DOSE: T+ 0:00	1	oral	Poppies - Opium	(tea)
T+ 0:00	few glasses	oral	Alcohol	(liquid)
T+ 4:00	3 hits	smoked	Salvia divinorum	(extract)
T+ 0:00	3 hits	smoked	Salvia divinorum	(extract)

BODY WEIGHT:

300 lb

My best friend 'G' and I are late-30's experienced psychonauts who have tried pretty much every drug you can name, with a preference for the psychedelics. Traditionally we've stuck to the classic trilogy of LSD, Mushrooms and Mescaline. However as we get older, these have become more difficult to find. So lately we've added Salvia to our experimental slate.

We always arrange the setting to be non-work days with no wives or kids around. We always sit for each other, and have had no problem trips with any substance to date. We've smoked both plain leaf and 20x extract in the past with disappointingly moderate effects, mostly body disorientation and light CEV's. We were barely tickling the bottom of the 'L' on the S-A-L-V-I-A scale. Well, my breakthrough went right to the edge of a second 'A'.

The fateful night in question, we started off in the late afternoon with a dose of opium tea along with a few drinks around 4pm. Come about 8pm (the above 2 substances had long since faded from direct influence) we broke out the 20x to try again to see if we could 'break through' and hit a real psychedelic experience this time. We each took 3 good hits of the 20x heated with G's new torch-lighter, to about the same effects as before. For my part, light (and slightly frustrating, I felt like I was chasing them) CEVs and body distortion effects. My neck and head felt like they were rolling along the rim of a bowl.

Your humble narrator then got the bright idea of padding the bottom of the pipe with plain leaf and packing twice the 20x on top, in case the 20x was just burning off too fast. We were still in the afterglow phase of the first attempt at this point. I took 3 huge deep hits of this preparation, holding each for 10 seconds or so, and then my world imploded.

After exhaling the 3rd hit, I began saying something to G, but heard my words turning to high-pitched gibberish as everything began rushing away from me into a tunnel of black, similar to when 'going under' for surgery.

I blinked and immediately 'awoke' to find that world that I knew was gone. There was something else instead.

I couldn't see anything directly, all vision had been shattered and fragmented into a jagged spiral vortex pattern somewhat like a kaleidoscope that was still at first, but then began slowly spinning out of control. I could not hear anything at first, there was no sound at all. Even worse, I had no memory of what I had just done or why my world was was like this.

I felt nothing but confusion and fear, trying to understand why things were now the way they are. This experience was not psychedelic in the least. This was deeply real. Hyper-real.

I need to stress how fully that I had lost my grounding; I had completely forgotten that I had taken a drug of my own choice, and that I would be fine in a few minutes. As far as I knew, this was reality, but that this reality was WRONG.

In this silent vortex I could feel/hear myself think, and would be answered by another aspect of my thoughts in reply. 'I never used to feel this way, I used be able to see and hear properly, right?' I asked myself. 'No' another part of my mind answered me, that was just a dream. 'THIS is what your life is, this is how it always has been. The dream is over.' I began to panic, all I could think was that I did not want to be like this forever, I was trapped! I began to feel the mental response to panic, but still not the physical. I may as well have had no body at all.

G said that at up to this time from his point of view, I had just been mumbling 'no, no no!' to myself with eyes closed. But now at this point he says my eyes opened with a look of pure fear in them, and tears began to run. Not that I could feel them.

I was at this time wondering how I was going to explain this to my wife and kids, that I would never be able to see them or talk to them again! (The lack of logic here was lost on me at the time of course).

Memory of my experience begins to get hazy at this period which was probably the peak of the experience. Recall is very disjointed and fragmented.

G says that it was around this time that I suddenly leaned forward and began to count rapidly in French, a language I have not spoken with any fluency since I was about 4 years old. I have a vague memory of doing this as well, it seemed very important that I do so at the time. G says I ran those numbers together so quickly that I hit 22 (vingt-deux) within 8 seconds or so before stopping. I also thought I was yelling them, but apparently I rattled them off at a normal volume.

I am told that after this I also started mumbling something about my father, and a trap. I do not recall this, although I do recall hearing someone else call my name from outside of the vortex. I think I tried to answer, but I am not sure. I wish I had recorded this, but this reaction was completely unexpected.

Also around this time I apparently tried to get up and move, but G pushed me back onto the couch. I do not recall feeling him touch me at all, or even that I had a body. I was still lost in the spinning vortex. He says that I was unresisting and easy to move.

Finally I began to realize that I was able to pull myself out of the vortex, as long as I turned my head to the right of where I was initially looking and never look back. Even so, everything in my vision was still smearing and pulling to the left, the vortex was still calling me and I knew I would be lost in it again if I turned left to follow the tuggings.

I became aware of the room around me, and of G being there again. He kept trying to get me to turn to face him (to the left of course) to see if I was all right, as I was still unresponsive to him until now. I snapped at him to shut up, I can't look that way dammit! I was still too messed up to explain about the vortex. I was just relieved that I had come out of it with my sanity intact.

I finally remembered what I had done to myself to cause this nightmare, and turned to G shaking and covered in sweat and said 'oh bro, don't do it!'. (It turns out I was not actually sweating, G states my skin was in fact bone dry.)

Once I was able to explain what I had just endured, his second liftoff that night was aborted. The setting was officially wrecked by the first bad trip we've ever encountered. I was in no shape to sit for him anyway after that.

Subjectively this hellish experience seemed to last about 20 minutes. However G (and the clock) confirmed that the whole ordeal had lasted roughly 3 minutes. About 10 minutes after this I was back to baseline. Except for the rattled psyche, of course.

After this night I was convinced that Salvia was a dead end. There was nothing to learn here, no opening of the doors of perception to other realities, just plain old reality broken and warped. I was prepared to give up on it all together but have since reconsidered a little bit.

Maybe I simply took Salvia too lightly and got what I deserved. I hope that if in the future I approach Salvia in a less contemptuous manner, I will get a less horrible experience. We'll see. Maybe.

Exp Year: 2011	ExpID: 94353
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 38
Published: Feb 6, 2025	Views: Not Supported
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Salvia divinorum (44) : Difficult Experiences (5), Guides / Sitters (39), Loss of Magic (34), Small Group (2-9) (17)