It's so odd how there's a near-universal reporting of small elf- or dwarf-like creatures from that drug. Is there any proposed mechanism of action for how it works?
Priming seems likely. Most experience reports I've read describe the "entities" as ineffable, so I have to think the language used by McKenna is more a cultural staple/fallback than a consistent hallucination unique to DMT.
I'm sure that contributes to a lot of it, as well as experiences others have with harder drugs. But from my research, many people reported this experience without ever being aware that others have experienced it. I think there must be some factor unique to DMT that can create experiences like this.
My running theory is that the machine elves from Dimension 9 are actually a heavily modified perception of one's self. This is purely just based only on research done in my basement with DMT, so nothing approaching academic research, but I think those little people are actually our "mind's eye" perception of ourselves, just twisted by the DMT. Like when you imagine yourself walking through a hallway to go to lunch, as people sometimes do, you're "seeing" that image of yourself. I think this is what triggers most of the creature visions. Maybe I'm not making sense, but this is the first time I've tried to put that idea into words.
That makes sense, but were you already aware of the "DMT elf" mythology before taking the drug? If so, that could've influenced a lot of your experience.
Otherwise, I think that could be a plausible explanation. Though I've read about people actually talking to the elves, or hearing things from them, which would be weird if the elves were themselves.
The very first time I did DMT -- this is way before stuff like Erowid -- I was not aware of that, no, and I did sense what seemed to me to be some kind of otherworldly presence. In the times since, I have read all about it on Erowid but still haven't seen specifically the "machine elves" but have had similar "encounters". The presence was more aggressive and "dark" when I smoked it versus drinking ayahuasca (from a mix of B.Caapi and P.Viridis). Also sometimes I feel a similar (but different) "presence" when smoking salvia divinorum.
Just for clarity, someone told me that 5-MEO-DMT is sometimes mistakenly called "DMT", but it is totally different from the "machine elves" N,N-DMT version: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5-MeO-DMT
Same here.Extremely strange parallel dimension and some other entity, but not the sort of alien companions I hear about from other people. It might be that I'm very unsocial and a bit of mystic to begin with, my brain has always seemed to be wired quite differently from most other people.
