DOSE:		smoked	Salvia divinorum	(extract)
		smoked	Cannabis	(plant material)

BODY WEIGHT:

170 lb

In recent years, science has been making significant advances in how we understand the universe - I think understanding loosely part of these concepts in a simplified way might help you to comprehend what I experienced. I'm not going to bore you, so I'll get to the fundamentals.

The universe is structured in what we call dimensions. There are the three we understand with ease because they compose the realm in which we live and from which we perceive our daily lives - length, width and depth. The fourth is time, a dimension in which we seemingly travel linearly from one point to another (to the individual, those points are presumably birth and death respectively). However, observations in physics and the theories we form to explain those observations suggest that there are more dimensions than those four.

Here's the simplification I think might help you understand the dimensions moving up from the fourth: If the fourth dimension is a line (time) between two points - like the first dimension is a line (length) between two points - the fifth dimension is equatable to the second dimension. It provides a 'temporal width'. This is what we have come to see as quantum theory. All those infinite possibilities that branch out from every passing instant make up the fifth dimension - the 'width' equivalent for time. It is all those seemingly infinite possible timelines. If you can wrap your mind around that, you might be able to extrapolate what the 6th, 7th and 8th dimensions might be like and so forth (presumably up to 10). That's all you need to know to understand what I experienced.

I was out camping with a group of close friends during the summer at a campsite on one of the great lakes. There were about 12 of us all told. This was our second time to the site - last year we'd come to the same place and had a great time so we figured we'd go again. And like last year, we decided we'd bring along loads of Alcohol, copious amounts of Cannabis and some Salvia to top it all off to be used on a nice clear night on the sandy beach.

It was the second night and me and a three of the others had been walking the paths in the dark and negotiating a fairly steep rockface in search of a couple of our other friends who had gone down to the beach earlier. It was the perfect night for Salvia and the friends who had gone off wanted to take part as well, so we had to find them first - and we did after not too long - but in the process we'd inadvertently appropriated a couple strangers we met on the beach into our little search posse.

Our little group of psychonauts +2 was together finally, and we picked out a spot on the beach to chat and relax for a bit - we sparked a couple bowls, passed 'em around, and watched a blood red crescent moon, amid a starry sky, melt into the lake - it was an awesome sight. I was vibing just right for some Salvia and everyone agreed. By this time, another person from our camp arrived - a girl with a lanthern.

We relocated to somewhere a little more spacious, closer to the water and sat in a circle with the lantern between us. I was QB, packing and passing, and coaching people through their hits. Most of them were first timers so they didn't want too much, and as for the strangers, I didn't want them to go postal since I wasn't prepared to be liable for whatever they got themselves into so for the most part I kept the doses on the modest side. More than enough to elicit effects. I packed a small nug of weed at the bottom, and a pinch of 15x on top.

So far everything was going smooth. One after another they would take their hit, babble incoherently for a few minutes, sort of sit looking completely disoriented with that scared animal look in their eyes - sometimes try to stand which always failed horribly, but we were on soft, uneven sand so it was just really funny to watch as opposed to concerning. But we noticed we were making a bit of noise so we shut off the lantern and proceeded under starlight.

Finally it was my turn up to bat. I grabbed a small hairy nug of our weed (some sticky Bubblegum), dropped it into the bottom of my pipe and grabbed out of my pocket a small packet of 20x Salvia. I'd done it a couple times before and this time I was looking for a slightly more intense trip. With the lights out, I was kind of fudging the pinches, and the guy who went right before me had got a bit of a weak dose so I took the approach of 'when in doubt, add a little more' so I ended up overloading my dose a little bit - and I knew it, but I kind of didn't care.

A few things, first, usually we'd use a bubbler for Salvia but pipes are all we brought, and second, strangers can throw a wrench in the mood when you're dealing with any hallucinagenic - do not want, and third... you should always be mindful of the size of your dose. I lifted the pipe to my lips, roasted the load for a few seconds and when I was ready I inhaled and held it in. It seemed to go forever, and eventually I exhaled. No initial effect. Every time prior, I'd always felt the effects by the time I exhaled, so I quickly went back for another quick puff to seal the deal. I could feel the smoke brewing in my lungs and I could taste the Bubblegum when it hit. I don't remember what happened to the pipe but I imagine one of my friends swooped in and grabbed it.

For a moment, I was still there - in the circle on the beach. My vision seemed to sharpen for a moment - everything became sharp, crisp and vibrant - and then I watched as my perspective seemed to fall back into my head. It wasn't like my eyes rolled back, it was instead like I fell backwards out of reality. I wasn't seeing my surroundings at this point. Everyone and everything had gone away, and that seemed perfectly natural to me at the time. I was falling but I couldn't comprehend what I was seeing as it surged by, but I knew what I was feeling - I wasn't falling down or into something... I was falling outward and there seemed to be these other entities there, and they acknowledged me and I felt faintly like I recognized them in the same way I recognize myself when I look in the mirror. I could hear a constant hum that seemed to undulate and then, finally, I came to a stop.

This was the most terrifying, fascinating moment (if I can call it that) I've ever experienced and I can't help but try to convey the total sense of loneliness in it, but at any rate, I'd stopped. The entities from before were gone and I looked, without my eyes, on the scene. Stretching beyond my vision - and in part obscuring it - I could see endless branches and arching, meandering lines reaching from one end to the opposite.

As I watched, I began to realize that I could see the branches moving, swaying - flailing, and slowly (though how slowly or quickly I can't be sure, I didn't feel the passing of time, only the passing from one thought to another) I realized that the branches were me and I was washed in an understanding that I was looking at the true me - the full five dimensional being that I am a part of - it all made such absolute clear sense. And slowly, I started to be pulled into the branch, and as I got closer I could hear this terrible screaming - multiplied a trillion times over coming from the branch and I could see that the branches looked like a blurry succession of me's, lined up one in front of the other, but with no space between them - it was and is quite literally indescribable.

As I was reinserted into the branch, I felt a terrible drop. This was the exact opposite of the first feeling I'd felt, like I had just been dropped from the stratosphere while at the same time being compacted down and constrained into a container that was far too small. For a moment I could see my surroundings again, but it was blurry, and I only caught a quick glance of the lantern (which they turned on sometime after I had got into my trip). I still didn't feel like I was in my body though - there was this unsettling foreign quality to everything, and, faintly, I could hear that same scream from before only this time it wasn't multiplied a trillion times, it was just one distant voice that was slowly growing louder and more clear. Then I fell apart again - like, if after that drop from the stratosphere I landed on some weak crust and after a moment of repose, fell downward into a cavern.

From my perspective it looked like the whole world tilted sideways violently - not my head, but my view, like a perceptual ligament holding my vision steady had been instantly severed. My vision smeared from the right, across to the left, and then continued smearing out into endlessness at terrifying speed. The best description I can give is if you took a photograph of a scene in Photoshop, took the right-most single-pixel column and began to repeat it across the left of the image and then beyond the limit of the image and out of your monitor and away to unbelievable distances incredibly fast. It felt like I was on the crest of a one-way wave across some two dimensional nook and it was taking me away from my friends and the scene at the beach - their voices became distant, the scream remained constant but faint. That's when I felt a different presence amongst the flat smear - just an impression - a sense that there were things watching and almost welcoming me as I rushed by.

All I had was my thoughts at this point, my vision was just a smear, I was getting further and further from reality, and the scariest moment was when I started to accept it - that this was just how things were going to be from now on, that my old reality was lost. Then slowly, the crest driving me outward from the beach began to slow, and the scream stopped, and slowly the momentum reversed and I started rocketing back toward the beach. Not that I think this is a suitable measurement but it FELT like I had gone miles on that wave and now I was speeding back at an insane speed fueled by my anxiousness to get back. In an instant, my head whipped to the right and my vision untilted.

When I returned to 'reality' I was babbling and incoherent. I realized I was sitting on the back of my ankles with my knees in front and bent. All I could do was think to ask for something, I felt like I needed something - I don't know why. The first thing I saw was the lantern and I asked for it clumsily without really looking around. I noticed that the girl holding the lantern, a good friend of mine, pulled the lantern away and I thought that was odd, so I looked up for the first time and realized everyone was around me, and they all looked concerned.... quite soberingly concerned - that is, if this drug were so easily to sobered from. For reasons I didn't know, everyone was eager to get moving pretty quick as soon as I was lucid and on the way I managed to string some questions together about what happened back on the beach.

They told me at first I was sitting there, amazed, repeating the word 'Wow' and I slowly began to repeat it longer and louder 'WOOoooww!' 'WOOOOOOOOOWWWW!' and then suddenly fell backwards and started moving back on my elbows and pushing with my legs. Soon I wasn't apparently amazed anymore, and became frantic and disturbed and one of my friends who I'd moved my way over to decided that since the public campsites weren't far off and I was getting louder, that he'd try to cover my mouth. Apparently after that, my Wow's changed to a terrified shriek. They said it sounded 'like I was being ripped apart.' I then broke free, and fell to my back and continued like this until I came back to reality.

For a while afterward I felt like I was actively having to hold my perception of reality together consciously because whenever I would lose focus and begin to talk about what had happened, I felt like I was falling down out of this state again. Almost like you might hold two blocks together while the glue dries. When I let up, it began to slip, and continued to do this for another 5 minutes or so. The main part of my trip was only 3 and a half minutes but it felt like maybe an hour.

People have asked me if I will do Salvia again - maybe. One day. When I'm ready to take another fresh look at the universe. Would I repeat that same experience again? Reluctantly, I would say yes. Purely the result of chemical interactions or a legitimate experience, it has really opened my eyes to a different way of looking at everything and what I feel is a deeper understanding of this experience that we call reality.

There are those who say that agents like Salvia and DMT can relax our perceptual filters as opposed to simply cause us to outright hallucinate and based on my experience, I would say that serves to explain my experience better.

Exp Year: 2007	ExpID: 66897
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Mar 15, 2011	Views: 11,003
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Salvia divinorum (44) : General (1), Large Group (10+) (19)