DOSE:

2 hits

smoked

Salvia divinorum

(extract - 5x)

BODY WEIGHT:

155 lb

All my previous encounters with altered states under the influence of mushrooms and LSD could not prepare me for my death and rebirth under salvia.

It all played out in my dorm room which resembles a small white box with two beds, a giant window, and two computers. I was sitting at my desk with my computer in front of me, my friend was sitting next to me, and I had a nice wallpaper made to trip people out on acid.

Overall I thought it was a good setup since I smoke cannabis everyday in the chair I was currently sitting in and I've had countless good drug experiences within this room making it a very positive place.

I took the first hit, and immediately I had the familiar yet totally bizarre feeling of being on a strong hallucinogenic. There was an abstract feeling that I could almost feel physically, like a source of anti gravity in the center of the room, pushing all things away from it.

At this point I glanced over at my wallpaper. The image is a woman whose hair is made of 8 skulls who extend from her in a spiral, leaving a trail of rainbow colors behind the skulls. The skulls each have a number of worm like things extending from their heads, but nothing about the image is scary or weird, since it is hand drawn and fairly abstract.

I noticed the extensions of her hair were waving left to right in rippling motion, dancing to the Shpongle playing in the background. Excited by the first signs of visuals, I loaded more into my bong.

This was a bad idea, at least for the next minute and a half (normal time). I held the hit in my lungs as long as I could. In fact, I was already tripping hard before I blew the smoke out of my lungs. Overall I probably held the smoke for about 20 seconds. The lady on my screen almost suddenly became real. Her skin looked real and her hair was shifting almost wildly. The next 30 seconds of the trip are hard to articulate, but I will do my best.

The woman on my desktop seemed to push out towards me. She had become real and looked intensely 3D, as if she were coming out of my screen. I felt like I was locked into my chair, and a feeling of terror came over me. The music wasn't helping, it was a strong bass beat trance song and the hair/skulls on her head were writhing to the beat.

Overcome with fear I looked to the heavens (well, ceiling in this case, since I was indoors) hoping to find comfort in God. Unfortunately it was at this moment where I was ripped from the earth to seemingly an alternate dimension of reality. I could no longer distinguish that I was in a body of any sort, but rather my consciousness had been replaced in this alternate reality of a white expanse where I could not see how far it extended. It was as if my point of view was floating above the whiteness. According to my friend, at this point I was just staring at the ceiling wide eyed and making gurgling noises. The white dimension probably has something to do with the fact that my ceiling is pretty much just that. A white blank ceiling. In my current state I was unable to perceive of anything other than the ceiling and could not tell if I was the ceiling or was apart from it.

All this took only about one to two seconds to occur, and then my vision started to tumble. It was such a radical experience that I was unable to identify what I was seeing until after the fact. I would see the normal world for a split second and then it would zoom past me replaced by whiteness. I could see the normal world flying through the whiteness in a circle, it would go out far and then come back and flash before my eyes. These brief glimpses of the normal world did nothing to ease my fear or help me understand what was happening. In fact I had forgotten I was tripping.

With each pass of the normal world I could distinguish a face. It was from these faces that I learned what was happening. Apparently life was a joke. Everything we do on earth was meaningless and time had just stopped at that moment. Forever. Time doesn't stop like we think it will. It was only physical time. My consciousness was still awake in the spirit world, which is where I learned the whitespace was. Aside from this, time was stopped by repeating itself over and over, with each revolution of the normal world.

Frantic, I didn't believe what the faces said at first and tried to move and break free from the time cycle I was caught in. When I turned my head to look at my friend, I felt the weirdest sensation. It was as if all of the universe had been split in two, with my body directly on the separation line. The split was left to right, and everything on the part behind me was still, whereas the front part of the universe (the part I could see with my eyes) was spinning quickly. I could tell I was starting to come down despite my wild thoughts because it was at this time I could actually see my friend as a person, and not as just a jumble of colors which helped to fabricate a mosaic of insanity. Suddenly, the tumbling started to slow and eventually came to a stop. My friend was staring at me wide eyed and I had the odd sensation that he had somehow had a hand in freezing time.

What I had just done came back to me in a flood. I had just smoked salvia, and I had just had the most intense trip of my life. The short twenty second trip felt like it has lasted an eternity. I was caught in the loop forever. It wasn't that bad, but it wasn't that good. That's why it felt like purgatory. It was just the same thing over and over but it came with a feeling of utter despair. As if being locked into a prison cell abruptly. The first thing I said to my roommate was 'May I sit on the couch?'. An odd question considering it was my place and my couch, but I was still skeptical that I could move and that time was done repeating. To my surprise and overwhelming relief I could get up and walk to the couch, where I sat and contemplated the experience I had just had.

The complete belief that comes with the Salvia trip is what is so intense. It seems so real that you actually believe without a doubt that what you are going through is really happening. At least the first time that is, since it was my first hard trip on salvia. I thought time had really hit an infinite loop and when my friend told me that I could sit on the couch it felt like I had been born again. The eternal spinning was just a dream, only like a nightmare while wide awake.

Even though my experience was so intense I'm not disheartened at all, I believe if one experiments with lower doses a good balance could be found, and for the more experienced psychonaut, a travel into alternate dimensions is a wonderful experience, especially in retrospect.

Exp Year: 2005	ExpID: 41292
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jul 24, 2006	Views: 5,243
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Salvia divinorum (44) : First Times (2), Small Group (2-9) (17)