My Bad Trip journey

My Journey with 5-Meo-DMT

Before I share my experience with 5-MeO-DMT, it helps to explain how I came to be there in the first place.

I was an alcoholic throughout my twenties and became sober in 2007. Not long afterwards, in 2011, I discovered Holotropic Breathwork and never looked back. It completely changed the trajectory of my life.

For the first time, I felt whole.

I left my corporate job and spent the next decade immersed in personal growth and healing through countless modalities. During those years I got married, became a mother to two beautiful children, trained as a yoga teacher and death doula, and studied with incredible teachers in dream work, shamanism, animism, and mythic traditions. I also pursued training in more clinical approaches to personal development and mental health.

Yet throughout it all, Holotropic Breathwork remained my saving grace and eventually became my life’s purpose.

I began facilitating regular workshops in Mount Samson, Brisbane, and felt deeply fulfilled offering such a profound modality to others.

Yet around 2018, a troubling mantra started running through my mind:

"I hate my life."

Looking back, I can see I was exhausted. I was struggling in my relationship, raising two young children, and suffering from debilitating migraines that had started after the birth of my son. The pain was relentless. I often felt as though I was somehow being punished.

I carried an overwhelming sense of guilt and inadequacy as a mother, despite being deeply present and devoted to my children. Looking back now, I can see that I was actually a good mother, but at the time I couldn't see that.

Hoping to find some relief, I started attending Kundalini Yoga classes. I immediately loved it and became hooked, although unfortunately it did little to help my migraines.

It was there that I met another participant who told me about a group facilitating "Toad Ceremonies."

Up until that point, I had little interest in psychedelics. In fact, the late Tav Sparks, one of the directors of Grof Transpersonal Training, had advised me years earlier:

"Stay away from psychedelics while the breathwork is working for you."

Sorry, Tav. I wish I had listened.

When I researched 5-MeO-DMT, I discovered claims that it could help cure migraines.

That was all I needed to hear.

I prepared carefully. Having extensive experience with non-ordinary states of consciousness, I followed every recommendation, restricted my diet, fasted beforehand, and took the process seriously.

I felt both excited and nervous.

At the same time, the entire process felt secretive. The ceremonies operated underground. There were private emails, hidden groups, and an expectation of secrecy. I couldn't tell anyone exactly where I was going, and there was no mobile reception at the location.

Looking back, I can see how all of those factors unconsciously shaped the set and setting before I had even taken the medicine.

We arrived in the middle of nowhere at a property with a couple of demountable buildings. We were camping there for the weekend. The scenery was pleasant, with cows roaming through green paddocks, and initially it felt peaceful.

Then I heard it.

A man screaming.

The sound sent a bolt up my spine.

Immediately I thought:

"Oh no. What have I got myself into?"

I tried to reassure myself. After all, people scream during Holotropic Breathwork sessions too. But this felt different.

Something inside me knew it was different.

I met the main facilitator, a South African man, who looked at me and said:

"It's okay, Lynda. My son tried it for the first time and he's fine."

His son and partner were helping run the workshop, and I remember thinking that if he was willing to serve it to his own son, then surely it must be safe.

During the opening circle, we went around sharing our intentions.

When my turn came, one word came out of my mouth:

Liberation.

Given everything that followed, that word still stays with me.

After the opening circle, we were offered Hapé.

I had never tried it before and, to be honest, I didn't really want to. Yet there was a part of me that felt foolish for saying no. Everyone else seemed willing, and I didn't want to appear resistant or fearful before we'd even begun.

The tobacco burned intensely through my nose. My eyes watered instantly. My heart began racing.

I hated it.

It did not feel grounded or centered. It simply amplified the anxiety that was already building inside me.

As I sat there waiting for my turn with the medicine, I noticed there was very little explanation of what people might experience. There was no discussion about what support would look like if things became overwhelming. No explanation of how facilitators would respond if someone became frightened or disoriented.

Coming from a Holotropic Breathwork background, where preparation and support are considered absolutely essential, I found this concerning.

Still, I watched participant after participant receive the medicine. Most appeared to be having profound experiences. Some laughed. Some cried. Some seemed peaceful.

I told myself I would be fine.

Then it was my turn.

By this stage, my nervousness had become almost unbearable, but I knelt down and decided to go through with it.

The moment I inhaled, everything changed.

Instantly.

There were fractals everywhere. Brilliant geometric patterns exploding beyond anything I can adequately describe. There was also a sound, an impossible sound, overwhelming and all-consuming. It felt as though reality itself had been turned up to a volume beyond human capacity.

I felt myself falling backwards.

The lights, the noise, the intensity.

It was too much.

My immediate thought was:

"I'm going to die."

What happened during the next ten minutes remains difficult to explain. There are large sections I simply cannot account for.

My next clear memory was returning to awareness.

I was freezing.

My shirt was gone.

My body was soaked with water.

It was May and the air was cold.

I felt nauseous and disoriented.

Then I saw my friend.

She was walking nearby, crying.

A sudden thought exploded into my mind:

"We've been poisoned."

I became completely convinced that whatever we had taken was toxic and that we were dying.

I looked down at my hands.

They were wet, shrivelled, and pale.

"Shit. I'm fucked."

The fear was unlike anything I had ever experienced.

I looked around desperately for help.

The facilitators were standing nearby, lined up behind me.

When I asked for assistance, they looked away.

I couldn't understand what was happening.

Eventually, I was able to get the attention of one of the lead facilitators, the woman who co-ran the ceremonies.

I asked her if she would sit with me because I genuinely believed I was dying.

For a brief moment she sat beside me.

I immediately felt calmer.

The simple presence of another human being helped me settle.

But after telling me, "It's just the medicine," she stood up and walked away.

The fear returned.

Then, almost as quickly, it would dissolve.

For a few moments I noticed the beauty around me.

The sky was painted with a soft pink hue.

The sun felt warm against my skin.

Nature seemed impossibly beautiful.

A sense of peace swept through me.

Then another wave of fear would arrive and consume everything.

Thankfully, another participant eventually came and sat beside me.

He didn't analyse anything.

He didn't try to fix me.

He was simply present.

That simple act of human connection helped more than any intervention from the facilitators.

I was confused about their role.

Were they space holders?

Guides?

Sitters?

Observers?

At that point I genuinely didn't know.

I was simply relieved when I thought the experience was finally over.

Then I discovered we were expected to do it three times.

My heart sank.

I felt completely overwhelmed.

But everyone else seemed willing to continue, and part of me worried I might leave before finding whatever healing or insight I had travelled there to receive.

Perhaps the next round would contain the gold.

Perhaps I just had to push through.

So I agreed to go again.

The Second Session

The second experience was no less intense.

This time it felt more relational.

The fractals returned immediately, bright and overwhelming.

At some point I became convinced that the facilitators were talking about me.

I thought they were whispering that I had taken too much.

I thought they were discussing whether I was going to die.

The paranoia grew rapidly.

I remembered that nobody knew where I was.

I remembered the secrecy.

The hidden location.

The lack of phone reception.

I found myself thinking:

"They're going to bury me out here."

It sounds absurd now.

But in that state, it felt completely real.

Eventually I gathered the courage to ask another facilitator to sit with me.

She was wearing a soft dressing gown.

I remember the feeling of comfort that arose simply from her presence.

As she sat there, the entire sky transformed.

The Flower of Life appeared above me.

Clouds became vast pink waves that seemed to roll endlessly across the horizon.

Everything felt peaceful.

Sacred.

Beautiful.

Then she moved away.

Once again, the fear returned.

As I sat there alone, a different realisation began forming inside me.

I wasn't just frightened by the medicine.

I no longer felt safe within the container itself.

I kept comparing what was happening to my years of training and experience with Holotropic Breathwork.

The difference felt enormous.

In breathwork, there is careful preparation.

Consistent support.

Skilled sitting.

Clear frameworks for non-ordinary states.

Here I felt abandoned.

I remembered something the facilitator had said when I expressed my fear of losing my mind.

"You need to go in-sane. Into sane."

Instead of feeling reassured, I found myself questioning the depth of understanding behind statements like that.

At the time, it felt less like guidance and more like spiritual cliché.

The trust I had arrived with was beginning to crumble.

That night I developed a severe migraine.

I barely slept.

Lying awake under the night sky, I watched the moon shimmer and move.

I knew I wasn't fully grounded.

Reality still felt unstable.

Yet somehow, I still had one final session ahead of me.

And despite everything, a part of me continued believing:

"Surely it has to get better."

The third session proved to be the most challenging of all.

 

The Third Session

By the morning of the third session, I was exhausted.

I hadn't slept properly. I had spent most of the night battling a migraine while trying to make sense of everything that had happened. My nervous system felt frayed. Reality still seemed slightly altered, as though I wasn't entirely back in my body.

Part of me wanted to leave.

Another part of me kept thinking that perhaps I had come this far for a reason.

Perhaps the breakthrough was still waiting.

Perhaps the previous sessions had simply been clearing something out.

Those are the kinds of thoughts people have when they are desperate for relief.

So, despite every instinct telling me otherwise, I agreed to participate one final time.

This time, one of the facilitators asked me to stand before taking the medicine.

I remember feeling uneasy immediately.

As the effects began, the familiar distortions returned. Nature seemed to come alive around me. Everything moved and breathed. Colours intensified. Boundaries dissolved.

Then I looked at the lead female facilitator.

Suddenly, her face transformed.

She appeared demonic.

Not metaphorically. Not symbolically.

In that moment, she literally appeared as a demon standing in front of me.

Oddly, I laughed.

The image was so bizarre and so unexpected that laughter was my first response.

It didn't frighten me the way many of the other experiences had.

It simply felt strange.

I asked for the facilitator in the dressing gown to come and sit with me again. By this point she had become one of the only people there whom I associated with comfort and safety.

She sat quietly beside me.

As I looked into her eyes, I felt as though I could see entire universes within them.

It was one of the most beautiful moments of the weekend.

There was a profound sense of connection, wonder, and stillness.

For a brief period, everything felt okay.

Then the lead facilitator instructed her to move away from me.

The moment she left, something shifted.

A wave of shame washed over me.

Instantly.

As though I had done something wrong.

As though I had become too much.

Too needy.

Too difficult.

Too broken.

Looking back, I don't know whether that shame came from the interaction itself, from my altered state, or from old wounds being activated. What I do know is that it felt incredibly real.

I tried not to dwell on it.

Instead, my attention was drawn toward another vision unfolding before me.

I saw imagery that reminded me of Alex Grey's artwork, particularly Theologue and Connection. Interconnected faces and patterns appeared everywhere. Forms dissolved into one another. The boundaries between people, nature, and consciousness seemed fluid and alive.

It was breathtaking.

For a moment, I felt immersed in beauty.

The experience moved between terror and awe so rapidly that I couldn't find solid ground.

Just as I began surrendering into the imagery, I suddenly heard the sound of a singing bowl being struck near my head.

The facilitator was attempting to call me back.

The effect was immediate.

And disastrous.

The sound felt like an explosion inside my nervous system.

Within seconds I was plunged into one of the most intense panic attacks of my life.

My heart raced violently.

My chest tightened.

I became convinced I was having a heart attack.

I thought my heart was going to explode.

I thought I was going to die.

Once again, it wasn't the facilitators who helped me through it.

Another participant came and sat beside me.

No teachings.

No interpretations.

No spiritual explanations.

Just presence.

That simple human presence helped me slowly return to myself.

It was one of the most important lessons of the entire weekend.

What I needed most was not somebody explaining my experience.

What I needed was somebody willing to stay with me in it.

As the effects gradually subsided, I realised something had fundamentally changed.

The issue was no longer whether 5-MeO-DMT was powerful.

It unquestionably was.

The issue was whether power alone was healing.

For years I had worked within Holotropic Breathwork, a modality built upon preparation, safety, trust, and careful support for people entering non-ordinary states.

That weekend forced me to confront a difficult question:

What happens when an experience is profoundly powerful but the container holding it is not?

I left the ceremony carrying far more fear than clarity.

Far more confusion than liberation.

And yet, strangely, the real impact of those three sessions was only just beginning.

Because what followed over the coming months and years would challenge my sense of reality, my mental health, my relationships, and everything I believed I knew about healing.

The Aftermath

When I returned home, I felt angry about the entire experience.

At first, I thought the anger was the main issue. But before long, I realised something far more concerning was happening.

Every night when I lay down to sleep, I felt as though I was being sucked into a black hole.

The sensation is difficult to describe. It felt as though I was falling endlessly into some vast void. The moment I began drifting towards sleep, panic would surge through my body and jolt me awake.

Eventually, I became afraid of going to sleep altogether.

Night after night, I remained awake, terrified of what would happen if I let myself surrender.

I reached out to the facilitators and explained what I was experiencing. I told them I didn't feel grounded and raised my concerns about the way the ceremonies had been facilitated.

Their response shocked me.

They suggested I begin microdosing psilocybin or return and undertake an MDMA session with them.

By this point, I no longer felt safe with these people.

The last thing I wanted was another altered-state experience.

What I needed was support, understanding, and help integrating what had already happened.

Instead, I felt as though another medicine was being offered as the solution.

Something shifted for me at that moment.

Perhaps fairly, perhaps unfairly, I began to feel that my wellbeing was not their priority.

I started questioning whether this was really about healing at all.

Not long afterwards, I was removed from their Facebook group.

The people who had guided me into one of the most destabilising experiences of my life disappeared from it completely.

I felt abandoned during the stage I needed support the most.

The integration phase.

My counsellor at the time didn't know how to make sense of what I was experiencing. Eventually, she stopped working with me altogether.

Again, I found myself alone.

I searched desperately for help.

I reached out to therapists. I explored EMDR. I tried Internal Family Systems therapy. I read everything I could find.

Nothing seemed to touch the panic.

The fear lived inside my body.

It felt relentless.

Eventually, my physical health began deteriorating as well.

One day my heart rate reached 160 beats per minute while I was resting.

I was hospitalised.

Unfortunately, it would not be the last time.

Over the following years I was admitted to hospital approximately fifteen times.

Doctors attempted to manage my symptoms through medication, but despite everyone's best efforts, I still felt profoundly unwell.

Meanwhile, my life continued falling apart around me.

My marriage broke down.

I moved out of the family home.

The stress became overwhelming.

Unable to find relief, I turned back to the coping mechanism I had relied upon in my twenties.

Alcohol.

After more than a decade of sobriety, I found myself pulled back into addiction.

The shame of that period is difficult to put into words.

I had spent years helping others navigate healing and recovery, and now I felt as though I was watching my own life unravel.

Then things became even harder.

I became homeless.

At the same time, my former husband initiated legal proceedings to relocate our beautiful children overseas.

I was still struggling with the aftermath of the toad ceremony. I was still experiencing panic, fear, and instability. I was trying to survive without secure housing while simultaneously fighting the possibility of losing meaningful access to my children.

The weight of it all was crushing.

I felt suicidal.

I often found myself reflecting on the intention that had emerged from my mouth during that opening circle.

Liberation.

I remember thinking:

"Is this what liberation looks like?"

Because it felt as though I had lost everything.

My health.

My marriage.

My home.

My kids.

My career.

My sobriety.

My sense of safety.

My sense of self.

Everything.

And yet, somewhere within that darkness, a small opening appeared.

I stumbled across the work and training of Sean O'Carroll.

For the first time since the ceremony, something made sense.

Instead of being told I was spiritually resisting the experience, or that I simply needed another medicine, I was offered a framework that helped explain what had happened to me.

My symptoms made sense.

My panic made sense.

My fear made sense.

Most importantly, I began to understand that I was not alone.

I undertook one of Sean's trainings and later enrolled in a second course.

Those trainings provided something I had been searching for over many years:

A coherent framework for understanding difficult psychedelic experiences and the lasting effects they can have on people's lives.

For the first time, I felt validated.

I stopped viewing myself as broken.

I stopped believing I had somehow failed the experience.

I began understanding that what had happened to me deserved compassion, context, and skilled support.

Today, my deepest desire is to help normalise these experiences for others.

There are countless people carrying shame, confusion, fear, and isolation after difficult journeys through psychedelics and other non-ordinary states of consciousness.

Many suffer silently because they believe they are the only ones and feel apprehensive to reach out for help.

Many are told that their distress is a sign of spiritual failure rather than an understandable response to an overwhelming experience.

I want people to know they are not alone.

I want to help create language and understanding around challenging psychedelic experiences.

I want to offer the compassion and reassurance that I so desperately needed when my own world fell apart.

Because sometimes healing does not begin with another breakthrough.

Sometimes healing begins when someone sits beside you and says:

"What happened to you makes sense. You're not crazy. And you're not alone."