DOSE:

1 hit

smoked

Salvia divinorum

(extract)

BODY WEIGHT:

155 lb

Background: I am 22 years old and experienced with LSD and Psilocybin Shrooms (More than 7 trips, less than 12. Can't really remember specifics, one acid trip 5 hits strong). I bought some salvia 20x extract (1g) and had smoked a little bit a few times before. Just enough to get some crazy visuals (open or closed eye) and some weird time distortions, but nothing earth shattering. I had started to lose respect for psychedelics/hallcuinogens because it had been a while since my last voyage into lala land and I had forgotten what it was like to be humbled. Anyway, one night I decided to take my vial, a bong, and a butane lighter/torch over to a friends apartment (in the same complex as me). There were about 5 or 6 good buddies there, and we took turns taking salvia hits. Well, I went last (being the provider for everyone else). Here's what happened, in 3 phases.

Phase 1) Directly after I took the hit I realized that I had taken a much larger dose than I had ever before. As I started exhaling I could feel the physical effects kick in. I could also feel my mind start accelerating at warp speed. Suddenly, everything was black. The entire room around me had collapsed onto me and myself and all objects and people in the room were all one, but we were not a consciousness. More or less, I was perceiving the end of my universe, in which all atomic molecules had been infinitely compressed into one point, much like the universe is said to have been before the big bang. I was myself, and yet I was everything else in the universe also. Slowly I started to see again.

Phase 2) As I regained my sight, I realized/percieved that I was laying down on a couch (though I wasn't actually lying down, because there was a friend sitting on either side of me). From my perspective, the couch looked like a piano and the 3 pair of legs on it resembled keys with the lines from the cushion segments and space between the people seated on the couch looking like the sharps/flats (the black keys). The world had a muddy orange tint to it that at the time I somehow associated with the original Super Mario Brothers NES game. My visual lucidity was coming back, and now I started to hear voices of the people in the room. I couldn't understand what language they were speaking, but I knew what they were saying: I was dead. I tried to lean forward and communicate, but I found myself paralyzed. I tried a second time and succeeded, but I had completely forgotten about the capability for speech. This is not to say that I forgot how to speak, but I had forgotten that verbal communication was even possible for humans to perform at all.

I fell backward into the couch in dismay. My mind was screaming 'I'm not dead! I'm not dead! I'm moving! I'm breathing. Please...don't let me be dead...' I felt the physical effects of the salvia, which for me is tingling all over my body which feels like little ant bites. All of a sudden, a more pressing issue hit my consciousness. Not only was I dead, but my crotch was on fire because I had dropped the bong and lighter onto my lap and I was burning. I leaned forward and looked, but I could not find the bong or the lighter. I looked on the floor near my feet, thinking I had dropped and broken it. I still could not see it. Falling back into the couch, I realized once again that I was on fire because I had dropped the bong onto my lap. Still, there was no bong. The friend who's apartment I was in leaned in real close to me and asked: 'What are you looking for?' It was the first sentence I had heard thus far that I actually understood as English. I widened my eyes and fell back into the couch, intimidated by his use of communications, and for some reason utterly confused as to why he was talking to me considering I was dead according to them.

At this point I seemed a little more in control, but I closed my eyes and I realized that my whole body was not tingling because I was on fire, but because I was God's right arm, and it had fallen asleep. I opened my eyes and started to cackle maniacally internally. After a couple more minutes of looking around in utter confusion, I regained most of my lucidity. My friend had brought me a glass of ice water and asked me if I wanted to go outside. I did.

Phase 3) I layed into a hammock that he had outside his apartment and we started to talk about my experience. As I recalled the events to him, I began to cry. I realized at this point that it was the scariest thing that had happened to me since one dream I had when I was a teenager (I dreamt that I was falling off a cliff, but instead of waking up right before the impact, I hit the rocky bottom and everything went instantaneously black. The dream still didn't end. I continued to dream the blackness without conscious thought but a sense of time for about 3-4 minutes. Then I woke up). While I was swinging in the hammock, I realized that I was having open eye visuals very similar to a level 3 experience on LSD. These continued for about 20-25 minutes after I went outside. I continued to cry, because I had never been so scared.

All in all, Phase I and II happened over the course of about 10 minutes. I couldn't find the bong because as soon as I took the hit, my friend took it away from me but I didn't know it. The bong had been sitting on the table some 8 inches in front of my legs the entire time. I am very thankful for my friend, of whom I have the utmost respect for. I am also very thankful for salvia. I haven't smoked any since then, which was several months back, even though I still have about 6/10ths of a gram left. Without salvia, I may have lost my respect for hallucinogens and had to be taught the hard way (say over the course of a 12 hour acid trip). I'd much rather have 10 minutes of terror and a long time of reflection than have an entire trip of terror which could possibly ruin hallucinogens forever.

Moral: If I am going to put a chemical into my blood and ultimately into my brain, respect it. Drugs can show me a great time, but they can also show me very ugly things that I may not want to see, but are forced to.

Exp Year: 2004	ExpID: 60536
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 22
Published: Aug 26, 2009	Views: 7,656
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Salvia divinorum (44) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Bad Trips (6)