DOSE:

1 bowl

smoked

Salvia divinorum

(extract)

BODY WEIGHT:

185 lb

Description of Mindset & Setting: I'm a high school student living in a suburb of San Diego in an upper-middle class lifestyle. I'm a professional guitarist and love everything about music and almost every musical genre. My mindset surrounding this experience was somewhat of a stressed out and exhausted one, due to end of the school year related issues. Issues such as AP testing (of which I took 5 AP tests), SAT testing, STAR testing, ACT testing, and Finals. Being a 4.0+ GPA student, I obviously place much importance on grades and positive achievement in school, which subsequently leads to high levels of stress and exhaustion during periods such as these.

I had previously used marijuana, and had been somewhat continuously using it weekly or biweekly, but had used nothing harder. Whenever I did use it, it was always with my best friend, occasionally with added persons. This experience was with that same friend, and 2 other friends of mine. The setting for my pioneering salvia trip was in a canyon about 2 hours before sunset. The canyon area is slightly off route from a hiking trail commonly used by bike riders and dog walkers, so the chances of getting caught were somewhat high. The temperature was around 70 degrees, and slightly windy with a mostly clear sky. The canyon was slightly narrow (only about 5-10 feet wide), and had little room for lying down or sitting comfortably. Ants and spiders weren’t visible. The canyon walls rose about 10-15 feet high, making a pleasant little niche for my group to habituate to.

Preparations: A water pipe was brought, along with a sizeable amount of Salvia that had been purchased earlier that day. We had allowed ourselves 1 hour to consume the substance and calm down before getting dinner. I had just drunk a large amount of water before beginning the trek to the smoking destination, hoping to escape any throat irritation that could ensue. I was on no other drugs or medication at this time.

Dosage & Timing: I was the last of my party to use the substance. By the time it was my turn, the first in the party to have lit up was having extreme hallucinations about dinosaurs roaming the canyon where we were, requiring the help of the rest of us to talk him down, so as not to draw foreign attention by unsuspecting hikers who could hear his loud descriptions of what he was seeing. In no way was he having a bad trip, but rather going through a shocking lapse of reality, in which he was neither scared nor endangered, but rather curious. For some strange reason, the last person, right before me, who had taken a good hit, decided to pack my bowl. I took this time to continue talking down my friend who was basically living in Jurassic Park. After a little while I realized that the person packing my bowl was completely incapable of doing so, and was completely unsure of what or where he was. So I took the bowl from him and placed it into the pipe. Only once I had lit up did I notice that he had placed a substantially large amount of Salvia in the bowl.

The Experience: The first hit off of the bong was a very smoky one, and I was only able to hold the smoke in my lungs for about 20 seconds. After taking a second hit, I was able to hold the smoke for about 30 seconds, but just after beginning the second hit, the initial wave of disillusionment hit me. Before long, I was completely out of it. I was successfully able to hand the pipe to someone and walk about 10 feet forward, where I could lean up against a wall, next to my good friend. From here, I had a good vantage point of the entire canyon wall opposite me, and the narrow pathway leading to where we were. From the first hit up to this point, I was only light headed and maladroit, very much resembling the signs of pot, but I also remember that my leg muscles were constantly tightening and loosening. But once I was able to slow my blood rate down, the real hallucinations began to take place.

The first visual change occurred on the canyon walls. The walls turned into the heads of various cartoon character looking figures, no specific characters, but rather characters with very circular features, and strange body figures usually associated with cartoon characters. These characters were everything from stationary, to walking, to flying in a plane above me. Some of which even tried to converse with me, but their sentences were incoherent and I was unable to understand what they were saying. As all this was happening, the sandy ground had turned into bright green grass, and the sky had turned into a dark pink. The areas of the canyon walls that hadn’t turned into characters turned into grassy hills. And for a small period of time, it seemed as if they were continuously getting farther and farther away from me. I recall my friend (right next to me) trying to talk me down, but I don’t remember what he said, and neither does he. Apparently I too was loudly describing what was going on in my head.

As all this is happening, a water bottle is passed to me, or I grab it myself, and take a drink. As I swallow the liquid, I can feel it move down my throat and into my stomach, but it doesn’t stop there, and begins to move through my intestines, and continue through the urinary tract. By this time, about 10 minutes into the experience, I’m sober enough to recognize where this water is going to end up, and I quickly lurch forward and unzip my pants, just in time to allow the water to make its exit on the canyon wall. If I were a woman, I wouldn’t have had such good luck with that. My only explanation for that was due to the large amount of water I drank before beginning the hike, and the possibility that the constant tightening and loosening of my leg muscles had somehow spread to my penis as well, and that the constant tightening and loosening of those muscles signaled my bladder to release. I remained standing there with my pants unzipped for a few minutes, not realizing that I was completely exposed. I was facing the opposite direction of everyone else in the party, but it didn’t take long for one of them to notice that my hands were grasping something, and that the wall was wet. After somebody had asked me if I had just gone pee, I promptly zipped up and returned to my wall. After another 5 minutes or so, the images were gone, but the euphoric sense remained, and lasted for about 40-50 minutes.

Overall, this was an amazing experience, other than the incident of almost wetting myself, which my friends still find humorous, and I plan on doing it again. I also noticed that I felt much more alive and happy for the next few days. The whole experience may have triggered some kind of positive endorphin release within my brain, relieving stress buildup, subsequently lightened my mood for small time period.

Exp Year: 2007	ExpID: 63783
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Feb 25, 2008	Views: 7,972
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Salvia divinorum (44) : Small Group (2-9) (17), First Times (2)