DOSE:

0.5 bowls

smoked

Salvia divinorum

(extract)

BODY WEIGHT:

150 lb

A bit of background to start: I’m pretty healthy, 150 lbs, 6’0”. I am a regular user of cannabis (trying to wean myself off of it), as well as a regular experimenter with shrooms and acid. I considered these psychedelics to be a good entry in preparing me for the wild ride that was Salvia. I was so wrong. I’ve tripped on 2 grams of shrooms and a couple tabs simultaneously, and that could not prepare me for Salvia.

The Setup: I had a trip sitter with me, as I’d heard of how uncoordinated people can be when they’re at the peak, plus someone to just help ground me. This was later proved to be a great idea. I packed about half a bowl in my favorite two perc bong, and ripped it with a torch I’d bought earlier. Talking to friends who’ve used both a lighter and a torch to trip, I am glad I used a torch as it gets the most out of the trip. I listened to some Mac Demarco to help me calm down and get in a relaxed mood before the trip, but overall I could’ve, and should’ve, done so much more to prepare. This had been a last minute thing that I decided to do between two classes, and I regret the haphazard way I prepared for it.

I loaded the bowl, torched it while taking a heft trip, and held it as long as I could as I put the bong down. The last conscious thing I remember was nodding to my sitter as I felt something start to happen.

The Experience: All of a sudden, without any preamble, I was gone. I did not remember who I had been up to that point, or the fact that I existed outside this universe I’ll tell you about. I was surrounded by multitudes of people, all dressed like me (I remember a yellow outfit), as far as the eye could see, all moving in a coordinated but indecipherable way. Imagine a college band playing during a football game, except thousands of people packed shoulder to shoulder making movements. I didn’t remember taking the Salvia, and my previous (actual) life seemed like some weird dream I had greatly enjoyed till I woke up in this crowd. I asked the people next to me what we were, what we were doing. They told me we were part of a dance, the very molecules something else was made of. I think we were part of the swaying branches of a tree, or perhaps even the skin of another, normal sized human. Their whole existence was BEING a molecule, nothing else. They lived to move with the will of whatever we were part of, that their whole purpose was just to be another atom amongst millions, moving to the whims of some other consciousness. I was incredibly distressed by this, because I vaguely remembered a past life filled with ambitions, choices, a future.

It seemed like some amazing dream I had been having up until this point. It was then that I vaguely recalled smoking the Salvia, and then I realized something terribly sad: up until that point I HAD been dreaming, and Salvia is the only way to wake up. Just as Neo chose to wake up out of the matrix by taking the right pill from Morpheus, I had woken up out of my own illusion by smoking Salvia, and now I was in the real world: a world where I was just a microscopic part of another creature. I found this incredibly distressing. I would rather have been happy living my illusion life of choices than be woken up to realize I did not matter, I was just nothing, consigned to this life, where time did not exist as there was never any change to experience. This went on for what honestly felt like years, or like no time at all. It simply was. Then I finally started remember I was actually a human, and I was on a drug. I phased out of that other universe back to this one, no memory of what I had been physically doing while I was on the Other Side. (According to my friend, I was giggling uncontrollably, had been trying to form words and failed, and this had all occurred in under 5 minutes) After coming back from the Other Side, I still felt incredibly discouraged due having lived a whole lifetime as nothing, and it took me a while to recover from that. I didn’t experience visuals after that, just a hurt in my soul. After a while (15 – 20 mins) I felt well enough to socialize with friends and talk to them about it. Overall, the whole experience lasted 30 minutes from peak to near- sobriety.

Review: I was wholly unprepared for Salvia, and how intense it was. One hearty rip (while holding it in) honestly blew every single drug I had taken previously out of the water, combined. I experienced an ego-death so profound that I felt broken after taking the Salvia. In terms of visuals, I was literally transported to another world beyond true description. If traditional psychedelics (psilocybin, LSD) change and warp the world around you, Salvia completely rips it away and replaces it with something alien and beyond my previous scope of understanding. Despite how daunting this may sound, I’m happy I did it. I will probably not do it again, but as an experience, it’s something that’ll stay with me for a very, very long time. It may not last long, but in those 3-4 minutes of peaking, it packs a punch like nothing I think one can experience elsewhere.

In summary, it was truly neither good nor bad, simply (almost) too intense. I would’ve truly prepared for this experience by having the perfect setting (my room, not the living room of a friend) and mentally prepared myself, instead of the “sure, I don’t have class for another 4 hours, why not” mentality I had when taking it. These two factors would probably have changed my neutral-but-unforgettable experience into a genuinely positive one.

Exp Year: 2017	ExpID: 110988
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 19
Published: Apr 4, 2020	Views: 941
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Salvia divinorum (44) : Small Group (2-9) (17), First Times (2)