DOSE:

1 hit

smoked

Salvia divinorum

(extract)

BODY WEIGHT:

150 lb

The evening had begun just like any other. A couple friends and I had ventured out to the local head shop to check out the latest selection of smoking devices available to add to our collections. Finding nothing worthwhile within our price ranges we decided to take a look around and came upon some salvia. We had all heard of how intense it supposedly was but had never tried it, the price had always driven me back but we decided fuck it and purchased a gram of purple sticky salvia collectively. The container was labeled as 80x but the clerk told us it was mislabeled and was actually 30x but we bought it anyways. None of us knew what lay ahead of us.

Later that night, we decided it was now or never and ventured out into the field across the street from our dorms. We all sat down on the hillside at the edge of the field and my friend Carl was the first to pack the bowl (we smoked using a bubbler and butane lighter). He ripped the entire bowl pack and a blank stare came across his face. Clint (our other friend) and I both had to pry the bubbler out of Carl's hand out of fear that he might break it. He walked up and down the hill, completely zombified and as soon as he began to come to, uttered the words 'DONT SMOKE THAT SHIT'. He later explained the feeling of becoming a black, vacuous entity having no existence whatsoever. The experience I received however was so much more intense.

I packed the bowl with another round of salvia, torched it, held it in a couple seconds, and exhaled. From the moment I exhaled I could feel the trip coming on. The scenery around me began to appear pixilated and my entire body began to tingle. What happened next was beyond anything I had ever experienced in my lifetime. I began to see what could only be described as a layer of flexible, interlocking, plastic tiles encompass my surroundings and creep up to my feet, much like a lava flow. I began to experience a slight fear but Carl told me to just close my eyes and let it happen so I did. The layer of plastic quickly ran up my body, into my mouth, and down my throat. After becoming one with this ocean of tiles, I was immediately glued to the hillside that is until it began to flow. The flow of plastic seemed vaguely ocean-like with ripples, waves and all. At this moment, I had no idea who I was or how I had gotten there. The thought of a drug-induced hallucination never crossed my mind. I was suddenly in an entirely different world.

I soon became a wave in the ocean and began gently rolling. This ocean soon became a violent rapid. My body felt as if it was being stretched, torn, and bombarded as I continued to roll and crash with the motion of the flowing, rippling plastic. I could see Clint's head bobbing above the surface and laughing hysterically. He seemed to enjoy this world. Upon reaching a certain point, the direction of the rapid changed and I began rolling in the opposite direction, remaining trapped as one with the ocean. Carl later explained to me that I had crab walked across the field, performed a series of flips, and crab walked all the way back. Somehow the sea of plastic had soon begun to weaken and I finally saw my chance to escape. I clenched onto the hillside, grabbed Carl's leg and began to pull myself out of that plastic rapid and back into reality. However, what happened next completely terrified me. As my head and shoulders began to emerge into the real world, I glanced down at the still-flowing river of plastic and saw my arms, still submerged, tear off from my body and flow away, washing up beneath a nearby tree. Terror-stricken, I asked Carl what lay beneath that tree, too scared to ask if it were my arms in fear of it being true. He convinced me that it was simply someone’s bags, allowing my eyes and mind to properly conceive that he was of course telling the truth. I was so relieved.

Once I was completely out, I sat at the edge of the hill with my eyes wide open, fearful that if I closed them again, the hallucinations would start all over again. As the three of us began to converse before making our way back, I found it impossible to speak coherently. All I could do was laugh. Even once the laughing subsided, it was extremely difficult for me to engage in conversation with a friend who had called me on the way back or even with my friends sitting outside our dorm on the benches. I wanted to tell everyone what happened to me but it was just so hard to do so I ventured back inside to regain my sanity.

Terrified by the experience, I decided that I would never smoke salvia again. It was just too intense for me. Even today, 4 months later, I still don't know if I could ever muster up the nerve to relive that experience. For anyone who's never tried salvia but is curious, I would have to say it is imperative to have a sober sitter with you because this shit is INTENSE.

There is something else I have experienced as a result that I need to share with this community. I believe that my experience with salvia divinorum may have had long term effects on my mind.

The following night I had a sort of dream 'flashback' in which I was being rolled around again and awoke to find myself attempting to climb up my wall from my bedside. This may have just been a regular dream, but I thought I'd throw that up there. What I found most interesting was my mind's reaction to marijuana in the weeks following my experience.

I sort of gained a reverse-tolerance from marijuana. Even though I smoked almost daily, sometimes multiple instances per day, I would get stoned almost immediately after a hit or two when in the past, it would take me a solid bowl pack to feel good and satisfied. The night following my experience with salvia, 3 bong hits brought mild hallucinations upon me. I would see visions of my father yelling at me, as if something were trying to tell me that doing drugs might result in something terrible I might regret in the future. I even had visions of becoming him later in life and this scared me. This was the first time I could honestly say I was too high. I was even unable to finish one beer. This occurred at a friends house and I wound up sitting on his couch for a solid hour at least because I honestly felt I was too fucked up to return back to my dorm room even though I wasn’t going to be driving.

The next several times I smoked brought similar results. I would feel the high almost immediately. Smoking any amount near my pre-salvia sessions would leave my eyes solid red and my mind racing with anxiety. When I would get high, my friends and the people around me simply became character-like as I would thoroughly analyze their actions and began to notice every little flaw and oddity they possessed. I would also analyze myself in this same manner, sometimes causing depression as I would sit there and pick apart my own flaws, both physically and personality-based. It would seem as if we were all characters in a sitcom that did the same things and acted the same ways each day. This lasted for at least a good month or so. I only began to think this way when I was high. Not knowing what else could have caused this (strength of the marijuana wasn’t a factor) I am left to conclude that salvia had caused this to happen although none of my other friends who had smoked salvia with me that night had any of these symptoms. I feel that salvia has left a lasting impression on my mind and psyche.

Exp Year: 2007	ExpID: 68674
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Nov 21, 2015	Views: 2,573
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Salvia divinorum (44) : Difficult Experiences (5), Post Trip Problems (8), First Times (2), Small Group (2-9) (17)