DOSE:		smoked	Cannabis	(leaves)
	1.5 hits	smoked	Salvia divinorum	(extract - 10x)

BODY WEIGHT:

120 lb

I sit Indian style on a blue bed, clear my mind and relax my body. I take a bong hit with a butane lighter, wait 30 seconds, and exhale. I begin to feel the first effects before even taking my second hit: slight confusion, a certain texture to the air, an uncertainty regarding which side of the lighter to push down on. The cherry looks pixilated and plain weird as I light it, but I know I must to finish inhaling to break through. The smoke is in my lungs, and my hand is covering the chamber. I’m losing reality at a ridiculously fast rate, but I know I need to clear the chamber.

Chamber.
Chamber.
Chaamwber.
Chaaaaaammmmeewwbrrrrrrr.

At this point, about 6 seconds after the initial sign of change, I don’t know what a bong is, what it does, or why I am upside down (I’m not) - so clearing it is pretty much out of the question. According to my friends, this is when I collapsed into a fit of hysterical laughter. I, however, felt something quite different. In 7 seconds or so I go from complete sobriety (save for a mild marijuana high to ease tension) to a 100% inability to comprehend physics, 99% inability to make functional use of my memory, and 99% ego death. What is left of my ego manifests itself as a shapeless “soul” ripped away from reality and projected onto my subconscious. It exists only to maintain some primal feelings of self-preservation.

I don’t know my name, I don’t know people have names, I don’t know what people are, I don’t know where or what I am, I don’t know what knowing is. One of the most interesting effects is the misinterpretation of physics. Normally, the brain processes different sensory input received from physical events, but this most certainly is not the case for me. Physics completely vanishes. Objects don’t have to have a shape, sound does not have to come from somewhere, light does not have to brighten, and touch works without feeling. The last part is the most confusing. My brain does not require for me to physically feel an object in order to fabricate both a texture and a location; I can simultaneously feel everything in the room. In addition to that, my brain makes up objects that do not exist, and sometimes creates a function for those objects. I feel forces all around me, pulling and pushing – forces almost, but not fully, entirely unlike gravity. I am in a place that has a couple extra dimensions, yet at same time those dimensions are meaningless. It feels right though, more right than anything.

I was expecting sensory deprivation when I broke through, but that is not what I received; I somehow remember that at the back of my mind, behind all the mayhem. Or maybe I’m starting to come down a little bit? I have a distinct feeling regarding the friends that are in the room with me, a feeling I’ve had before regarding other people during a salvia experience- a feeling of complete reliance. It is a very familiar feeling, it feels exactly like infancy. I would have never remembered the feeling had it not been for Salvia, but it is definitely something I had experienced as a baby. Although the feeling may stem from my vulnerable situation, I do not feel exposed or in any way unsure; just the opposite- I feel protected and secure. Anyway, since I was expecting something somewhat different from the experience (although, in retrospect, not much different), and since my friends were laughing (at my laughter) I come to the drug-induced conclusion that I must have done something hilariously wrong. Not that I did anything dangerous or harmful, but that I somehow screwed up the intake of Salvia in some ridiculously funny way. This thought may have been fueled by the fact that I was unable to clear the last hit of the bong.

I feel like I have some goal I need to accomplish. This is mostly due to the fictitious forces I feel – It is as though they are guiding me to do something. Something about the bong is starting to come back to me, and I decide that it must be involved in my task. With my eyes closed (or were they open? It didn’t make much of a difference anyway) I take the butane lighter and bring it up to the mouth of the bong. (I am still not aware that the lighter is a lighter or that the bong is a bong). A part of the lighter happened to sort of attach to the bong, which allows me to slide it along the bong’s circumference. I feel like this is what must be done to complete my goal. Whenever the lighter makes a revolution around the top of the bong, it feels to me as though the lighter/bong complex move over onto the next “rung” of the imagined touch/space object. The touch/space objects feel in my brain like a mix of the pushing-apart force of two equally charged magnets and the texture of glass (probably because of the bong).

When one of my friends took the lighter from my hand, I was thrown back to reality for a moment. Through fits of laughter, I manage to vocalize brilliance such as “What the fuck? What the fuck?!” and “What the fuck just happened?” I am clearly coming down at this point, but I am still very much up. I was completely, 100% convinced that I did something hilariously wrong, and that my friends know what it is. When one of my friends said that the only thing that happened was that I collapsed into a fit of laughter, there was no way I could believe him. So much more happened. At this point I am still having a lot of difficulty understanding that I am sitting down on a bed – my brain can’t keep proper track of my body parts’ weight, feeling, orientation, or any other variable. This is not to say that I felt as though I didn’t have a body (although it did during the peak), just that certain parts were a couple universes away from each other. Vision acted very interestingly during this time, and although it was completely unlike reality, my brain constantly attempted to regain footing and saw each new odd sensory situation as proper and “right.” This is what my vision looks like, except with a lot movement and change, especially in areas out of my direct field of view.

Slowly I regain a foothold on reality. I realize that my friends aren’t messing with me, and that I broke through on Salvia. The world begins to reshape, the imaginary forces recede, my ego returns, and my brain obeys my eyes once more. 3 minutes after my first hit, I am back to normal. Upon proofreading this, I realize that it sounds like a pretty tame experience. Unfortunately, I am unskilled at explaining emotion, and since Salvia is more of an emotional experience than intellectual, there is no way for me to fully convey its intensity and awesomeness.

Exp Year: 2004	ExpID: 30529
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jul 10, 2006	Views: 7,270
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Salvia divinorum (44) : Glowing Experiences (4), Small Group (2-9) (17)