DOSE: T+ 0:00	1 hit	smoked	Salvia divinorum	(dried)
T+ 0:20	1 hit	smoked	Salvia divinorum	(dried)
T+ 0:20		smoked	Salvia divinorum	(extract)

BODY WEIGHT:

180 lb

Mindset & Setting: I have anxiety and I suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder. Typically I will use an entheogen to perform a sort of "reset" every month or few months. After a trip, I feel as if my stresses have disappeared, and my mind is more clear. I meditate often, at least once per day with varying success.

I was not a particularly spiritual person until 1. A good friend introduced me to Tool, A Perfect Circle, and Pink Floyd, and 2. I was suggested to try LSD. From there, I continued to experiment with entheogens until I found myself with Salvia Divinorum plain leaf as well as a mid-concentration extract. The Seasonal Affective Disorder has been making me feel steadily for sad (and without good reason) in general, more stressed, and unmotivated. The days grow shorter until the 21st. While I enjoy the night sky, there is no biological substitute for the feeling that more hours of sunlight provide.

My setting is in late Fall. Snow from a recent storm has just finished melting away. It was a sunny day and about 14 degrees C. I live in a nice home, and this is where the particular experience takes place.

Preparations made: I have prepared as well as one could for a Salvia experience. While I've been told that nobody can truly prepare for a Salvia experience, I have not found this to be entirely true. There are several things a person can do to prepare their mind and body for an experience as... weird? as Salvia is.

My preparations in order of importance were the following:

Experimenting with other compounds extensively beforehand. LSD heroic doses (and even up to the 950 micrograms I've tried) are completely inadequate points of comparison to Salvia. The sheer intensity of Salvia exceeds my greatest and most terrifying experiences on LSD even when combined with mushrooms. This is not, however to say that Salvia is only terrifying and scary. If properly prepared, the experience can be life-changing in a positive way.

Becoming comfortable with every aspect of the feelings that other entheogens give me, and excited by seeing fractals and whatever else I typically see when I trip. Once I was comfortable being uncomfortable, and excited by visual and auditory hallucinations provided by my entheogenic guides, I had made good way in preparing for a Salvia experience.

Seeking to answer an important question or set of questions, and writing them down where I can see them as I leave and come back from a trip. This can be the hardest part of preparation because at the times when I most need the guidance of entheogens, I am sometimes least capable of seeing what questions in life I need answered. I simply need help and don't know how or why. Salvia is an intimately introspective experience, though it would also connect me to the external at a certain threshold as well. It is for this reason that I very deeply and intently contemplated what is right and wrong in my life, and what guidance I would most need to help me grow and move forward.

Finally, the typical set and setting. Making sure that I had a trip sitter, plenty of time to internalize the experience and lessons learned, comfortable temperature and a VERY familiar environment. Home is always best. Drinking plenty of water, meditating or relaxing without stimuli beforehand, etc.

Dosage: 1gram dried, unfortified Salvia leaf and 1/100th gram of 20x fortified Salvia leaf smoked.

The initial dose was an approximate 1/2 gram unfortified leaf smoked with a bic lighter held above the leaf and pulled into the leaves for the entire duration of inhalation. I got a mild body high and waiting exactly 20 minutes before re-packing the other 1/2 gram unfortified and .01gram fortified leaf and smoking it with the same technique as the first bowl. I used a mini glass pipe. It was not a water pipe.

I did not take any other prescription or OTC medication the previous 72 hours, nor do I typically consume OTC or prescription medication or marijuana, etc. before trying a new substance.

The actual experience:

I took the first pull of unfortified leaf, and what followed was nothing for about 20 seconds. I went and sat down in a comfortable spot knowing I planned to wait 20 minutes before taking the full dose. I felt what many describe as pulling and twisting, as if gravity were changing its source and direction in a rhythmic motion around my body. This was a very calm feeling that did not induce anxiety. I noticed a bit of a clammy feeling and being slightly colder than usual. Overall, the body load was similar to a threshold dose of Mushrooms. The headspace was excited, slightly nervous (as a result of experimenting with an entheogen I heard was infamous for its intensity) and absolutely engrossing. I felt as if my mind was able to process what stimuli were around me, however, I also felt as if I was somewhere else thinking about the possibilities of entheogens in a general. Are they chemical portals to the afterlife, simply a strong delusion and hallucination, where will I go, what will I do when the next dose is taken? Things like this kept going through my head. Finally, I close my eyes and saw a flower. The next part was not an out of body experience, I knew where I was, felt the comfy seat underneath me, etc. What I saw, however, was my body shooting upward and out of my house and into space in a span of time that at least felt like 1 or 2 seconds. Once there I saw the Earth, very blue with clouds crawling over the United States West to East before noticing a very saturated-color yellow and red serpent that was very similar to google images of Aztec Serpents. The serpent had a playful and friendly nature about him, long, flowing whiskers, and he swam through space from the top right of my vision to the bottom left and stopped. He looked at me and spoke (his voice was my own, oddly.) and said "look" while his very thin but appropriately-sized left arm pointed to the Earth. I looked back at the Earth and it glowed a brighter blue before changing quickly to a dark pink which then became a lighter gradient toward the outer edge of the sphere. In a relatively quick change, the now dark and light pink Earth grew flower petals which began to spin, contract and expand. The petals became slightly mirrored. I opened my eyes and saw no more visuals. It was beautiful, like a very intense closed-eye visual from LSD. I waited there in my comfy spot until 20 minutes were up.

Finally I went to take the second dose. I felt as if my whole body weighed 1/4th what it used to. It was like I could carry a thousand pounds on my back and still walk for miles, though I did not feel energized so to do.

I took the second dose, and after exhaling, I immediately felt the urge to laugh. For some reason, I felt it necessary to resist the urge to laugh and didn't. I felt my legs becoming slightly numb, and quickly walked back to my comfy spot. I sat in a very relaxed position with my feet up and started feeling a much stronger sense of gravity twisting and pulling. I laid my head back, and thought "Here it is. It's happening." Very quickly thereafter, I noticed my peripheral vision beginning to blur and then melt. The best description of the melting is throwing water on wet paint, but all of reality was the wet paint. My cat jumped on my lap and I hugged her. I felt lost, like if I suddenly woke up in a forest I'd never seen. I tried to figure out where I was and thought "you're in your house." Oddly enough my next thought was "Where is your house?" And then my entire field of vision melted away beginning at the peripheral and finally everything disappeared, revealing blackness behind it. At the same time, I was playing Shakira's Whenever, Wherever. All audio from the waking world disappeared. I was nowhere. I didn't experience anything else visually in this state, but I remember thinking the name of one of my friends who is usually with me when I try something new. I felt very scared, but I also heard "you're okay" repeated to me non-verbally. It was like telepathy as if someone was telling me directly that I was okay. I had no sense of time, and in fact, I found out later that I had a very weird lack of sense of time during this.

My cat meowed, and it sounded like a very low-pitched meow that raise in frequency until it became her regular high-pitched meow. Suddenly, I came back to the waking world and I was looking right at her. There was another cat head inside of her mouth also meowing. (Sounds scary or disturbing, but it was rather comical and cute.)

I sat for several minutes trying to get my bearing and integrate this experience so to speak. I noticed almost immediately though that I had been in this black space for just short of 6 minutes, though it felt at the time to only be 30-45 seconds. (I tried throughout the experiment to be very conscious of time.) In all, I would say that the experiences were profound, the former more so than the latter. I waited for a half hour while doing some housework and cleaning before heading out for work. While on the way to work, I felt a very deepened closeness to the reality of our fleeting time on Earth, or in this waking life in general before we go on to an important afterlife. I put all of the visuals and feelings into the context of my prepared questions and life situation and came to a personal interpretation that in our waking lives, we are all sent to perform a role and to enlighten a higher consciousness to which we will be reconnected upon death. It is our role in our waking lives to live as we believe we should to best contribute to the meaningfulness and understanding of the waking life experience. Upon death, we have the sum of knowledge provided to this higher consciousness and disembark again to live waking life again and again into eternity. We live both to learn and teach, not about college, technical skill or knowledge alone, but to amass the sum of answers of all possible human situations and insights. (Sounds far-fetched, but I've left out one crucial visual/conversation that occurred, so there is more to the context that made me feel this way)

I've never been particularly spiritual, nor do I now consider these strong feelings to be fact or correct representation of life and afterlife, but it certainly has changed how I think about theology, life and afterlife forever.

Three days later, I feel highly motivated, clear-headed and refreshed, happier and spiritually awakened.

TLDR: Smoked Salvia leaf and extract, talked to divine space dragon and saw world bloom. World melted away and established deep belief in a profound and meaningful afterlife of truth and bliss. Would recommend with correct preparation, set and setting. Also, having a cat may help, lol!

Exp Year: 2018	ExpID: 112725
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 27
Published: May 28, 2020	Views: 1,767
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Salvia divinorum (44), Meditation (128) : Personal Preparation (45), Therapeutic Intent or Outcome (49), First Times (2), Small Group (2-9) (17)