DOSE: T+ 0:00		smoked	Salvia divinorum	(dried)
T+ 0:00		smoked	Salvia divinorum	(extract - 10x)
T+ 3:30		buccal	Salvia divinorum	(dried)
T+ 3:30		smoked	Salvia divinorum	(extract - 10x)

BODY WEIGHT:

210 lb

Bought 5 grams of dried leaves and a gram of 10x extract.

October 1. First experience. 4pm. I smoked a small amount of crushed dried leaves in a small wood pipe with a butane lighter in my bedroom, moderately dark. The effect was not strong enough to do much, so I smoked 2 or 3 shallow pipes of enhanced 10x, half of a quarter teaspoon each, with a regular lighter.

I got a definite effect -slight numbness in my jaw and the base of my skull, and a sensation of spreading warmth through my head. I had no idea really what the dosage would be for me, so I took that as enough for my first try and lay back for a few minutes with a cloth over my eyes. Other than physical effects and a slightly stoned sensation I had no other phenomena. I did feel that had I added sonic driving I might have got a effect, but am not set up for that next. Next time I am going to hydrate and chew 5 grams of dried leaves for 20 minutes, possibly later tonight (unlike LSD, my reading suggests that there is no tolerance build up with SD - in fact, possibly the opposite).

I'm happy to start slow as I want to accustom myself to the substance before I plunge headlong into it. The stoned feeling lasted for less than an hour, without any appreciable sensory distortion. I am probably going to have to get several more pipes, as its important to take 2 to 3 inhalations within the first 2-3 minutes apparently, and refilling the pipe is a chore.

7:30 – 8:05pm. I chewed 5 ounces for almost 20 minutes, then spat it out – OMG! it was disgusting - and lay down in the dark with a cloth over my face. I think I took my glasses off. I lay there for a few minutes and knew that wasn't enough - not even as stoned as this afternoon, so I said, OK, Ill smoke a good size amount of the10x extract. Say, an eighth of a teaspoon. So I did, sitting on the edge of my futon. Two BIG puffs, deeply inhaled and held for the count of 30, then I felt something. So I said to myself, “I think that's it.” I lay back, wrapped my blanket around me, and covered my eyes.

I lay there a bit and felt like I fell asleep. Just a bit of the pulling on the right side of my face, which others describe, but none of the unpleasant feelings people describe. Then suddenly I felt that I was slipping out of my body lengthwise, and everything became very elongated (in my imagination, because my yes were covered). I resisted a little, then I “woke up.” I think I pulled the cloth off my face. I looked around, and everything around me seemed alive, like a living presence surrounding me in the room. I looked at the ceiling and around at the walls and the doorway. Nothing had changed visibly, but there was this palpable feeling of a presence , and I felt embarrassed, like I had disturbed someone's privacy. I said, 'Hello, I'm sorry, I didn't realize it would be like this.' No answer. I felt a bit overwhelmed, but not too much. It was also amazing. There was a thought, 'OMG! Maybe I have become insane and this won't go away.' Then I reassured myself that it could only last a few minutes.

I had an impulse to get up. I could have. It would have been totally easy to get up and walk around, but I was afraid that in that state I might hurt myself – I wasn't even sure if I was in my body or not - so I said, 'There's no way I'm getting up.' If I was in my “dream body,” I could have done anything, gone anywhere. But what if I was actually in my body experiencing these things and my body walked around, and I hurt myself? Then I realized how it comes about that people throw themselves out of windows, thinking they can fly. Fortunately in this altered state I was totally sober and rational. I covered my eyes again to see if I could see anything, but there was nothing there. Then the sensation of strangeness, like a presence or intelligence in the walls, began to recede. It took a minute or two, then I felt myself again and removed the cloth from over my eyes. There was no illusion or delusion whatsoever.

Blood pressure was just over 150/100 several minutes after experience, heart rate 83. Dropped back under 140/190 within 30 minutes.

Oct. 2, 2010. 6:28pm. Why am I afraid to surrender myself to Salvia, by allowing it to “suck” me out of my body as it wanted to do last night? After all, I fall asleep every night, which is a dissociative state of the first water, and in that state I dream, and have a “dream body” just as I would under Salvia (or perhaps not even a dream body)? I think the answer must lie in the fact that in sleeping I am surrendering myself to a state of lesser lucidity, and so I feel that my body is “safe” from whatever might befall me in the dream world (although objectively speaking that is only partly true, as I could sleep walk in theory – although I never have actually done that). However, with Salvia I am surrendering myself up to a state of higher lucidity, and although the literature seems to suggest that, mostly, the body is relatively immobile during the Salvia induced OBE, this does not seem to be 100% true. This is the same fear that immobilized me 20 years ago. Since I have no one to “sit” me – and really don't want such a person in any case – I think the answer must lie in some sort of harness, like a benign straight jacket. Something I can use to comfortably restrain the body, especially my legs, i.e., from walking, crawling, etc., and my hands, i.e., from striking at myself, that can be easily removed in the non-Salviaic state, but impossible to remove otherwise, and that can be quickly fastened in the minute between my final pipeful and lying down. To some extent pulling my blankets over me has that effect, but if I KNEW that harm was impossible than I would feel far freer to journey. What would such a harness or restraint look like, I wonder?

9:09pm. I keep thinking, over and over, of the movie version of Carl Sagan's novel Contact, in which an American female scientist becomes the first human being to travel through an artificial singularity to encounter the first alien intelligence. She never actually sees the alien, but ends up in a phantasmagorical environment in which she meets and converses with her deceased father. Even during the encounter she realizes that this man is not really her father, but a device, taken from her own mind, used by the alien intelligence to communicate with her. The implication is that everything she is seeing, hearing, and experiencing may simply be a form of alien communication implanted in her mind to facilitate understanding, since a truly alien intelligence is, by definition, incomprehensible, there being no consensus on symbols of meaning. Arthur's description of Salvia divinorum seems to be like this. None of the people he encounters need be “real” in the conventional sense. They may simply be means of communication – with what? Indeed. What is the question.

9:49pm. I took a small taste of SD today. I wanted to experience a bit, to think more about its effects. It is cold, like anesthetic - not really pleasurable at all, in the way that THC or LSD is. I seem to experience it in the legs and the hands, but really its in the brain. It numbs the body until, like Neo in The Matrix, it rises to the head and face and then - one is gone. I rewrote my expereince somewhat. It realize now that what I did was impede the process of extraction, that I experienced as elongation, by pulling off my blindfold at the very moment that I would have completely dissociated. As a result, I experienced the reality of the dream body completely superimposed on the reality of the physical body, and the reality of the Salvaic world totally superimposed on the reality of my bedroom. Thus, looking around I saw the walls and ceiling but FELT the presence of Salvia itself, the palpable presence of a cold, ubiquitous lucidity, utterly aware yet completely calm and without judgement.

Exp Year: 2010	ExpID: 88740
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 56
Published: Jan 12, 2017	Views: 2,954
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Salvia divinorum (44) : General (1), Alone (16)