DOSE:

smoked

Salvia divinorum

(extract - 5x)

BODY WEIGHT:

250 lb

A short while ago I bought some 5X dried Salvia leaves (5X indicating that the leaves had been treated with a liquid extract to amplify the potency). I had downloaded and read the Salvia FAQ and several other pieces of Salvia documentation from salvia.lycaeum.org, Erowid, etc. HAVE A SITTER, READ THE PREPARATORY INFO. That cannot be overemphasized.

I was a bit leery of trying Salvia, as I had heard it was pretty potent, so I let a couple of friends who were more courageous (foolhardy?) than I give it a go. Both of them smoked several small bowls each of the material and felt nothing more than a momentary mildly stoney buzz. I would put a couple pinches in the bowl and let one person smoke it. We used small amounts so the entire bowl could be vaporized in one hit. This is important as the active ingredient tends to vaporize almost immediately. You need to smoke it hard and fast (with the flame on it the whole time, and as fast as possible), so we started with very small amounts. We'd wait for possible effects to kick in (which is only a few minutes in the case of Salvia) and try again. Neither of them felt much of anything.

A couple nights later my friend and I decided to try it (implementing the same procedure as before), and our experiences were much different. We were in my apartment (a small, studio apartment with a bed in the center of the room) with the lights down low, the windowshades drawn, and some ambient music playing very softly in the background. We took turns, so we could sit for each other.

My friend went first. Sitting on the bed, she took a strong hit and coughed violently, sending up bits of ash everywhere. The smoke IS rather harsh. She started laughing as I scrambled about trying to prevent the bedspread from getting ashburns. As I finished cleaning everything up, I realized she was still laughing, and now harder than ever. In fact, she had rolled back on the bed and was laughing maniacally. She continued to laugh for about 10 minutes straight, whereupon she suddenly sat up and said, 'Oh my god, I had school today! How long have I been here? Shit!' I explained that it had only been 10 minutes since she hit the pipe (the explaining took a while as she thought she'd been gone for 7-8 hours, and that I was messing with her!) and she started laughing again and jumping around. She was eager to try it again.

Then I smoked some of the Salvia. It was sort of harsh, but nothing seemed to be happening. I was about to try a second hit when everything started to liquify and become rather 'swimmy'. I slowly leaned backwards into a lying position as the world became plastic and melted into a spiral around me. I wouldn't describe it as a hallucination, at least it was nothing like an acid or mushroom hallucination. I could feel it as well as see it and my apartment wrapped itself around me, or else I was wrapped around it. Either way, I could feel my bedspread squeezing against every surface of my skin all at once and there was a momentary flash of 'Christmas' and 'trains' somehow. Sorry to be vague here, but it was sort of like those two concepts just infused themselves into everything for a moment and then dissolved as the prickles came on. I wish I could describe it better. The 'prickles' was a sensation that I had of being entirely hollow, and I could feel something rigid and spiny rattling violently around inside me. It was very unpleasant; I felt sort of like I was being beaten, but without the pain - just jostled around from the inside. From the moment when everything melted, I had my eyes open, but I couldn't see anything from the outside world. Eventually I was able to stand and vision returned. There was a sensation of things sliding around and through me, slower and slower, until eventually everything was as it had been before. It took me a while to understand where I was, who I was, and what had just happened.

My friend tried it a second time, with similar results. She said afterwards that her grandparents used to look after her when she was young, and the trip sent her back there. They were tiling the pool, and she was with them. Then they were playing with her. 'You know how you mess with a little kid, just ticking them and teasing them and making them laugh? That was me! I was an infant and they were fucking with me, everything was fucking with me. It was hilarious; the whole WORLD was fucking with me and I couldn't stop laughing!' Well, she really liked it.

I tried it again, after I'd recovered from the first time. This time, I took a tiny hit (I put in only a wee pinch of leaves) and the effects were very pleasant. I closed my eyes and I felt like a spherical awareness, for lack of better words. There was a night sky filled with stars, and I was a shimmery blue-yellow light source forming a horizon around the bottom of my visual field. Well, I had my eyes closed, but you get what I mean. We had some very soft ambient music in the background and it sent thrills through me. I could see and feel the light changing in response to the music and I felt my arms slowly rise in accompaniment. They felt weightless. It was a very delicious feeling and I would like to find it again.

On a different occasion, I took a friend up a nearby hill, and had him smoke some. After several hits, he attained a pleasant spacey state of mind that lasted nearly a half an hour and was very enjoyable. He said it wasn't too unlike marijuana, except for one point where he lay back into the hill and could feel himself seeping into it. He bonded with the hill (in a couple senses) for a while before sitting up sharply. 'That's a damn fine hill!' he exclaimed. He also said he could feel a fractal-like recursive pattern of purple cones or triangles, wherever he came in contact with the ground.

I took a small hit, and was totally blown away. It felt like my brain had been bashed out of my skull with a snow shovel. I couldn't make sense of anything and it was difficult to restrain my panic. I could only see a small patch of ground in front of me. Images and concepts flew about my brain and I felt like I was being shaken roughly. I couldn't understand gravity, and I felt like I was going to fall into the sky, or at least up the hill. I found myself clutching the hill and slowly, desperately trying to crawl downhill in an attempt to survive. It seemed like something kept forcing me to the ground rather violently. I felt 'sticky' in some strange way, and again had the sensation of being spread out across the ground so that the dirt and pebbles were pressing into every part of my at once. I was gasping 'Where is, where is ... ?' and nothing made any sense. When I finally (5-8 min later) started to come around, I felt abused, and I don't think I will smoke any more Salvia for a long time.

I purchased some of the Salvia tincture extract, but so far it has had no effect on me. Then again, I took the lowest possible dosage after my previous experience. We shall see ...

Exp Year: 2000	ExpID: 931
Gender: Not Specified
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Dec 17, 2000	Views: 23,621
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Salvia divinorum (44) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Guides / Sitters (39), Retrospective / Summary (11)