DOSE:

2.5 hits

smoked

Salvia divinorum

(extract - 5x)

BODY WEIGHT:

125 lb

My experiences with Salvia have, on the whole, been nothing like anything I've read about it. The first two times I smoked it I had similar, though less dramatic, effects to things I've heard. The first time I used it I forgot who my girlfriend was and woke up briefly in a world where I was about eight years old and with my mother in Arizona. The second time I became a table that was on the back porch of a house I lived in when young. Both of those times were with 5x and the experiences, while bizarre, were funny, stimulating and pertinent to my ever-growing fascination with the function of perception and consciousness. The main thing I liked about Salvia was that I felt very much at peace with myself and the universe, genuinely happy, after my first two experiences. The metaphor I used to describe it to my friends was that the mind is like a deck of cards that you are constantly drawing specific cards from and often in a hurry so that the deck becomes very rough and disorderly. Salvia straightens out the deck. In order to do so, though, it first has to spread all of the cards out so it can reorganize them. This displacement of the usual organization of the mind is what creates the brief craziness of a salvia trip.

But it was the third experience, really, that was extremely different from everything else. I was on a playground at a park with about five of my friends in the middle of the night and asked them if they would sit quietly and watch over me for a few minutes while I smoked the rest of my 5x salvia. They agreed and I sat on the second level of the playground next to the shaky bridge part. I took two deep hits and held them and then attempted a third. Like the previous two times I wasn't able to concentrate on what I was doing and can't remember if I got a good hit or not. I reclined on the playground with my legs on the bridge and looked up at the sky. As I lay back, some seemingly extremely important thought occurred to me and I tried to articulate it. I didn't do a very good job, but my friends SD and IC who were perched above me and looking down seemed interested and kept talking about whatever it was (I assume they were, but I can't remember their words and I couldn't completely comprehend them as they were spoken).

Lying there with the walls of the playground looming above me I had the feeling that I was in ancient Rome. Again a silly and random thing and I was simultaneously aware of my disappointment at this as well as the reality of it. In the meantime, my friend SS decided to mess with me. I was completely aware that that was what he was doing and it annoyed me so I told him to stop and moved to lie down completely on the bridge. This is where this experience changed. It was maybe four minutes after I had smoked (thought it's really hard to say), about the time it usually wears off for me. As I was lying there, I suddenly felt very strong. That's the best word I can think of to explain it. I just felt mentally and physically strong and I leapt up. I'm not a very physically strong person... I'm fairly short and my only really physical activity is lifting amps to carry them to and from band practice and shows. The point is, it was an odd sensation to have, but it was definitely there. I struck a superman pose, standing there on the bridge and told everyone that I felt really great. They laughed and I felt very much at peace with them.

I ran over to the far end of the play ground and a concept popped into my head that was related to making the superman pose. Suddenly superman and clark kent seemed to be an incredibly apt explanation of the universe. Clark Kent was the world that most people live in from day to day. It was the functional world that had to be inhabited in order to get things done. But Superman was always there lurking on the other side, a fantastic world in which everthing is much more powerful, much more meaningful. It was the Superman side that I had entered through smoking Salvia that evening and I stayed there for over an hour and didn't really let go of it until I woke up the next morning, though I woke up in a beautiful, clear state of mind, more prepared to accept Clark Kent's boring existence knowing that, if need be, he could become Superman at any time.

The rest of that evening about seven more people showed up at the playground. I ran around, enjoying my physical empowerment and mental acuity. Thinking back on it, I spent the rest of the night being fairly antisocial, but I was having an awesome time listening to people and watching them and I felt like I was interacting, though I mostly wasn't. They started smoking pot and, as usual, offered it to me expecting me to smoke -- as usual -- but the thought of smoking pot seemed extremely funny to me right then. Funny and ridiculous. I think that salvia possibly could be a tool for aiding victims of addiction, because I very much could have decided right then to stop smoking pot forever (I've only been doing it for about half a year, but I've been doing it a lot).

In fact, I realized that after the summer ended and I went back to college I would probably not smoke much at all. It was sort of like a decision, but it was more like I just suddenly recognized that that's what I would do. Being stoned seemed to my mind at that moment to be muddled and unclear. I wanted to preserve that brilliant clarity as long as humanly possible. Honestly, I think that it has not gone away even now, over two weeks later. I'm perplexed that I have not heard of anyone else having a salvia experience that produced these feeling for that long.

Exp Year: 2003	ExpID: 25258
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Dec 4, 2004	Views: 8,303
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Salvia divinorum (44) : General (1), Small Group (2-9) (17)