DOSE:

1 bowl

smoked

Salvia divinorum

(extract)

BODY WEIGHT:

200 lb

It's been about a week since I first went truly through the looking glass with Salvia (see my other report, Stuck Outside Time). In the meantime, I smoked once at a slightly lower dose than last time and got really stoned--I merged with the chair, but I didn't 'get off' the same way I did previously. Then, last night, I decided to go for broke and visit the dreamtime again.

I got home from the bar with a slight buzz on, but I wasn't at all highly intoxicated. I went out on to my screened porch and meditated a little bit as a light, chilly October rain fell outside. Then I sat down and toked up a bowl of 25x extract, finishing in about one and a half hits.

I should note that the brand of extract I used comes in a little plastic container which supposedly contains a total of 100mg of pure Salvinorin A laced onto some dark, fish-food-like leaf matter. If this were true, then one would expect to feel extreme effects from smoking about one percent of the contents of the container. Having experimented a little bit, I find that smoking roughly one percent of the contents of the container results in barely threshold effects. The bowls I've smoked that really sent me were more in the neighborhood of ten percent of the contents of the container, which I believe contained something in the neighborhood of 1/2 gram of leaf matter.

After finishing the hits, I was quickly launched back into the space I experienced before. I recall that last time, I described the 'texture' of the space as 'smearing,' but this time I'm going to go with the term 'dissolving.' I was a little more relaxed this time, perhaps because of the alcohol, but also because this experience was a little more intentional than the last one. Therefore, my experience was less terrifying, but it was still a little unsettling at first.

Last time, I believed that the universe itself was grinding to a halt, and I believed that my consciousness would have to wait in limbo until it was assigned a new universe to occupy. This time, my feelings were remarkably similar, but from a slightly different perspective. I became aware that I had chosen to occupy this reality and this body, but since I had blasted myself out of it with Salvia I would remain in the 'dreamtime' and not return to consensus reality.

The quality of my emotions regarding this realization were different this time for two reasons: last time, I believed that the whole universe had ended and I was actually a little worried about other occupants of the universe (loved ones), but this time I had the notion that the entire universe really only existed for the entertainment of my cosmic being, and that it really wasn't such a bad thing for it to be over. I would pass right through to the other side having had an interesting experience as an earthling, but no worse for the wear. Again, however, I didn't have any awareness that I had taken a drug, just a knowledge that I had fallen out of existence. I accepted my fate, and I relaxed. At that point, I began to reintegrate.

At first I was even a little sad to be returning to earth, and I remained convinced that my everyday experience was the 'trip,' and the Salvia space existed at the threshold of the 'real' reality. It was exactly as though I had awoken from a dream convinced that the dream was real and my waking life was illusion. This conclusion was supported (I thought) by the fact that I awoke sitting in a different chair than the one I had smoked in, and that my cellphone seemed to have disappeared. I interpreted these developments as 'glitches' in the fabric of reality that were evidence of the artificiality of my world. I also found it extremely bizarre to have arms and legs and be bounded by spacetime. I believe my exact thoughts were 'Come on guys, this existence is highly implausible, couldn't we have come up with something more convincing?' I had a little chuckle about that, and then realized that, like it or not, I was back and I was dying for a cigarette. I'm still not entirely sure which reality is real.

My recent Salvia experiences have been extremely profound and very hard to integrate. They seem so REAL. I'm doing my best to narrate them here, but I can't help but lament how inadequate human language is to describe this sort of experience. Additionally, I've always sort of pooh-poohed people who have actual religious experiences on drugs. If you told me that you saw Jesus on acid or something, I would have replied that it was some kind of overlay of your cultural background through which you experienced something which was either entirely illusory or entirely real but more universal than the Christian god. The experiences I've had and the way I narrate them to myself and others may suggest that I am simply finding my own spiritual language to describe a neurological phenomenon so traumatic that ONLY spirituality can explain it. Again, though, they seem so real, and they make the idea of consciousness persisting beyond death a little bit more plausible to me. Should I just go with that? Or should I be a skeptic? I don't know.

Exp Year: 2007	ExpID: 66491
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Dec 16, 2012	Views: 3,430
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Salvia divinorum (44) : Mystical Experiences (9), Alone (16)