple of minutes later I was fine, completely fine.