DOSE:

1 hit

smoked

Salvia divinorum

(extract)

BODY WEIGHT:

240 lb

This happened a while ago, and I've tried to write about it before, but it's so hard to put into words. I'm fairly experienced with drugs, having smoked weed fairly consistently since I was 14, drank alcohol (of course), and had roughly 10 or so experiences with various psychedelics (shrooms, LSD and Morning Glory).

I'd done salvia a few times. The first time was at the MassCann rally in Boston when I was in high school, where I had a cool experience where I thought I was turning into a balloon. The next time was after I had graduated, I tripped so hard I astral projected (Yeah, really) and had visions and conversations with various spirits, including a female entity composed of metal plates and vines I am now convinced was the salvia goddess. The funny thing about all the trips I've taken with salvia, including the one I am about to relay, is that each time, I did it with other people and they did not get anything beyond the threshold, giggly sort of high one can get from it, but I always tripped HARD. I'm convinced I have a low tolerance or some spiritual connection to it, because it never fails to send me out of this world, even just the leaf.

So, one night my very good friend S. calls me up to come over and watch 'Mongol', a film which is about the early life of Ghengis Khan. I go over, armed with some weed prepared for a very good movie, because S. is an aspiring filmmaker with impeccable taste in matters such as movies and music. He doesn't smoke, but he's never been judgmental about it, and never minds me toking in his apartment. I get there, we greet each other and go into his room to listen to some King Tubby or something, and we talk for a while. He had finished typing up his own trip report from when he did way too much LSD back in October. Now, I said he doesn't smoke pot, but he does hold a mild interest in hallucinogens, and wanted to try acid, but got some powerful liquid and wasn't prepared for the amount he had been dosed with. I complimented him on his story, which was really well written in my opinion, and we started to talk about other trips we'd had. I told him about the last time I had done salvia, and my astral projection experience with the salvia goddess. I told him I kinda wanted to try it again, now that I knew what to expect from a hard trip (Pro tip: I will NEVER be prepared for the nonsense that happens to me on salvia).

S.'s roommate B. had some 25x extract and we both knew it, so we went over to his room and asked him if I could have pinch. I'd smoked this guy up with weed a bunch of times, so he was feeling generous and said sure. The plan was laid out: we would put on a record of my choosing, I'd smoke in the comfy easy chair in their living room, and they would be my personal guard, and make sure they didn't let me make any real decisions until I had come down. (I asked them to do this because my 'astral projection' trip had shaken me so badly that I had kicked my friends out of my house, insisting that I needed to be alone, which I regretted 10 minutes later when I sobered up completely.) So we packed a small, or what I thought would be a small bowl of the extract, and I looked through S.'s record collection. He has all these great vinyls that he got from his dad, and I passed over 'Kaya' by Bob Marley, 'Cosmic Thing' by the B-52's, and a record of whale songs before settling on 'London Calling' by The Clash. Now, if you've ever heard that record, you know that the opening track has these very jarring, intense chords. It's almost a threatening sound, but I certainly didn't think that then, or I would have definitely put on something lighter.

So, I sat in that soft chair, they turned on the record and some multicolored holiday light they have hanging up, in the hopes of giving me some visual stimulation, and I sparked that bowl, expecting to be blasted to my core. I cornered about half the bowl, and handed the pipe to S., and held in the smoke for about 10 seconds before I got that alien body high that creeps up on me ever so suddenly, and I remembered why I hadn't smoked the stuff in a year. I hate that shit. 'What a mistake I've made' I thought, which was not the best mindset to be going forward. I exhaled quickly hoping to expel most of the smoke before it really got to me, but apparently, 10 seconds was enough and my vision became warped, and I had the sensation that I was falling, or rushing in several directions at once. The jarring chords from 'London Calling' were spiraling and multiplying and it was the only sound I could hear, even drowning out Joe Strummer's voice. I remember saying 'OH GOD!' and then my ego broke.

The next 1000 years of my life are a chaotic, nightmarish blur, that is nearly impossible to describe, but I will try to do my best. I had this vision of a street near my house, and I thought about my stepmother and the police station near my house. These things have no real significance to the trip, but I'm trying to document everything here. This is all strange to me, because I'd already forgotten I was on drugs. The next thing I know, everything kind of gets scrunched up into each other and starts stretching up and down, into infinity, and Earth's civilization had come to an abrupt end. What I thought had happened, is that alien forces had finally decided to do something about humanity, and had employed a machine to turn us all into energy beings, except we were not ready as a species for the implications of this, so we have to be imprisoned and bound while the negative energies of our beings are harvested for more constructive purposes. Everything, every soul, was visible to me as this cascading waterfall of colored lines, that seemed to be emanating from below my field of vision, and out of my mouth at the same time. The feeling that everybody on the planet is going into your mouth is so utterly bizarre that I can't remember what it was like at all, except for the fact that it happened.

I had lost all sense of time, and only had these occasional flashes of any sense of self, I had become one with everyone in the world. But it wasn't that lovely, New Age oneness that I've gotten from mushrooms, I was experiencing everything, including some very dark souls, evil things with no love in their black hearts. I felt despair, and spiritual pain that I have never experienced, even in some of my darkest hours. It was what I imagined hell to be like, not a Place with fire and demons, but just being trapped in my own head, confused and never gaining any sort of understanding or being able to recognize anything or feel any joy. I was outside of time, and had no memory of the past, and couldn't conceive of the future. (I'm leaving this short paragraph separated to make a point. This was all I could conceive of, I had no time. Read it over and over and over, and you will get a better sense of what was happening.)

The wall of souls bent, and suddenly I perceived it to be similar to a schoolbus, and I could vaguely make out a grassy field and a road upon which it traveled. It was still made out of people, and the fact that the entirety of the human race was being made into something as absurd as a schoolbus by some alien race offended me. Mankind deserved better. So, I began to try to move to the front of the schoolbus by hanging to it's exterior, but I could only move with my mouth. I discovered I had regained my arms and could also flail them about, but this accomplished little. But by doing certain things with my mouth I was able to swallow my way towards the edges and corners of the bus.

Time had come back to me loosely at some point, and things became a little more 'normal', although I was still moving with my mouth, eating a schoolbus made of everyone in the world. I felt that if I could get to the front of the bus, I could see who was driving it, and maybe do something. I'd be the hero of the human race. But I needed to turn to the right, and this was something that I did not know how to do. I became aware at this point of two towering shadowy figures silently observing me, and I wondered how I hadn't seen them before. They must have been the aliens responsible!

Suddenly one of their faces became clear to me. It was B.! Then I remembered! I was tripping my face off on some crazy shamanic drug! I tried to speak, but I still hadn't fully re-entered reality, so I turned back to the bus, and I either abandoned my quest, realizing that it wasn't anything to be bothered about, or I rushed to finish it, I can't actually remember. At this time I could kind of recognize the sound I was hearing, and it was 'Brand New Cadillac'. I'd been gone about 4 minutes.

I looked up and saw S., my good friend! My wonderful friend! I jumped up and tried to talk to him, but I was still tripping hard, and he was warping and twisting, and I knew I couldn't walk. I assured him that I was okay, I just needed to come down. S. never loses his cool, and sounded utterly nonchalant and was like 'Okay, it's cool.' I get back in the chair, but sitting down makes me feel like I might come up again, so I stand up and try to walk it off. It's becoming easier to do this, but I'm stumbling around like a drunkard. The taste of the souls is still in my mouth, the one lingering mindfuck from the peak of the experience that stays with me and I ask for a glass of water, which S. brings me.

The water helped SO much, I can't even begin to relate how refreshing and cleansing it was. It reminded me of this time where, during the middle of a bad acid trip, my brother's roommate made me a cup of herbal tea, and I could feel it literally warm my soul from the inside out. The water was like the yin to that yang, the cool, clean water washing out the darkness and fear that had enveloped me. I tell him I needed fresh air, but in reality, I wanted to make sure everything was back to normal. There was a little hesitation on his part, as I had asked him not to let me do something like that until I was down completely, but he decided, as he would accompany me, he could watch out for me and keep me safe.

So I put my coat on and we started walking around the block, and I was walking fairly steady at this point, but my vision would still bend this way and that in an uncomfortable manner. The cool air had the same effect on me as the water had, and I was feeling better by the minute. We turned a corner, and I felt ready for some conversation, so I told S. that it was total lunacy that our society outlaws pot, but still allows this stuff. I don't believe prohibition ever works, but if at least ONE drug had to be illegal, it should be salvia.

He asked me about my trip, but it was still too close for me, and I didn't feel cool talking about it, yet. It was like waiting for someone to leave the room, so you could say how you really felt about them. We got back to his apartment, I take off my coat and sit down, and I'm finally able to laugh about it and I told them as well as I could what I had experienced. S. tells me that I had screamed and spoke in what sounded like a foreign language, and just sort of generally flailed and twisted about, while they watched. We laughed a bit more about what a weird drug salvia is. I had been over at their house for about 30 minutes only, which blew my mind. It felt like years had passed. So we finally put on 'Mongol', which is a great flick, and I packed a bowl of good old-fashioned weed, which helped enormously, and we had a lovely evening.

My thoughts on salvia are weird. It seems kind of like a wild friend you make excuses not to see because they can make you feel unsafe, but just have to visit every once in a while because they're so different, that they really enrich your worldview. When I came down from this trip, I was swearing that I'd never touch the stuff again, but that was then, and this is now, and I'm considering doing it later this year, after I put a little more distance between myself and this experience. Salvia is the most intense drug I've ever done, and if you haven't done it and are considering it, just try to keep in mind, that it can take you further than you've ever been, and twist your mind in ways you never thought drugs could do. It is not a comfortable high, so don't listen to anyone who touts it as 'legal weed'. The only advantage is that it lasts for such a short time, it can be really easy to deal with it when it goes bad, just make sure you have people you're extremely comfortable with around you.

Exp Year: 2009	ExpID: 77493
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Oct 3, 2011	Views: 14,026
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Salvia divinorum (44) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Difficult Experiences (5)