DOSE: T+ 0:00	1 bowl	smoked	Salvia divinorum	(extract)
T+ 0:10	0.5 bowls	smoked	Cannabis

BODY WEIGHT:

170 lb

This is my first real experience with salvia. I had tried it once before, but I couldn’t get any effect from it other than a slight buzz.

To let you better understand my state of mind at the time of this trip:

I had ordered, and received 3 grams of 15x Salvia divinorum extract, at the end of my freshman year of college. By the time I received the Salvia, it was time for finals, not experimentation, so the salvia sat in a drawer for roughly two and a half months before I first tried it.

As the end of the summer drew nearer, I realized that opportunities to trip with my good friend, favorite psychonaut, Tom, were getting limited. My friend Charles, having just gotten a new computer, was eager to play a game that weekend. He had gotten hooked on Supreme Commander, so on Saturday night Tom, Ed, and I all brought our computers over to Charles house and began playing. After two games, the first short and the other extremely long (3+ hours), it was getting late, about 2 a.m.. Ed needed to drop his car off at home, so he and Charles went to drop it off. The round trip to Ed’s house is roughly 20-30 minutes.

Tom was talking about going home, as he needed to run the next morning, but luckily I was able to convince him to stay and sample the Salvia with me. This is the beginning of the true experience write up as best I can remember it, I'm writing this up almost a month after the fact.

I turned off all the lights except for a lamp on a table between the two armchairs Tom and I are sitting in. I also turned on one of my favorite Techno/Trance albums, Sunshine Live! vol. 11.

Tom gets out his bubbler style pipe, which was stashed at Charles house to avoid his parent’s detection, and I get the Salvia out of my backpack. I pack a bowl, and we decide that Tom will smoke first, as he has to get home soonest. He takes the first bowl in two large hits, he doesn’t feel any strong effects. Tom sits and waits for the drug to take effect while I pack another bowl for him, having heard that you need to take several rapid hits if Salvia doesn’t have a large effect on you. Tom sinks the second bowl in a few hits, he says he feels as though he is underwater, he feels the fluidity of the air around him, and resistance in his limbs. I finish packing a third bowl, hoping to get Tom over the threshold. He sinks the third bowl, although by this time the harsh smoke is taking its toll on him. He doesn’t quite make it over threshold but reports a strengthening of the previous effects. He gains a little detachment from reality, but never experiences a complete loss of motor function, or complete detachment from reality. I am beginning to suspect that I don’t have real, or very strong, Salvia having read the profound experiences. Tom is very much tranced, but not so deeply that he loses touch with his surroundings.

(00.00) I load the next bowl, Tom had struggle with the harsh smoke of the last bowl, so we decide that It’s time for me to have a go.

I start out sitting on an armchair facing my friend’s bed, which is about three feet away. I don’t expect much, after seeing a lack of effects after many major hits by Tom.

(00.00) I take my first hit, holding the flame to the bowl the entire time (the water in this bubbler was probably near boiling at the end of my hit). I hold the hit in for about twenty seconds, although the smoke was harsh (and hot) going in, it isn’t too hard to hold. I let my hit out.

(00.01) Thirty seconds after that, the ceiling of the room seems to grow more distant, and I start to feel like I’m getting pressed down. Not into the chair, but into the surface of reality itself. With the last of my willpower I manage to half stand, turn around, and collapse onto my friend’s bed.

(00.02) The ceiling continued to grow further away, and my perceptual reality itself began to change. I could still see Tom, sitting in the chair next to the one I had been sitting in. He was methodically packing a bowl, he didn’t realize what a strong effect my single hit had had on me, which probably had a lot to do with his own mental state at the time.

(00.03) This is when the true changes in my personal perception of reality began to change. I still felt like I was being pressed into the surface of reality itself, sinking into whatever was supporting my body, then through it, into a different layer underneath.

The next sequence still doesn’t make sense to me, by which I mean I don’t know why I would possibly have perceived things in this way, however, that's the reason for experimenting with substances such as this, to see things outside the scope of normal perception.

(00.04) The bed I was lying on, and had sunk through, became a strip of grass in a median, the space between a sidewalk and the street. My perception of the room faded out, and colors became much brighter and more absolute. The darkened room was suddenly a brightly lit morning, in a cartoonish, or just idealistic world. The sky was a single shade of sky blue, while the “grass” I was lying in didn’t grow in individual blades, it grew in large spikes, with were uniformly colored a vibrant shade of green.

(00.04) I wasn’t so much lying in a bed of grass, as I actually was the bed of grass. I was unable to move or communicate, and was subject to the whims of the rest of my artificially created environment.

(00.05) Tom, not knowing what I was experiencing was packing another bowl for me. To me he appeared as a hunched figure wearing bright white clothes, the pipe became a small blade, or trowel, and he appeared to me to be edging the median I had become. He touched my knee, which was bent with my feet hanging off the bed, and it only increased my belief that I was a median of grass, and he was edging me.

(00.06) Although it had only been fifteen minutes since he left by this time, I knew that Charles had gone, and that he was coming back. The door to the room was above my head, on the other side of the bed from Tom. Charles didn’t come back for another twenty minutes, but I saw him walk down the “street” that was on that side of the bed. He appeared as a postman, dressed in garments of the purest white, wearing a postal hat, also in white, and smiling broadly.

(00.08) I stayed this way for four or five minutes (although it seemed like half an hour to me). Abruptly I was back on a bed, Tom was sitting in an armchair looking at me while holding his pipe, and I was back in Charles bedroom.

(00.10) We got up and moved our chairs to the other side of the room, in front of the stereo. I got out my one hitter at this point, and Tom and I both take two (small) hits of Marijuana.

(00.12) Turning off all lights, I felt as though I could see/feel the fabric of reality. Tom and I sat in our chairs, listening to music, exchanging our thoughts on the rearrangement we had just experienced.

The strongest effects of the drug ended abruptly after about ten minutes, but Tom and I continued to be in deep contemplation of reality for another half hour beyond that.

(00.25) Charles and Ed return. Not knowing what Tom and I have just been through, they open the door, turn on every light, turn down the stereo, and start another (very loud) game of Supreme Commander.

Thinking back on that conversation, it was one of the most profound discussions I have ever had. It was also one of the most stereotypical stoner conversations I have ever had, but this goes beyond the feeling of insight gained when very high on THC. This wasn’t just talking about an abstract concept that I felt I had insight into, this was a discussion about actually witnessing and experiencing an abstract world far removed from reality.

Salvia Divinorum in of itself is not intrinsically enjoyable. Salvia does not produce euphoria, this makes it a different experience than most other 'recreational' drugs. Salvia took me to a different place, not necessarily an enjoyable place, or one any more or less valid than consensus reality. Just different.

My ideas about exploring Salvia:

1. Start out small, extracts vary greatly, even among products from the same manufacturer.

2. Use salvia with someone you trust absolutely, who won’t take advantage of you. Preferably someone who you can talk to about any subject.

3. Last but not least, as learned in this experience, Salvia is most enjoyable if taken in a setting where you will not be disturbed, or around people who are conductive to a safe peaceful experience.

Exp Year: 2007	ExpID: 66384
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 19
Published: Dec 11, 2018	Views: 1,690
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