DOSE:	.3 g	smoked	Salvia divinorum	(plant material)
	.3 g	smoked	Cannabis	(flowers)
		smoked	Cannabis - Hash

BODY WEIGHT:

150 lb

I’m writing this as a way to inform others, as well as a way to clear a bad trip/memory from my mind. I’ll try to keep this as accurate as possible, but I may forget a few details. Let’s begin:

Background:
I’m relatively new to the field of drug use, having only smoked marijuana twice before and drank a little alcohol. Some of my friends and I got the idea to try Salvia for many reasons: it was relatively cheap, easy to find (but not necessarily easy to get), provided a quick trip, and opened up your mind. I didn’t know much of what to expect, but I had done my research online, and one of our friends was an extremely experienced tripper.

Before I go any further, I’d like to make a side note: The plan for the evening was to try the Salvia with my first group of friends, and then join my second group of friends later in the night to smoke some weed.

Now for the story:
I left my house with the Salvia in my car trunk and headed for my friend’s house, the one that I was suppose to pick up. She got in the car, and we started to head for our mutual friend’s house (the one where the smoking would take place). On the short drive there we talked a little, mostly me saying I was a little anxious, and her saying how excited she was. After some driving and more chitchatting we arrive at our friend’s house. He comes outside to greet us, adorned in full Native American garb and wielding a walking stick, very fitting for the evening.

We go inside and make ourselves comfortable while he helps to set the mood: dimming the lights, getting out some candles, preparing the pipe. We were all ready for our journey, and our friend who had much experience tripping took the first hit (half weed and half Salvia). He held it in for a good thirty seconds and exhaled. He remarked that he definitely felt it, but he wasn’t blacking out and being transported away like he should have been. He took a few more tokes, proclaimed he was relaxed, and then sat in the corner of the room smiling.

I emptied out the pipe and loaded the next batch of weed and Salvia in, and handed it to my other friend. She took a few good hits, coughed a bit, braked for some water, and then came back to finish. She said much of the same thing my other friend did, that she felt the effects, but they weren’t as strong as they should have been. She then proceeded to find her own spot in the room and relax.

I, determined to get my money’s worth, smoked the last of it by myself, with some help from our experienced friend when I was coughing or had to take a break. I had bought .5 gram of the stuff, and probably smoked .3 or .4 grams of it, haha. Needless to say, I was off and away for a very beautiful and pleasant trip.

My vision first split into different divisions around a circle, much like the spokes of a wheel. The “wheel” turned around and around, mashing images together and creating a wide array of dazzling colors and geometric figures. Whenever I moved, there was a lag between when my body actually had made a change in position, and when my mind actually perceived it had moved. This created an effect that there were multiple layers of myself, or multiples of myself, folding or falling onto each other in perfect succession.

By this time my heart was beating quite fast, yet I was not anxious or nervous, only excited and in awe at the spectacle I was watching unfold. Feeling that moving any more would cause me to fall over, I half-crawled, half-stumbled to the bed my friend was laying on, and sat down next beside her. I just closed my eyes and relaxed, and saw a plethora of colors and figures. The geometric figures were impossibly accurate, so perfect and precise. I wasn’t scared one bit during this entire trip, like many people on Salvia report (the scarier part would come later).

I realized that only a few minutes had passed, when it seemed like half an hour. I knew I wouldn’t be tripping for much longer, and tried to focus on the task at hand: I had decided to do Salvia for personal reasons, to delve deeper into my psyche and examine myself and what I had become since my childhood. I changed positions in the bed, sitting cross-legged with my arms laying on each leg, meditation style. I focused on the problems that had been plaguing my social life, but was instead treated to a very different spectacle.

I was suddenly on an island, near the ocean, on a beautifully crafted Japanese or Asian styled temple’s steps, sitting the same way I was in reality. Surrounding me were other individuals, who also appeared deep in thought. Some were talking to each other, others just pondering; it was all so peaceful. I actually felt at peace for once in my life, no worries, no concerns, just infinite knowledge and all the time in the world. I smiled briefly, but just as quickly as the scene had come, it disappeared.

I realized my two friends had left the room, and I slowly ventured out the door and to the stairs to find them. At this point I was no longer tripping, but I was at a very marijuana like high (probably from the weed mixed with the Salvia). I heard what I thought at the time to be a band playing downstairs. I hesitated, thinking that their family was having guests over, and that they were hosting a jam-session. I weighed the pros and cons of staying upstairs or heading downstairs, and eventually decided to go downstairs. To my surprise, my two friends and the experienced tripper’s old brother were playing video games and listening to music on a very good quality speaker.

I sat down for a bit and talked with them, before wandering into the kitchen to get a bite to eat. Everyone moved into the living room after a while, and we sat down and watched the Simpsons for a half hour or so. My friend said she needed to go home, and invited her to come smoke some weed with me and my other friends, to which she declined. She did however, want to go to White Castle with me (where I was meeting my friends).

That night I earned my stoned driver’s license, as my friends like to say. We made it safely to White Castles with no close calls, and met up with my friends. I didn’t have anything to eat (probably a mistake), and just talked with everybody. They kept giving me some weird looks, or so I thought, making me think it was obvious that I was stoned. I told them I had to take my friend (the girl) home, and I asked one of them to go with me; I needed to stop by my house and get some extra clothes and a pillow. My parents were both very experienced drug users, having grown up during the 60’s and 70’s, and I feared they would be able to spot my high from a mile away, so I wanted a little sober back-up incase questions were asked.

So I took my friend back to her house, said goodnight, and started heading to my house. On the way there, my friend, we’ll call him J, informed me he had taken Adderall before he came. I scolded him, telling him that was stupid of him and going on about how dangerous prescription drugs could be, but stopped when I realized I was being a little hypocritical, having just smoked Salvia.

We get to my house, my parents suspect nothing, and we leave with all my goodies and head to our other friend’s house, whom we’ll call K. *I’m sorry this must be very confusing for anyone reading this. I often get confused going to and from so many houses myself.* We arrive at K’s house, who is with S, and head inside.

We go upstairs and play Xbox for a bit, waiting for his parents to fall asleep. After a bit, K tells us his parents are asleep, and has us go downstairs to get everything ready. We use a hookah to smoke our weed; dunno why, I wasn’t the one that started it, but K had paid for it and the weed, so we used whatever method he wanted. We moved a table and four chairs outside while K got into his stash and got everything ready. On a side note, it was freezing balls that night. Anyways, I get the honor of being the “coal boy” and I pull my job off perfectly, entitling me to first hit. It was a good, clean hit, very nice and gentle to my throat. And so we blaze the night away, smoking about 3 bowls, each a mix of two different batches of weed and hash.

The weed crept up on me, and I was soon back to the high I had experienced on Salvia, though not as intense, but in some ways more visual (if that makes any sense). J, the one who had taken Adderall, immediately started freaking out, saying he was seeing animals everywhere. Our other friend S, who is a very experienced smoker by the way, kept exclaiming how high he was. Both of them were in pure delight. K and I were the only ones keeping a level head, but I was beginning to have trouble focusing. Only a few minutes had passed when J took his paranoia out of me, talking about random stuff that made no sense. He kept saying I needed to stop being “me”, and that I was going to “destroy us all” if I didn’t refrain from doing so. I knew he was talking complete nonsense, and tried to calm him down, but after some more harassing he was starting to get to me.

A little unnerved from what he had said, we packed everything up and headed back inside the house. We stood around in his weight room for a while, while K cleaned the hookah and everything out. S and J were extremely giggly, and kept pointing and laughing at me and K. I’m very much the quiet type when high (not so when I’m sober), and I looked around the room for something to entertain myself with.

I had never been fond of trophy fishes hung on walls, something about them freaked me out, and in the weight room was a giant sailfish attached to the wall. I stared at it for some time, perplexed, pensively thinking about the sailfish. I don’t remember the exact thoughts, but I do remember the essence of them: how weird it was that this animal had once been alive and may have been able to kill a person, but now it was just hanging on a wall lifeless.

We left the weight room and moved into the kitchen and all had a bite to eat. The pizza I tried tasted delicious, it felt as if every taste bud on my tongue had turned into an entire new mouth, and I was infinitely chewing and eating the same piece of food. I looked around for a while, just smiling and thinking high thoughts, when things started to get somewhat cartoony. I realized I had smoked way to much, and probably shouldn’t have smoked weed after having done Salvia in the same night. I promptly went to sleep on the living room floor, J slept on the couch, while K and S played Xbox with K’s older brother.

At no point was this a bad trip, until the next morning. I awoke, having gotten a good 6 or 7 hours of sleep. I packed up my belongings, took J home and then headed home. Once back at my place, I hopped in the shower, dried my hair, checked Facebook (haha) and went to sleep infront of our fireplace. I had felt a little weird upon arriving home, but decided it was just from lack of sleep.

After awaking, I expected to be totally sober, which I was completely wrong about. My parents had left to do some shopping, and it was about Noon. I noticed I was beginning to feel awkward and dizzy like I do when I’m high, and I immediately panicked. I had never had the residual effects of smoking last for so long. I grabbed a book and tried to read something to get my mind off of it, but it only made things worse as the words and lines wobbled and I couldn’t concentrate. I thought about calling my parents and telling them I was having a panic attack (something I often had before even starting drugs. I found that drugs helped to ease them and lesser their frequency, so I was not expecting this.) I decided against it, and took 2 ativan and returned to the fireplace. For a few minutes I sat there, panicking, thinking I had done something that would cause the high to never go away. I became so afraid that I nearly broke down and cried, but I gathered myself together, and managed to fall asleep.

I woke several hours later, feeling much better, but still not myself. My parents had come home, and didn’t want me to sleep anymore for fear that I wouldn’t be able to get to sleep that night. I did anyways, and spent pretty much the entire day sleeping to try and shake off the weird feelings I was having.

The next day I went to school and was feeling better, but still a little off. I was having little flashbacks here and there, nothing to interrupt my day, but just enough to upset me some. They went on for a while, up to this point that I am typing. I’ve been noticing lately that when I’m really tired and I close my eyes to try and sleep, I’ll trip a little. Every once in a while I’ll feel like my vision is being split between two dimensions, that there is one just beneath the surface of the other. It’s all so mild though, all it does it bother me. It doesn’t interrupt my day or any of my thoughts or actions, but it is still disturbing. I don’t know if it was the cannabis or the Salvia that set it off, but it seems like I have a mild case of HPPD.

It’s strange, as I never really did enjoy life that much (not to the point of suicide, I was just always bored and a little depressed), but it seems much more interesting now. Like a play where I’m the lead role, and I just don’t know it. My experience has made me enjoy life a lot more , and I feel bad I take sobriety for granted. I still plan on smoking again, though not too soon. I’m interested to see if more Salvia worsens the HPPD or helps to fix it. I have a feeling I only experienced a bad trip because I took to much in excess, was being pestered by a$#holes like J, and there was a lot of stress involved that night. I’ll make sure to write another story the second time I try it, or whenever I smoke weed again.

What I’ve learned though, is that drugs are very dangerous, but when used responsibly can relieve stress and cure many symptoms that ail me. Never take too much, and be careful what I mix it with. And always be aware of my surroundings and who I plan to do it with, making sure they won’t spoil my trip. Not only will a spoiled trip be disappointing, but can lead to some psychological or emotional problems, like the ones I’m dealing with now.


[Erowid Note: Driving while intoxicated, tripping, or extremely sleep deprived is dangerous and irresponsible because it endangers other people. Don't do it!]

Exp Year: 2010	ExpID: 88643
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 17
Published: Dec 9, 2019	Views: 699
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Cannabis (1), Salvia divinorum (44) : Small Group (2-9) (17), HPPD / Lasting Visuals (40), Bad Trips (6), Combinations (3)