DOSE:

1.5 hits

smoked

Salvia divinorum

(dried)

As of last night Salvia has become one of my favourite, most respected things; it scared me to despair but I love it for that. I was taken completely by surprise, especially since what I did was only meant to be a particularly light dose. I'd done two similar sized doses beforehand, and all I'd experienced was altered perception of size and 'position'; I felt like my world wasn't upright at all. I giggled a lot and could communicate fine, although right after smoking my voice apparently sounded like a tape that was being chewed up.

I am inexperienced when it comes to psychoactive drugs, all I'd really done before Salvia was one mushroom trip which went very well indeed. But still, I suppose that throwing myself into Salvia at that stage was sort of stupid, but like I said it was meant to be light. Anyway, last night my boyfriend Paul and I decided to up the dosage a little. Paul, unlike me, is a very experienced psychonaut type person, yet he decided that it should be me to do all the exploratory stuff. A dark bedroom with a big bed was at the ready, and we were under the impression that since the increase in the dose would be only marginal, that I would be able to make it there. As it happens, I really didn't. It took 'one and a half' bongs to finish off the dose. I could feel the strange 'not upright' feeling after the first bong, and after the second I don't remember a thing. Things went blank for an instant, whilst memories of my life thus far are put away somewhere else where I can't see them.

Next thing I hear is my slow monotonous laughter as I seem to be looking at Paul. I feel that I'm standing up, I can see Paul's face and he's laughing too. He then appears to be mimicking my own awful laughter. It goes on and on for what seems like hours as I gradually see what is being revealed to me. (What I'm actually looking at is Paul knelt on the floor, with a piece of paper in front of him as he gathers up the dried remnants of the leaves, I am actually sitting down.) Back in my head, things start to clarify. I see Paul, and I see his body, knelt before me, I am also aware of the rest of the room behind him. Except that I'm not actually there in the room, I'm looking at a huge cliff face with the image of the room slowly disintegrating as what was once my reality takes on its true form. The perfection and absolute reality of what I am looking at is undeniable as I see, all around the real Paul, thousands of little duplicate Pauls all living and breathing and fleshy all spiraling off each other just like the Mandelbrot set only different, much simpler. They were all laughing in unison, mimicking me exactly. They made up this huge living cliff face of various-sized Pauls.

The effect on what was once my living room was similar to what a TV screen looks like when your nose is almost touching it. All those little coloured squares with the picture going on in between them. I kept laughing even when I finally realised what was happening. This huge cliff face of little Pauls has simulated my entire life so far and it stood before me like a monstrous lump of meat on some huge steel blue plane. In this place nothing behind me existed and the ground was covered by a centimetre of shimmering water.

I had realised that these little Pauls weren't actually Paul; they were just using his form because he happened to be there when they decided to let me in on their little joke. And to show that they were telling the truth, they made the scene change. The colours and shapes between their bodies shifted and changed and my lovely lounge was effortlessly transformed into some otherworldly jungle scene with waterfalls and non-existent plants and trees. They kept on laughing and so did I. Things got kind of difficult because I still had a sense of myself. I was still Kathleen, I still had my personality but I didn't have my life anymore. These creatures that had worked for so long making up my world thought that I would find this funny too; I knew that they weren't capable of realizing that maybe I wouldn't like this. But at the same time I felt pleasantly surprised, I did find this funny somewhere in my head; I also felt a bit excited about getting to explore what would now be my real world, with these weird things that could take me wherever I wanted to go, etc. As thousands of totally alien thoughts and decisions crowded my head, I looked closely at the little piece of paper by Paul's knees where he was gathering the Salvia; without looking at what he was doing he was pushing the piles of leaves into little portraits of his face that were also looking and laughing at me. This creeped me out a bit, but I kept on laughing. I remember actually, making the effort to get the lounge back, and was utterly amazed when it did. I was pretty angry (but still laughing) and wanted my life back, I was also pretty furious that the right edge of everything I could see was furred by images of Paul's little smiling faces. I got up to go to the bedroom thinking I might leave it all behind in the lounge. (I also remember thinking, 'wow, I'm going to have to tell Paul about that') I got scared when it wouldn't go away, it was everywhere, and I was convinced that it was the absolute truth and it was here to stay. But I also KNEW that it would end, but on the surface I felt this nagging suspicion that I might be really wrong; it seemed like a reasonable suspicion too.

I got Paul to come and cuddle me, and I kept trying to smooth his right side so the faces would go away. I swore I was stuck with them, I really, really did. When I could feel things returning to normal, I felt unimaginable relief and happiness and appreciation and adoration for my lovely boyfriend and the rest of my life. I was so glad to have everything back. I'd never been so scared in my life as I was when I made it the bedroom. But that is not going to stop me from doing Salvia again. It's the most amazing, mentally enriching experience I have ever had and I'm going to start growing it.

Exp Year: 2000	ExpID: 2679
Gender: Female
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Nov 13, 2001	Views: 21,718
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Salvia divinorum (44) : Small Group (2-9) (17), General (1)