DOSE:

125 mg

smoked

Salvia divinorum

(extract)

BODY WEIGHT:

165 lb

I feel as though I need to explain to you the fact that after my first attempt at Salvia, I had been left with nothing more than a slight sinking feeling after I finished off an entire gram of 20X sold at a headshop. That sinking feeling could have been my stomach at the thought of dropping that much cash on a dissapointment that heavy.

Lesson learned, right?

Naturally, I researched and found that there were others experiencing the same thing. Or not experiencing anything at all. In fact, some of you reading this right now may have been in the same situation. They call us 'hard-heads'. The 'salvia insensitive'. As though we're some mutant offspring of humanity doomed to suffer the constraints of reality while everyone else is prancing around with elves and making good impressions for inanimate objects.

I certainly thought I belonged in that category.

I am writing this now, 20 minutes since proving myself wrong, for you.

(Test #2, Salvia 20x, reputable seller, cheap bubbler & a green BIC lighter.)

I'd ordered 3 grams with the intent that if 1 didn't work, I'd gung ho the remaining 2 in an attempt to Rambo myself into some kind of self deceiving justification for at least a headache or a mild twitch of some sort. But I'd read countless times, 'Never underestimate the power of this herb.'

Fresh out of syringes, I pack a single bowl.

The lights are out, save for two artsy-fartsy soft red ceramic lamps to provide lighting just in case I need to see myself think. No music. No distractions. Just me, a cheap bubbler, my favorite chair, and not much expectation. The bowl is small, but packed pretty well. The green BIC lighter is diving in from my periphery and a couple seconds later I get a pretty decent toke. True to form, I follow the advice of countless bedroom Salvia experts and start counting to 20 while holding in the smoke.

I get to about 9.

(psuedo real-time narrative continues)

The first effect that I notice is my head feeling as though it's hollow. Spacey. Sort of like when I chain smoke too many cigarettes after a day off the nicotine binge. I barely have any time to analyze this effect when I'm suddenly seeing open eye visuals. Not comparable to LSD in its peak, but more comparable to the closed eye visuals I get when I’m on the very last fringes of a magic mushroom comedown, except resized in photo shop to a very very small resolution. I vaguely remember the visuals looking like hundreds of colorful Philadelphia Flyers logos for some reason. They are like a layer on top of everything else at this point, and before I have time to analyze them, the actual trip starts.

Now let me just clear one thing up. When I say trip, most others would say catatonic. That is my relation to psychedelics. I've done LSD, mushrooms, Ketamine, and other more unpronouncable things literally hundreds of times. My idea of tripping hard isn't seeing pretty colors and watching stars. It's not these outrageous stories of seeing demons and in severe cases, Michael Jackson. My idea of tripping hard on any psychedelic is not even being able to recognize what you're looking at, depersonalization, ataxia, temporary amnesia, total wipe out of all brain function. Not that I like to go there, I don't. And it wasn't always that way. But I remember well the emotion that goes along with it. It's scarier than monsters, or 'tripping forever'. It's much deeper than that. It's something undefinable. Something reflective of me as a human being and the infinite connotation of it somehow being wrong. That's my idea of a hard trip. Well, I guess it could be considered a bad trip.

So here I am, and the Salvia trip starts.

At this point, I'm glued to my favorite chair. I actually mean glued. Spiritual super glue. Sunk. Gravity demonstrating its powers to harness me by the spiritual balls. And while I'm glued there, I feel as though there is a person just beyond my periphery behind my right shoulder, positioned about midway between myself and the ceiling. It's not a visual hallucination of such. It's a feeling, sort of a knowledge. It's a presence. During this acknowledgement of the presence, I'm still seeing the Flyer's logo. I'm still in my room, eyes open, but this reality is happening in my mind and being super-imposed over what I'm perceiving. This presence is EXTREMELY familiar, but somehow very wrong and the emotion I'm feeling is as though something is wrong but I can't figure out what it is. I become very very confused.

This type of confusion, should not be um... confused with regular confusion. It is a very profound confusion, but not in a bad way. Just in a way that prompts the question: 'What am I supposed to do?' And I mean that in a way that asks: 'What am I supposed to do as an entity of existence? What is expected of me? Can someone tell me what happens next while existing? Do you look down on my existence? Am I existing wrong?' Those are the questions racing through my mind at this point, while this presence exists beyond my periphery but in full view of my waking subconscious.

I've heard a lot of people report that time has no meaning when tripping on Salvia. Well, it had a meaning for me. It is at this point where I know that I don't have much time to figure out whatever I'm trying to figure out in this confused state. I'm in the middle of the trip, and it feels as though I'm on the verge of discovering the answer to the most difficult question in the universe. It's the feeling of having an answer on the tip of my tongue, but not having control of my tongue. There's something looming in the periphery of my consciousness, just close enough to feel it emotionally, but not touch it logically.

So here I am, stuck to my favorite chair like it never wants to let me go, but I'm not mad at it. The trip starts to dull a bit. My eyes are wide open and I can't help it. I gather enough motor function to pick up the bubbler and BIC my way back to an unanswered question through little more than a cashed bowl. The hit brings back the familiarity with the experience a little, but not enough to hang on to. I don't want it to fade because I want to understand it more. I feel like maybe I didn't go far enough.

So I cash in, and let it ride out. The following moments are easier to remember, but more comically displayed. I wish I had a video recording of it. When I had enough sense to stand up, which was approximately 4 minutes after I started tripping, I realized... 'I've got to hide this bong!!!'

I'm in the military, so naturally, I'm paranoid about someone busting in and shouting the dreaded 'AHA!'. Here I am, running about, trying to find a place to stick a bong upright with water in it, half confused, still in a sort of fuge state, not really covering any productive ground according to my intention. About 15 minutes after the whole ordeal, I fully emerge back into my normal state of mind.

And I must comment about this, because it is peculiar.

When I came to, from the main event, I felt in control somewhat, but as each minute passed, I felt more in control and sober minded. It's like it counted down, in reverse, slowly, to my previous state of mind. Each level making me feel like I’m back to myself until I’m actually back to myself. It felt like a slowed down backwards version of what happened after I took the hit of Salvia. It was just as interesting as the trip itself... Kind of like traveling down a road, leaving pieces of yourself until you reach your destination, you're no longer yourself, then turning around and picking those pieces back up until you reach the start point and you're yourself again.

Very interesting.

And here I am now, typing this last paragraph. Completely back to normal. Not an adverse side effect to be seen. Just me, my favorite website, a beer, and an intense desire to experience Salvia yet again. And hopefully take it a little bit further.

Exp Year: 2007	ExpID: 68436
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Mar 15, 2011	Views: 10,297
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Salvia divinorum (44) : General (1), Alone (16)