DOSE:	1 bowl	smoked	Salvia divinorum	(extract - 10x)
			Cannabis	(plant material)

BODY WEIGHT:

165 lb

I first started using cannabis almost a year ago. I believe that I was very sensitive to the effects. I almost always used it alone. My experiences have always been along the lines of religion, Armageddon, personal revelations. When I listened to Pink Floyd (Shine On guitar) it was almost unexplainable. I cried and convulsed. Anyway, there is much that may not be of interest to you. But I have easily found these experiences to be the most tense and powerful of my life. I find them almost transcendental. A few months ago, I started using Salvia (leaves and 5x & 10x extracts). While Salvia alone never did it for me (it gives me strange sensations all over my body, which aren't very pleasant). I found it to be somewhat unemotional, as if there are other realities sprouting within me, but never really amounted to anything significant. Not to mention the lingering headaches afterwards. However, with just a little amount (1/3rd of a joint) of cannabis, the experience can be almost transformed.

Experience: A few days ago, on a weekend night, when my wife went to sleep, I cleared up my living room, filled a glass of water since I tend to get very dehydrated and lit up a candle. Then I put the music CDs in the appropriate order in the player (Dead Man Walking, Natural born killers, Coldplay, Pink Floyd - I think in this order. I love PF's Shine On but I've heard it too many times). I then brought out my water pipe and stuffed it with one dry leaflet of regular salvia. Using a common pipe tool I put in small amount of 10x Salvia over the leaf. After that I put in a little amount of Cannabis. Over this I sprinkled Salvia 5x and some common Salvia crushed leaves. I don't really know why I do this elaborate set up, but the thesis is that I don't want to inhale a lot of 10x upfront, since it may send me out into outer space and I will not be able to continue with the rest of the bowl hence wasting a lot of it. It is always better to be fully loaded before letting go and getting ready for the trip.

In any case, I then turned off the lights and meditated for about 5 minutes to get my mind at rest. I know that I should meditate a lot longer, but I tend to get impatient at this stage. It was quiet and the flame of the candle was still. After a while I felt that my racing mind had slowed to somewhat appropriate levels. Holding the water pipe in my right hand, I took a couple of deep breaths and then emptied my lungs of air. Then I lit up the salvia/cannabis mixture and then inhaled to almost 70% of my capacity. The time was around 3:45 am. I held it and started counting in my head. It's a habit I have picked up, since a few times, I wasn't sure I had held it for so long that I thought I may pass out.

After holding it in for 20-25 seconds, while I was getting ready to exhale, I started feeling, as always, that my mind/body is being slowly drifted. While there were no real visuals, my 'mind' could pick up slight patterns/scenes (not significant though). I gently shook my head a few times: I was determined to fight it and not give in until I was definitely not in control anymore (perhaps I was just playing). Then somewhere around that time I exhaled. The candle was still. I turned on the CD player. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan in Dead Man Walking started playing. Around this time, I don't know when, I decidedly drifted into a mode where I was experiencing as if I was being divided internally into various 'things' (I'm obviously not articulate) that I perceived to be a part of me. Unfortunately I don't remember that all. In fact I strongly believe that it is impossible to remember the feeling of that experience, but that people tend to remember that feeling by using language which doesn't do justice to that experience.

Therefore it is almost impossible to feel what another might have actually felt. That is a major reason why, when we watch TV and see poverty and misery, we don't feel a thing. (However, once I just saw a snippet of a news story on Africa while I was high on Salvia/cannabis and I saw pictures of Africans sitting in dirt and shanties, my heart ached for them and I cried. I realized what while America is launching this huge war against the killing of a thousands of Americans, it has ignored millions of people dying by starvation under inhuman conditions. And this is a crime). Anyway, back to my experience. I felt like that for I don't know how long (I guess 3-5 minutes) but I eventually came back. My first thought was: 'How impossible is it to explain to anybody else what I went through. Let's take another hit'. Little did I know.

I again exhaled, lit my lighter again and torched the bowl. Then I inhaled the smoke deeply. I felt that I was losing control since my water pipe was shaking in my hand. I don't remember if I put it down. I think I did. While, I wish I had remembered the details, I don't. In fact while I was under 'this magnificent spell', I knew that I would forget this experience soon afterwards. I tried to cling on to it for as long as I could. In any case, it was an intense feeling of a whole different reality. While it resembled the human reality in a way, the human life that I am a part was nowhere (nowhere) in sight. It was not a total ego loss in the way that I was minutely aware that I existed and that I had a body and that my mind was someplace else. I felt that I was moving through a total different reality. As if a long moving caravan through time or eternity. I was a part of it and my life as I know now was nowhere. Please remember that these stupid words (most of the experience is forgotten anyway) will never do justice to the feeling.

Then when I had almost totally forgotten who I was and that I had a life on a planet called Earth, I got a small glimpse of this reality. Just a vague whisper or glimpse of that reality that seemed to say that it is also a far fetched possibility that you have a human life. I became somewhat terrified and puzzled what it could mean to have this human life. This reality started to become more and more clear (although slowly). At the exact same time, it began dawning upon me that I did not belong here (as in this human world and everyday life). I felt as if I was moving back through that caravan of realities, as if I was being dropped. Like I am being forgotten.

My mind screamed: You were a part of something else and you were forgotten here! A part of my mind started remembering of the everyday reality. While I was still sure that I did not belong here, I felt afraid: What if I really belonged on Earth, on that so called 'reality of everyday life'. I felt as if I was physically struggling to hold on to the 'plane of existence' that I had been projected into. I became more and more desperate as if I was forgotten and left alone in this wilderness where I absolutely don't belong. As if my heart began melting with emotion. At some point I felt that if I had to die to remain in that plane of existence, it would be the most logical thing to be. But it just didn't seem right somehow at the same time. I believe that I may have started convulsing slightly because the emotions were unbearable. I don't want to left here. I was pleading. And then as if someone is lifting a veil: I drifted (very quickly) back into this reality.

At that point, I had been absolutely convinced that it was something that had not been shared with many others on this planet. That I had been given a very big secret (not that I wasn't to share with others since it doesn't matter), impossible to deny, that this life is a total joke. It is not even a speck if compared to where I had been. The possibility of multiple existences in multiple planes had no place for a life where you get up and go to work and have sex and watch TV and play and read and get angry and think or have children or look at the sky or worship. It was all meaningless. I was so shook up that I almost stumbled in the room, tears flowing, with my fists clinched: No, no, no, this can't be. This can't be. After pacing the room a couple of times, my first reaction was to wake up my wife and tell her what had happened. I went into the room, she was asleep, I knelt besides her and gently woke her up. I said something to the effect: I wish I could tell you what just happened. In her sleepy voice she asked me what had happened. I buried my head in the bad sheets and almost choked. Just banged my fists on the bed: 'I can't explain it. I can't explain it. I wish I can explain it'. She was somewhat worried but probably more sleepy. After a few minutes of this intensely emotional outpour, the climax for the night had been had.

The rest of the night was interesting too, but this description is already long enough. I can not integrate the significance of this experience with my life. It hasn't changed me at all, since it has nothing to do with this life. What do I do with this? I have had other slightly different experiences where I am absolutely convinced that regardless of the fact that this is all in my head and due to some chemical imbalances, the moment is so real that all my life is nothing when compared to it. How do you deal with this? It's all chemicals? It hard to believe anything else. It's too easy or naive to say that this is another reality that is out there and we connect with it. Even if it is within our heads, why is it here? Where does it come from? Is it only so intense because it is different or because it truly is sublime? Is that what happens after we die? Impossible to find the answer.

This experience will not change me, otherwise everybody who tried this would be changed and that would be too easy, wouldn't it? It happened and it is now gone. It will happen again. But I'll only have a brief and vague memory of what happened. The moment is reality. Memories are just memories. They are nothing. Remembrance of things past. Perhaps before time started. Perhaps when I was nothing but was everything. Perhaps that, that will be.

Exp Year: 2002	ExpID: 16337
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jul 19, 2005	Views: 16,748
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Cannabis (1), Salvia divinorum (44) : Alone (16), Mystical Experiences (9), Difficult Experiences (5), Combinations (3)