DOSE:

3 hits

smoked

Salvia divinorum

(extract - 5x)

BODY WEIGHT:

145 lb

I’ve smoke salvia 3 times. A friend of mine and I ordered 1 gram of 5x extract off the internet. The first time I measured out about 65 mg, and I didn’t get much more than tingling in my sides and a feeling of drunkenness for a while afterward. My second time I did about 130mg, and I hit the second level and went for a walk in the forest. The colors were intensely bright and vibrant and I commented several times to my friend about how beautiful everything was.

Today, I smoked salvia for the third time. It didn’t go well. I eyeballed a little over 160 milligrams of the 5x extract and loaded it all into the bowl of my friend’s bong. I sat down on my couch and took 3 hits, holding it in as long as I could.

After the third hit, I got the tingling feeling down the sides of my body that I always get from salvia, but this time it was much more intense, and there was a third point of it slightly to the left of the middle of my forehead, and it felt like it was pushing me down somehow in those three places.

The force felt triangular, with the point downward. The triangles were comprised of several rows of shifting black and white lines (this isn’t a very good description). It felt like it looked kind of like this:

_____________
|///////// /
/
|////// /
/
|// /
.. /
/


I then became aware of a large black woman (I felt this more than saw it) on the patio of a house with orange tiled flooring that had little geometric patterns in it, and a trellis with vines growing on it to the right of my field of feeling/vision. It was warm and the sun was shining (sorry for all the detail, but it helps me remember). She leaned in very close to my face, and told me “you’re not supposed to be here” or something to that effect.

By this point, I was feeling VERY uncomfortable, and I told my friend that I wanted to go outside for a walk, thinking that the woman literally meant I wasn’t supposed to be in the house. I told him to put the bong away in case anyone came home (even though no one would for several hours, I wasn’t quite aware of time at that point). We went outside, and I fumbled with the key to lock the door, but I remembered I had forgotten my coat, so I told him to wait there for me and I ran back to the house. It felt good to run, it felt right. I went inside, put my coat on halfway, and then hurried out of the house and locked the door so I wouldn’t anger the woman anymore.

I finished putting my coat on and we started walking down into the forest behind my house. The feeling of pressure had diminished somewhat, but it was still there. We walked down to the stream and crossed over it to the other trail, and I started talking about how uncomfortable I was, and that it wasn’t a physical discomfort, but an emotional discomfort. I just wanted the experience to end, but it wouldn’t. I told my friend that I felt like I wasn’t me. He told me that I wasn’t, that I was walking and acting and talking very differently. This frightened me; I started worrying that I’d be in that state forever (something I never thought I would have thought). I realized what my self-image is, and although it seemed ludicrous at the time, I didn’t want to lose it. I thought of the girl that I’ve just recently started going out with, and I didn’t want to lose her. I realized that as much as I told myself that I wouldn’t be afraid of ego dissolution or death because I had no special connection to this life or this world, that I was lying to myself, and that I was truly terrified at the prospect of losing myself.

While we were walking, I thought about my drug use, and I realized that I had been moving too fast with my drug use (I started looking for LSD about two months after I started smoking marijuana, and I’m very glad that I wasn’t able to find it for a year, because I know that I wouldn’t have been ready for it), and hadn’t been approaching it with the reverence I should. I started out using drugs with reverence, but I’ve gradually fallen to the point of purely recreational use.

I decided today that I wasn’t going to do salvia again, because it didn’t like me, but reflecting, I think that I just wasn’t ready for it. I hadn’t prepared at all, it was somewhat spur of the moment, and I was doing it because it was there and I was bored.

After I came down, I read a few trip reports on salvia, and most of them talked about it being a teacher, and I realize now that this experience is exactly what I needed. Had I been shown in a gentle way that I needed to slow down with my drug use, it wouldn’t have stuck, but since it was
uncomfortable and unpleasant, it really made a profound impression? I also realized that had I continued my progression through drugs at the same rate, I would eventually end up screwing myself over and regretting it for the rest of my life.

I’ve done a lot of thinking, and I’ve decided that I will do salvia again, but not any time soon. I think I’m going to stick to tryptamines for a while, and wait until I’m completely sure I’m ready to do it again.

Exp Year: 2001	ExpID: 5407
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jan 14, 2002	Views: 23,394
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Salvia divinorum (44) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Difficult Experiences (5), General (1)