BODY WEIGHT:

145 lb

I've been experimenting with Salvia divinorum for a few months now. At the same time I've been doing extensive research into psychedelics (Terence McKenna, Aldous Huxley, Daniel Siebert, trip reports, and piles of stuff I've downloaded from the internet). Nothing one reads quite prepares one for the novelty of the Salvia condition. Nor does doing Salvia, reading about others doing it, reading about tripping in general, doing Salvia again, and reading and talking about it more necessarily prepare you for your next trip. The Salvia state is utterly unknown.

I've done what are probably medium doses via smoking, chewing reconstituted dried leaves (this is rather economical), and using the so-called Goddess Extract that Daniel Siebert offers (no better than chewing dried leaves, but way more expensive). Chewing fresh leaves is the ideal.

My best, though short-lived experiences are from smoking simple dried Oaxacan leaf (which I purchased cheaply online). You get a stronger dose from smoking it, as it is dispersed instantly. I've smoked it a dozen times or more, so I am speaking retrospectively. Each time I do Salvia I am enveloped in a very specific and consistent condition of being.

First, my technique for smoking. I created a large bowl for my bong out of aluminum foil, as you need to take very large hits that completely fill the lungs (it doesn't work for me to do multiple small hits). I crumple some leaf into the bowl, loosely so it can ignite easily. You will need to get the hot smoke. Don't worry about wasting the leaves, as they are dirt-cheap and you can smoke $42-plus-shipping worth for 6-12 months or more. I hear the dried leaves last indefinitely.

Before inhaling take 2-4 really deep slow breaths so that you are accustomed to that kind of breathing. Since implementing this warm up my highs have been much stronger. After exhaling my final preparatory breath, I spark up the leaves and inhale deeply, filling my lungs about 90 percent or more (filling them up to the point of bursting doesn't help the assimilation. Do it within the realm of comfort). I hold the smoke in as I refill the bowl. If there's unsmoked Salvia still in the bowl, I just pile more on top of it. Exhale by blowing the smoke out in a thin stream (so it impregnates the upper lung apparatus). Spark up the bowl and inhale again. 2 hits usually do it. If not, then 3.

One of the last times I used this procedure I became frozen in place. I smoked it sitting on the edge of my futon, and was petrified into that position, unaware that I was even human or what position I was in. I could have been a steel girder. I probably could have sat up, but under the Salvia I didn't know that I was leaning forward, since I didn't know what I was. This was my most unusual Salvia experience, but proof that the stuff really does work and can pack a knockout punch.

The prior time I employed this same technique (sitting on the edge of the futon again) I noticed the hair on my arms moving. Only some of it was moving, as if along tributaries. There were some vague almost geometrical orange globules in my peripheral vision. My arms seemed frozen to the tops of my legs, and I just sat there like a sentient statue until the effects lessened. Another powerful blow.

Normally, I do not have such overwhelming physical responses. I must mention now the truer element of Salvia. When Salvia envelops me, there is a very specific, consistent, and unknown realm that I find myself in. Physically it is usually very nice. One time I felt as if I'd dipped into a perfectly still, undisturbed, cool body of water. Contrary to what I've read, Salvia always makes me feel cool. One of the ways I know it is working is I feel this coolness encapsulating me like a benevolent blob. Salvia IS a mint.

The cool enveloping sensation is accompanied by the visual distortion of everything appearing a little smaller, and as if it were seen through some glassy film or some other creatures eyes. At this point I know it is ON, and I need to go with it. Salvia does not mingle well with external reality - they cancel each other out, and you might just feel a little wobbly. I need to close your eyes because Salvia resides in the inner world. I can turn it on and off like a light by opening or closing my eyes.

This may lead you to think it doesn't really work - that if it can't take you with your eyes open, it's weak - but that's not the case. Why forsake the safety valve of opening your eyes? Besides, if it hits hard you may not remember or be able to open your eyes. With your eyes closed you enter an inner world. Imagine a cool, spacious cavern. You may feel like you're in a chrysalis, or like you are a filled balloon, or as if you are wrapped up in a leaf. What these examples have in common is the feeling of having a shell of some sort, but of being hollow. You should lie still to facilitate these feelings, assuming you are able to move.

You can find yourself in an entirely unexpected, somewhat eerie, somewhat paradisiacal, somewhat familiar (in a primal genesis-like element) state. This state is so novel, and peculiar, that if you are in it and there is someone else in the room, you may feel as if you are not in the same place at all. You may feel as if you are slung in a hammock inside the wall.

There is also a distinct FEELING, which is the scary, or blissful part. The FEELING eludes description, but is always there for me. One might say that there's a presence, or more likely that you are incorporated into a presence, but that doesn't really capture it. Perhaps a blissful reuniting with a lost incorporation, and all with an aura of a gathering of natives in a circle chewing leaves together (and you are one among them) combined with an aura of a carnival or amusement park (the octopus ride and the giant slide). I should mention this is nothing like weed. On weed I'm still in enough of the universe with which I am familiar. Salvia takes me someplace distinctly different, so much so that I am shocked on repeat visits. Salvia occupies a dimension the entrance to which there may be no other portal. It's not like mushrooms either, though the ecstatic or blissful high of both is similar. The high where you are inarguably elevated, in a state of euphoria (it is at these peaks when one really hates that this condition has been forbidden and forsaken by the unknowing establishment).

I am not making the grandiose claims of revisiting my childhood, seeing goblins, or being transported to a 3-dimensional universe replete with sentient being who communicate with me. This, may, however be possible with larger doses. I would like to experience this, but through Salvia I realize how truly frightening and exhilarating such an experience would be. To cross the threshold of the reality I know into another dimension, completely. I've dipped in there. I've glimpsed it. I've vibrated on the membrane between the dimensions, but I've never gone all the way in, seemingly irretrievably, where I can't know that I will ever come out because I've lost all contact with that which I do know.

What I AM seeing is something very distinct, and at the dosages I'm doing it, very nice and valuable. If one were to smoke it every so often, one could maintain a link in one's life with that Other World. My analogy for the Other World is a tree. Suppose one of the roots was exposed and experienced the world above ground (sky, winds, birds, children playing, dogs pissing, whatever) and then after being reburied beneath the soil, and packed in tightly, tried to explain the aboveground world to the other roots. The root would have no vocabulary to describe things such as sky and horizon. The root would say things like, 'It is as if there were no dirt, just an expanse, and the expanse was bright and clear…' The other roots, only accustomed to the dark, to dirt, mud, worms, water, and a variety of bugs would think the root was full of bogus fluff, which would appear meaningless.

Salvia can be used as a tool to allow you to peak or dip into that other world, to see it, to know it's there. And it's legal (2001).

I imagine that the best way to have the Salvia experience is to chew fresh leaves. You CAN soak dried leaves in warm water for about 10 minutes, and chew those, and it DOES work, but I don't like having dried little bits of leaves in my mouth when I'm possible losing motor control. I don't want to risk choking on 'em. It would seem wise to purchase one of the plants itself, raise it up, revere it, talk to it, whatever, and then harvest the appropriate amount of leaves (8-10 is the minimum) and chew them. Then you have a lifelong psychedelic companion with whom you have a personal bond. And if the pigs discover that Salvia really works, and want to outlaw it because of its access to the other world (the unknown of which they do not know and therefore don't want anyone else to know of), then you have an innocuous enough looking houseplant that will probably forever go undetected.

I also recommend reading any Terence McKenna (especially 'The Food of the God'). His overarching theories about the place of psychedelics in human evolution may not be completely accurate, but if there's much truth in them, there is the possibility that through the judicial use of psychedelics one can enter paradise, even if only momentarily.

Exp Year: 2001	ExpID: 5744
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jan 31, 2002	Views: 15,643
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Salvia divinorum (44) : Retrospective / Summary (11), Alone (16)