DOSE:	1.75 g	oral	Mushrooms	(dried)
	1 hit	smoked	Salvia divinorum	(extract - 10x)

BODY WEIGHT:

200 lb

While studying in the Netherlands last semester I had the oppurtunity to enjoy a number of herbal substances that had otherwise never been available to me in as pure a quality. I was not expecting the experience I received from mixing psilocybin and salvia.

The mushrooms were of the dried Mexican variety, and I consumed between 1.5-2 grams which I had typically found to be sufficient for a moderate trip. The Salvia I had on this evening was extract of the 10x fortified kind. I had smoked Salvia 3 times before this evening, once as dried leaves with no effect, and twice as 5x fortified extract with pleasant dissociative/out of body effects, mild delusions, and perhaps the slightest bit of a sense of Others. Definitely nothing disturbing or remotely akin to what happened when I combined the two psychedelics.

I had eaten the mushrooms a few hours earlier and had definitely moved pass the peak and was into the extended comedown when we decided to smoke some salvia. The trip had been mild overall, with very little visuals or anything remarkable, pleasant, but not terribly moving. Two of my friends (who had both eaten ecstasy, though not mushrooms earlier) and I decided to smoke the salvia together so I began packing my hitter. We were smoking out of small glass bat-style one hitter. Most people prefer smoking salvia out of bongs, we used the hitter so as to gauge exactly how much each person received, as well as for ease and portability reasons.

Both my friends hit before me, and with them appearing relatively stable I eagerly packed the hitter for myself and took my own hit. Leaning up against a wall (Why we were not sitting, do not ask me, these are the foolish decisions we sometimes find ourselves making without realizing that a decision was ever even made) I put the lighter to the hitter and inhaled the entire small bowl. Unfortunately I cannot say exactly how much of the extract was in the bat, but for purposes of a vague and ineffective comparison I could say that it had a mass near that of a skittle (lovely examples I come up with).

This is where my memory of the evening blacks out. I don't remember exhaling the smoke, as soon as I had completely taken the hit in I put the bat into my pocket, and apparently within seconds fell face down onto the ground. At this point, my friends reported to me later, I began twitching slightly for a minute or two, and then started to try to get up. One of my friends had the presence of mind enough to realize that I was not in control of my body and that to stand up could only be dangerous. Thus as I tried to push myself off of my stomach he place his hand upon my back and said, 'Listen to me, I know you want to get up, but you can't right now. You'll only hurt yourself.' I don't know if I was aware of him trying to help me, or if the pressure of his hand was enough to convince me not to rise, but apparently at that point I stopped trying to get up and instead held a mid pushup position, my arms only half extended for the next 10-12 minutes. This alone would be incredible enough for me even if my mind hadn't been doing what it was, as I'm fairly sure that I would find it quite difficult to hold that position for such a length of time under normal circumstances.

I am told that I was mumbling occasionally during my time on the ground and then upon rising after several minutes, while still not completely back to 'reality' (as I might always quote it from now on) I rambled a garbled sentence that didn't sound english to my friends and concluded in the words 'parlez vous franglaise?!?' I've heard of people returning from comas/near death experiences/other whose second or third languages return to them before their first for some reason, I can't explain why I would shout out a bastardized conglomerate of french and english, but really considering the nature of this experience I'm not terribly surprised.

During those +/-12 minutes that I was out my mind was more active than at any other point in my life. I struggle to find words to describe the intensity of the experience. It was an instantaneous barrage of images and concepts. Distinctly non-verbal, but completely coherent to me at the time. I still don't remember much of it, and honestly hope that I never do. But it seemed to me that I had broken through some sort of wall, that I was being shown another layer to reality that somehow I had always known was there or had always been acting in as well. This was not a dimension at all like ours, it was one that was clearly run by powerful forces of evil (and though I did not see them I can only assume good as well, as one cannot exist without its converse). All of my deepest darkest insecurities and hypocrisies were brought to the forefront of my conscious and conglomerated into one terribly disturbing and all too plausible conceptualization. I saw myself, isolated and tortured. I saw masses of people looking up as if in wait of something. I was transported into what seemed like space and saw massive spinning columns.

Ultimately I felt a searing and unimaginable pyschic pain so complete that I could equate it with hell. Throughout all of this there were several images that reoccurred. Among them was that of a small group of people looking down at me. I can't recall exactly how many people, it seemed like 4 or 5 and they were distinctly blonde and perhaps androgynous, this was the image that ushered me back into the 'real' world at the end of the trip. As my vision returned that last image seemed to fractalize and shrink. Merging with all the shadows in my field of view, as if there was an almost invisible screen between my mind and my vision of the world. My memory of all of this is faint and spotty, I'm not sure how much of it was original to the trip, but it all seemed to me to be things I had felt before. It all seemed taken from nightmares and the world of the unconscious.

I had never been a very seriously spiritual person, but this trip shook everything up for me. Throughout it all I felt distinctly that there were forces external to myself at work. I felt as if I had been in the present of some sort of demon, something tormenting me. For the next 40 minutes after I came to I was still delusional, although gradually regaining my grip. I was convinced that my friends knew something more than they were willing to tell me. That they had some understanding of what was happening that they wouldn't share with me. This was, I believe, just an extension of the overall paranoia that was ringing through my brain. I couldn't shake the feeling that I had broken something, that there was some feedback loop of negativity and psychic pain running through my brain that would never end, and eventually drive me mad.

After that trip I ate mushrooms again once, albeit with much apprehension. I had a bad experience that evening, not worth expanding upon here, but definitely related to this one. Suffice it to say that I feel my spiritual being is not strong enough right now for any more psychedelic exploration. The fears and delusions that I experience through the synergism of salvia and mushrooms has creeped back on me from time to time, unexpectedly gripping me and shivering my spine until I reconvince myself that I am a being safe in the physical world. This trip happened around 3 months ago, and I have thought about it every day since.

I defintely was put in touch with a level of spirituality I had never really considered possible before. Certain fears and memories were unlocked from within me that I had completely repressed. Overall the experience was frightening and overwhelming, yet I feel that if only it had been diluted, not as compressed and instantaneous, perhaps I could have taken a more constructive lesson from it. My message in sharing this experience is to let people know that salvia should not be taken frivolously. I'm certain that this experience wouldn't have happened if not for the combination of substances, as well as a number of other possible factors of the time (stress, fatigue, too many trips in the preceeding weeks/months). I had tripped on LSD and Mushrooms a number of times before that evening. Often having mixed them with other substances (MDMA, MDA, Mescaline, Speed) but never have I even come close to as powerful and experience. The trip went beyond the normal levels of hallucination and delusion that I had come to expect from drugs. It was more real than real, distinctly personal, yet felt somehow true and frighteningly external.

Exp Year: 2000	ExpID: 5141
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jan 11, 2002	Views: 42,287
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Salvia divinorum (44), Mushrooms (39) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Difficult Experiences (5), Combinations (3)