DOSE:

3 hits

smoked

Salvia divinorum

(extract - 10x)

BODY WEIGHT:

135 lb

This was my first time taking Salvia. I'd had a little with some pot one time, which lead to a slightly more trippy feeling of being stoned, but by all reports, the effect of straight Salvia would be significantly more intense.

One friend had taken it and believed that he was 'dead', and has permanently sworn off the stuff. Another friend, had lain down on the grass, and felt himself sinking and becoming part of the earth. He was willing to try it again. Another friend, had prepared himself by going out to a spot in nature, and sat down on a log. Took it, and fell off the log, down a hill, and into a ditch. It was not a good experience.

I resolved to not take it where I could fall of a log, obviously.

Most intrigued by the sensation of being 'dead' or no-being. I had some acid, and given it was hard to come by, wanted to work with a transformational psychological experience. Perhaps a symbolic death, followed by acid, would result is something similar to a shamanic journey - perhaps in combination with E just in case, to take the edge off a post-nothingness acid trip?

This was the mental information and setting with which I decided to try Salvia. Either of the first two possibilities sounded good - death, or feeling one with the earth.

I'd discussed it with friends, and friend two, in the above listing, was interested in taking it with me. After having discussions earlier one night then going out, I got home at about 3am to find my friends up, and discovered that Salvia had been purchased (I had had a glass of alcohol earlier in the evening, but it would only have been minimally effecting me by that point). Friend two was lying on my couch under a blanket, on a trip. I'd literally stumbled in on him, but I tried not to disturb him, and he didn't seem too deeply in a trip. It'd been his first trip, and he was happy to sit for me.

I lay down on my couch, under a blanket, and tried a cone's full, from a copper pipe I owned, with a very small wee flame, trying to apply the yellow of the flame to the Salvia. I did it in several quick breaths, as I'm a little sensitive to heat & smoke in my lungs.

I remember the sensation that I was about to trip, with a combined sensation of pressure and floating, like being stoned, but I no more remember entering the trip than I can of the moment I go to sleep, I was only aware of 'awaking' within the trip, kind of the sharp lines between reality and trip in a NOS trip.

But who was 'I'?

I didn't really know of understand once I came out of the initial confused Salvia experience on what happened in my very first trip. I knew had been patting at the blanket on me, thinking it was me, and came out of it with a strong fixation about the space to my *right*. I'd been fairly nonverbal during it, so it was hard to understand what my mental awareness had been during it.

To reconstruct the experience - I had lost much of my verbal awareness, and sense of who/what I was, and what my self body-shape consisted of. Being unaware of what I was, I assumed that the couch I was lying on, the back of it resting against my left side, was also myself. My confusion mostly lay in - why was I not *symmetrical*? I was convinced that whatever I was, I *should* be mostly symmetrical, and so I think I was trying to either mentally construct a couch-self to my right side, or mentally propel myself to the right. Either way, neither was possible, but as I became more lucid, I was still having this very odd sensation to my right. As I gathered what was and was not me, I was patting at the blanket, fascinated as it seemed more attached to me, and yet was not. What an odd concept!

Once the initial 'trip' wore off (only a few minutes, I think), I was left with a sensation not unlike that of being stoned, mostly in the body sensation, and slight lack of clarity to my thoughts, and a mostly pleasant emotional-mental state. I talked with friends a little, then returned to my room. I was quite tired, so went to lay on my bed. Friend two had another trip, and laughed uproariously from the couch.

Then, would I like some more?
Sure!

Back on the merry-go-round I go. As the disorientation came on, I tried to stay focused enough to smoke some more, having my friend hold the flame. This time I was more familiar with the state, so was a lot more able to understand what I'd been thinking, and to clarify, it was after this trip that I understood what I'd been thinking on the first trip . Coming into awareness in my second trip, I wasn't sure what I was, but I thought that I was the entire 'platform' that I was lying on. There was a person-thing, oh, my friend, sitting on a corner of me. Wait. Was that right? Didn't I have some memory of my self-shape as being a torso with four tubular things coming off me?

I patted the platform. It really did seem to be a platform shape, rather than... 'legs?'. But I couldn't see any tubular shapes beneath me. There were lumps 'under' (these concepts were still giving me difficulty) the... the blankets? But they were the wrong shape. I didn't see anything long enough to be 'legs'. Maybe my memory was fooling me.

Wait! I patted at lumps. They might be legs and knees, just shorter than I had presumed. Although what made them different from other lumps on the platform? Finally I understood the mystery of the length. They were folded under at the knees, to make a shorter lump. How ingenious! I also patted at my head (my head being the center of my perceptions) with these 'arm' things. Fairly clumsily. Whacking myself in the face slightly. I was still not entirely convinced of my leg theory. I would investigate - and attempted to pull up the blankets, one by one, but - there were so many. I was lucid enough now to believe that there were really legs under there, or at least, it seemed less effort to assume that than to continue failing to pull all the blankets up.

Hmmm. These blankets. Did that mean I was on a bed? I rejected the notion. I'd had experience of beds. Lots of them. And the overriding image from earliest days was that it should be smaller, narrower, and the blankets should tuck down at the sides (ie a single-sized bed from childhood). Whatever I was on did not always have the blankets tucked in, and I was fairly sure it was a 'double' thing, whatever that was, even if it was quite bedlike. Eventually I was lucid enough to realise that it was, actually a bed.

I was back in the lucid, but just kind of stoned state. I discussed with my friend my experience and that I was surprised more people don't take Salvia. It seemed to be a quick trip of loss of chunks of verbal memory, and entire loss of sense-of-self boundaries, followed by a pleasant stoned state. For the sake of the stoned state, wouldn't more people take a merry-go-round ride on that first bit, and then joke amongst themselves as to what had occurred during the loss-of-self? Other people's experiences must be significantly different to mine I concluded. Or possibly I was less worried by the loss-of-self state. My friend had had less interesting trips, just laughter for the most part. He thought my trip was closer to what he had experienced the first time I took it.

After that conversation, it was even more late, and I was tired, but I was easily convinced to go on one more trip.

I vaguely remember the coming-to in the trip. Again, I didn't know who or what I was, but more than that, I was tired, and it would have taken a great deal of mental effort to figure it out, and I was aware that whatever this state was, or whatever I was, it was temporary and would go away soon. I (or more accurately 'What') knew that What didn't need to know what What was to lose consciousness, so What descended or sunk more (I didn't know whether the lumps beneath 'What' were arms or pillows, or whether either of those were me, but neither did I care), and I think I went to sleep. I may have woken once the trip wore off.

The next day, I felt ok, a little mentally foggy. I wasn't as enthusiastic about taking Salvia as a pot-substitute, or going on the merry-go-round for the hell of it, in retrospect, it just seemed like large chunks of temporary brain damage, making me forget what I was. It didn't seem that interesting or illuminating really.

I've had slight experiences of depersonalization often enough that maybe the ego-loss felt less scary to me than it would others. I think that people I've known, including the first friend's account, would have felt the sensation to be that of being being dead, but for me, ego-loss is not death, or particularly interesting. Worth riding the merry-go-round at least once, but ultimately, I felt a little disappointed. No great revelations of self, which I was desperately craving at the time.

But then, perhaps doing it outside, and thinking I was part of a hill or the ground would have seemed more cosmically significant in retrospect than thinking I was a couch, or a bed.

I'll give it another chance in those surroundings, but I won't be combining it with acid in the short term, as it doesn't feel like it would add to that experience.

Exp Year: 2008	ExpID: 71940
Gender: Female
Age at time of experience: 25
Published: Oct 24, 2018	Views: 1,445
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Salvia divinorum (44) : General (1), First Times (2), Small Group (2-9) (17)