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A Circus of Distortion
LSD & Salvia divinorum (leaves)
Citation:   Auseklis. "A Circus of Distortion: An Experience with LSD & Salvia divinorum (leaves) (exp66148)". Erowid.org. Dec 29, 2010. erowid.org/exp/66148

 
DOSE:
T+ 0:00
3 hits   LSD  
  T+ 3:00 1 hit smoked Salvia divinorum (leaves)
BODY WEIGHT: 150 lb
This was the most intense and the best acid trip I've ever had, and I'd tell you all about it, but there are plenty of trip reports based on LSD alone, so I'll just write the pertinant information- the trip after I smoked Salvia divinorum.

I took three hits of LSD (my friend had done the same earlier in the day) and had a wonderful experience while peaking. However, about 3 hours into the trip, the peak ended, and I was very disappointed. The intense visuals had entirely disappeared. My friend told me to smoke marijuana to get them back, but I had a drug test in 3 days so that wasn't an option. Instead, I went to my car and pulled out a bag of natural strength salvia divinorum (usually way too weak to smoke by itself) and brought it inside.

We turned off the lights, the only illumination left was coming off the computer screen and a static tv. Some really terrible rap music was playing, I like hippie music, so this didn’t thrill me. My friend (who was more sober at this point) packed some salvia into a bowl of a sophisticated bong (diffuser stems, all kinds of crap) and lit up. I remember being fascinated by the strange, green smoke that was filling up the chamber. He took a HUGE hit and immediately began coughing terribly. He vomited into a garbage can and said, “That was the weirdest puke I’ve ever taken” (for this kid, that’s saying something) and added, “Smoke this shit if you want to, I’m sticking to pot.” He packed a bowl of salvia for me, and helped me work the bong, since he’s a much more experienced smoker. I took just one hit of this natural strength salvia, enough that it was a little uncomfortable, and held it for as long as I could…

I was laughing, uncontrollably and for no reason. My friend was laughing too. I just stared into his face, and he stared back, with a strange glow around his face and pitch darkness everywhere else. Suddenly it wasn’t a face anymore- just a personality, a spirit- the only physical manifestation he had was a devious smile and yellow eyes, think Cheshire Cat. Things became extremely abstract- everything in the universe disappeared except for our roaring laughter, my mind, my friend’s personality, and a frightening droning in the background.

Things flickered- some memories flashed by, though I can’t remember details at all, and it seemed only to last for milliseconds. Now I was really scared. I was stuck. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t stop laughing. My friend’s face was becoming more and more evil. I felt like my consciousness was being shot back and forth between my mind and the location of my friend’s personality at light speed. It seemed this loop had lasted for years… When would it end? I was sure I was stuck in this perpetual nightmare fore eternity…

I used all my willpower and shook myself out of the trance. The room came back, and it was hard to tear my gaze from my friends face, which had normalized, somewhat. The terrible rap music was still playing. “Holy shit” I muttered. “I almost got stuck in a loop forever.”

“How?” my friend asked. I tried to explain it, but it was just impossible.

“Do you remember all of that?” I asked.

“Remember what?” he replied.

“All of what just happened… Holy shit, I can’t believe I came out of that. What happened?”

“You just kind of stared at me, and kept laughing, and then you…”

But I couldn’t hear him anymore. I was petrified. The music was terrible, it had to stop.

“Stop it, man. Turn off the music. Turn it off! The trip’s getting bad, it’s getting real bad…” The music stopped, but it just made things worse. The entire universe was immersed in a petrifying silence. He went and turned on the lights. There were terrible, intense hallucinations in my peripheral vision. I was really scared, scared that I’d never return to reality. I started thinking about my uncle, who was schizophrenic, about all the psychedelics I’d done and how stupid I was for pushing it…

The room flashed into hell. My friend had an expression of torment on his face, he was preying on my agony. Flames were licking his eyes. He started to say something to me, something terrible… I couldn’t control any part of the trip, and nothing seemed to resemble reality at all. I told myself I was hallucinating, I knew my best friend could not possibly be evil… I used all my energy and willpower to shake away the setting, to imagine my friend as he really was.

The room came back, but it still had frightening aspects. “I’m scared,” I kept saying. “I’m questioning my sanity. Logan, Logan come here I need you!” And my friend ran to help me. My peripheral vision was the worst of everything- it seemed like I had a permanent frame around my eyes. I go scared I’d see that way forever. I couldn’t tell what was part of my body- It seemed like dressers, blankets, everything was part of me somehow. When I moved my arm it pixilated- little bits of matter just floated in space. I started thinking that the molecular structure of the universe was crumbling… It seemed like every bit of matter was somehow physically a part of me. I hated it. I kept questioning my sanity, wondering if I’d ever perceive things the same way again…

More people came into the room, since I was making such a scene. “This is a bad trip, man. This is really bad… I gotta fix it.” All three trip sitters were really nice, but all three of them were on something, so I couldn’t tell what was part of reality and what wasn’t. I tried to calm myself down, I had become the feeling of panic. They told me the first step was to just chill, so I lay down. They put a blanket over me, and I just hated that sensation. I threw it off. I kept telling myself that the salvia trip was over, it only lasts a few minutes, I was fine… But I wasn’t fine. I was sure the drugs were no longer affecting me and I was in a psychosis, but I kept telling myself it wasn’t true.

“What’s making the trip bad?” They asked me. It was hard for me to put it in words. “It needs to be happy… The trip’s not happy, its terrified… I keep getting stuck in loops man, so many loops…” and my mind was flooded with paradoxical things. The oroborous (a snake eating its own tail), the existence of God, molecular structure… I kept praying, praying over and over and asking God to forgive me for tampering with my mind. I then noticed that they were doing things to try and make me happier.

“This is a really happy bag,” one kid said. “This is the happiest bag I’ve ever seen.” I looked into it and it was filled with candy, toys, colors, everything a 3 year old kid would be enthralled with. But I didn’t like it, there was something wrong with it. Then he held up a soft bear. “This is the softest thing I’ve ever felt. Look how amazing this guy is. Wouldn’t it be awesome if these things were real and our size? And they’d just walk around and smoke pot with us?” But I didn’t like that either. Their pet black cat came in and I started petting it, talking to it, trying anything to calm down.

“Funyun?” one friend kept saying. Any time I looked at him, that’s all he would say. I was sure I was stuck in a loop of the past, like when a record gets stuck and repeats over and over… Another kid was drawing on the wall. He was stoned out of his mind, and any time I looked at him I was reminded of a mental institution. He kept saying the same things, looking at me with the same disturbing smile. All these loops… Everything was repeating itself, and I hated it.

I looked to my best friend, Logan, and any time I looked at him floods of memories and emotions would rush passed my eyes, and I suddenly knew that I could never trip with him again, because we had existed together on so many levels, and that was part of what was triggering this psychotic reaction. Any time I asked Logan a question, he would just repeat it, in a different tone. All he seemed to do was echo me. Any time I wanted some sense of direction or a glimpse of reality he would just lead me in circles.

“Are you hungry?” Logan asked, and I said yes, anything that might help me grip reality. He brought me a microwaved burrito. It was really strange eating it- it was half warm and half cold, and very spicy. My body just felt weirder after that. “I’m questioning my sanity.” I repeated. “Am I stuck this way?”

“No,” Logan replied. “No, look at me. You’re not crazy. I’ve seen crazy people. You’re talking completely normal. This happens to everybody. You’ve been tripping only 4 hours and this stuff lasts about 12… You just weren’t expecting the salvia reaction.”

But no matter how much he told me, deep down, I just couldn’t believe him. He recommended we go outside, but the darkness just made things worse. I still had frightening things going on in my peripheral vision, and I still couldn’t grasp the concept of matter and what was my actual physical property. I hated salvia- I hated it so much. I thought maybe if I destroyed it it would end the trip… I started talking about how evil it was, how it was of the devil. I told myself I’d never have to take acid again, even though I loved it, because I didn’t want to end up this way again, not even for an instant. I definitely would never smoke salvia again, it was something man was not supposed to play with.

It seemed like hours since I had smoked the salvia. I was sure this bad trip would have ended by now. I told Logan, I told him we had to end the trip now. “Do you want some downers?” he asked. But I couldn’t, I had a drug test coming up. “We’ll just give you a sleeping pill. It won’t show up. It’s lunesta or something.” Suddenly I was very relieved. I would just go to sleep and wake up in the morning completely sane. Suddenly my entire existence was dependent on that one sleeping pill.

I tried to be patient, but when my friends still hadn’t given me one I got really panicky. I almost started crying. He told me they belonged to his mom, and he couldn’t just tell her that his friend was freaking out and needed to be pacified. Tears were in my eyes. “Please,” I begged, “It’s really important.” He tried again, but in vain. I accepted that I wasn’t going to get one. I was still very unhappy and scared, and this was obvious.

“Wanna play Mario?” Logan asked. “That’s happy.” I told him sure, anything. But it wouldn’t work, so he put in Mega Man instead. This was a SNES, and with my whole difficulty with matter at the time it was near impossible to differentiate myself from the controller from the game and everything just sort of blended into one environment. I kept dying, but was always relieved when I could just play the level again. I got a little less scared. But then the loops started again. I kept fighting the same robots. I kept playing the same sequence over and over. Was I psychotic? “Didn’t I just fight this guy?” I asked. “Didn’t I do this already?” But nobody answered, there was no help in sight.

“I need to be grounded.” I said. “I just want to be grounded and to know what’s real.” I wished for dinner with my parents. I wished for times I played with my sister as a kid. I wished for watching the History Channel and for school and wished for anything that was routine and I knew was real.

I handed off the controller to somebody else. Logan offered me a Mountain Dew. I said sure, and decided to use this as a placebo. “If you could just pass that over here,” I said, “and allow the good tripping to begin.” Logan laughed. Anything weird that happened I just dismissed, I just told myself it was the drugs and I’d come out of it eventually. After a while, the scary peripheral hallucinations stopped completely. I felt more and more normal. But any time I thought back and tried to review the events that had taken place, I’d get confused and toss myself into a bad trip again. With my willpower and with time I floated back to reality, and started making rational decisions again. I managed to fall asleep, and when I woke up I felt like I was glowing, but was indeed completely sane.

This entire salvia experience lasted only about a half hour, my friends say. It seemed an eternity to me. Unless I feel like going into psychosis or astral exile, I won’t smoke salvia while acid tripping ever again. If I had done it while peaking, I think I’d be in a mental institution right now. I’m glad I did smoke the salvia, because it taught me a lot and certainly defined the trip, but I definitely wouldn’t do it again.

Exp Year: 2007ExpID: 66148
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Dec 29, 2010Views: 22,087
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LSD (2), Salvia divinorum (44) : Combinations (3), Bad Trips (6), Relationships (44), Small Group (2-9) (17)

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