DOSE:

0.5 g

smoked

Salvia divinorum

(extract)

BODY WEIGHT:

190 lb

PREFACE

During the time me and my trip-sitter were freshmen in college, I got the bright idea to give salvia a try in my depressing, dreary little dorm. To help contain the smell of our bong rips, (usually cannabis) we were used to smoking in my even smaller dorm bathroom.

We entered the tiny space, I took out the little baggie we purchased from our local headshop (1.5 g of 13x extract), and proceeded to load the bowl of a double-bubble glass bong that has an abnormally wide stem. I was also using an ash-catcher with it at the time. Approximately a gram of finely-ground extract was packed into the bowl, I took a couple of deep breaths to relax, and proceeded to torch a little over half of the bowl with the vehemence of a college-kid who had just recently discovered the joys of pot =]. As this was happening, me and my unprepared trip-sitter were sitting about a half of a foot apart on the edge of my bathtub. This turned out to be the dumbest thing I have ever done to myself spiritually. Anywho, I proceeded to hold the cool smoke in my lungs for what I was told would be thirty seconds at the very least. It only took twenty seconds of holding my breath before I broke through, however.

MY TIME HERE

After the twenty seconds was up, my vision and my consciousness faded quickly away to nothingness. That is to say my world fell down and to the right. This was my last memory of being here until the trip was over. I now know that back here I was flailing my whole body around violently, maybe because I had hit my head pretty hard on the tub immediately after fading down and right. My trip-sitter was sober, but unaware of my life-shattering situation. He stood up and asked me to get out of the tub, then saw that my 'head was vacant.' Like he puts it, 'There was nobody home.'

As he stood, completely dumbfounded by what appeared to be my seizure, he noted that salvia did not seem to be the sort of thing he wanted to try. While helplessly trapped in another dimension and confused as Hell, back here I was still moving about violently. I proceeded to hit my head two more times, both on the faucet. After about five minutes on Earth of tub-twitching, I somehow managed to pull myself out of the tub using the cues around me in my alternate dimension. This part took me months to figure out what had happened, as reality started fading slowly back in place once I had managed to climb out.

The whole ordeal lasted about five minutes here, and I was in the alternate dimension for what seemed to be about thirty seconds. Now out of the tub, I was stumbling around my tiny room, going back and forth asking 'what happened??' incessantly. I have no memory of it, but I picked up the bag of extract and tossed it somewhere into the abyss that is my messy room. I know I was still completely out of my mind even though I was back on Earth again, because I also don't remember trying to throw my bong (at least my trip-sitter did something right). I was coerced into my sheets by my trip-sitter, and it was there I came all the way back to Earth.

For about the next 15 minutes I just felt terrible, and vowed never to do salvia again because of how empty I felt inside. After that, everything was back to normal except it felt like I had been in a car crash earlier that day, or an even better description - it felt like the day after I had the dream that foreshadowed my mother's death.

THE DREAM

She died - from mesothelioma - when I was sixteen. Her body died long after her mind, and in this beautiful dream which happened two weeks before her body's death, I got to talk to her and hug her one last time. After our conversation had come to a lull, we both looked to the sky, and watched the sun explode with no time to react. To this day I wonder what God was trying to tell me through my dream. I also wonder why the last words we spoke to each other were 'OHH,' and 'FUCK'! She was a Lutheran Pastor practicing in the ELCA, but she still enjoyed cussing every now and then. Anyhow, this is only relevant because I was just as shaken by this dream as by my salvia experience, and they both continue to wear my soul thin.

MY TIME THERE

I've never been able to put the alternate dimension that I visited into words before. Now that I have more experience tripping, however, I feel like I've got to try.

After the brief fading/falling episode, I soon found myself in a place with no ground or sky, only bright white all around. The physical vastness of space here was bigger than I'd ever had a concept of before. Immediately I descended into what seemed to be circular, viscious cycles of tripping.

A giant, heavy steamroller-like cylinder was now rolling over me in the direction of my toes to my head. The cylinder had formed out of the white vastness, and what was the edge of my visibility a second ago now collected itself about a foot in front of me to crush my very being, even though I was nothing more than a random collection of thoughts. What was worse, it turned into a cylinder with many, many horizontal edges. Each edge would roll over me about a second apart from each other. On each of these edges was lined-up a row of rubber puppets, all laughing at me despite the fact that they looked completely inanimate. None of them were concerned at all about being crushed.

I, on the other hand, was clawing/pulling myself further and further forward, trying desperately not to be crushed by the edged-cylinder-of-white-space. At one point it was such a powerful crushing force that my whole body felt like I had run into a brick wall at full speed, a sensation like I had been decked in the face, except all over my body. Looking left and right to see the rubber puppets, all of them were being pulled under. Some started to talk to me, still in a mocking manner. As I fought being pulled under the giant rolling machine more and more, my sense of space left and right of me merged together into my center.

This caused the rubber puppets to start another viscious cycle. As my left and right merged together directly in front of me, I no longer had to fight being pulled under the giant machine because no matter how much I let the machine flatten me, I would not be underneath the roller. I'd describe the way my left and right were merging as rolling gently into each other. As the puppets rolled together, and then morphed into one object resembling a cactus made of bright light. They were forming letters and trying to relay a message to me. In my state I thought that I was almost dead because it became hard to breathe. Sooo my trip descended into its final and most frightening viscious cycle.

Now my sense of space only existed to my left, and directly in front of me. I was reaching out for something to hold on to mentally. I was coming so close to understanding what the messages were, but I noticed now that now my surroundings had formed into a bright, sunny day. I was laying out on the pavement somewhere (it was still too fake/bright to be Earth), it was still hard to breathe, and on top of all that the direction right did not exist. Left and forward physical space still existed.

I was in the middle of being rescued from a car wreck. The mystical messages that lady salvia were sending kept pouring into me, but they seemed more than anything to be instructions on how not to die. I have never wanted anything more in my life than at that moment, and it was horrible when the messages stopped flowing. However, surrounding me were paramedics which gave me hope, and those damn rubber puppets again.

It was at this point in time that back on Earth I finally had found the edge of the tub, and I proceeded to use all my remaining strength to pull myself out. As I did this on Earth, back there I let out a huge sigh of relief because I had pulled myself through a portal of the dimensions I had just visited. I felt a weird suction on either side of me as I ripped myself out of the tub. I didn't know yet that I was almost home, but anywhere was better than visiting the scene of my death. I hope that if I ever need emergency care, I won't have to decode a salvia trip to follow the care-giver's instructions on how to keep breathing.

THANKS FOR READING

I believe that my dream and my trip are connected somehow, but I'm absolutely clueless as to how. Someday I'll muster the courage to go back, but I'll DEFINITELY be smoking with an informed trip-sitter on my nice, soft bed.

Exp Year: 2004	ExpID: 42111
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jun 3, 2007	Views: 14,693
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Salvia divinorum (44) : First Times (2), Mystical Experiences (9), Entities / Beings (37), Guides / Sitters (39), Relationships (44), Difficult Experiences (5), Small Group (2-9) (17)