DOSE:

1 hit

smoked

Salvia divinorum

(extract)

BODY WEIGHT:

125 lb

This is my detailed account of everything from my first time smoking Salvia Divinorum. Apologies for the length, but I could not bear to leave out any detail I remembered.

Background at time:
I am a male 20 year old in college weighing 125 lbs. I have smoked a fair amount of weed, but only had been into it for a little over a year. I did molly twice but never fully experienced that. I was with 3 friends who I will call Albert, Axel, and Peter to protect identities. None of us had ever smoked Salvia Divinorum before this day, and at the time of writing (the day after) I am the only one to have smoked it. Axel had smoked a ton of weed that day and was completely baked. Albert was also pretty high from the weed. Peter had smoked a very small amount of weed so he was pretty sober. I hadn’t smoked any weed at all that day, so I was entirely sober going into the experience. We had not looked up any actual dosage amounts for Salvia Divinorum, which you could say was a mistake. I wouldn’t label it a mistake. It was just the scenario. We went to an herbal witchcraft shop and bought one gram of 20x extract. I had zero experience with any kind of psychedelic. I had no idea what to expect from the Salvia.

The Hit:
And I mean: The Hit. We were in my friend’s apartment. I sat on the couch and had our rasta-colored bong on the short white table in front of me. Peter sat across from me in a desk chair. Albert was at the far end of the adjacent couch. Axel was on the close end. I was alone on my couch. Behind me was a door to the balcony that was open with a fan blowing out the door for the smoke. I divided the gram into three portions because originally three people were going to partake. I packed my third of a gram into the bowl. I was psyching myself out about the taste of smoke. I honestly didn’t have any anxiety toward the drug, I just didn’t want to taste the smoke. I looked at our table filled with carvings. I read the “LETS GET DILATED” and with enthusiasm lit the bowl and ripped the bong as hard as I could. I then sat back and held in the smoke. At this point, time is difficult to recall. All time estimates are from my friends. I am writing this the day after smoking it and time is still a little hard to follow. The smoke was not a bad taste. It was just strange. I finally couldn’t hold the smoke anymore and a cough forced a little smoke out my nose. I then exhaled and immediately felt a falling sensation. I said “whoa” out loud.

The Trip:
I embraced it and pushed myself into the couch. For a few moments, I was in a void. The only things that existed in this void was my head, the top couch cushion, and the pressure of the couch on my head. I relaxed and let my head just rest on the couch cushion.

Now I was in another realm. Just like that. I couldn’t really conceptualize the “no come-up” part of salvia until I experienced it. There was no transition. There was no “oh this is the trip”. It wasn’t even like the void disappeared and this realm appeared. This realm just was. There was no before. There was no after. I felt that I was a child, maybe 4 or 5 years old. We were in line for a roller coaster. By “we”, I mean I felt this maternal figure was holding my hand. Nobody was actually holding my hand. There were other people in this realm, but they didn’t matter to me. They were just there. Afterwards, I believe there were 3 people other than myself in the realm due to the 3 people in real life with me, but during the trip there was no concept of the number 3. There were just people, me, and this mother. Besides the people, there was this background. It wasn’t even like a background. Everything that wasn’t these people, was just color with a metal grate. Another experience report described this “hyperliquid” of color that he saw, and I believe that is the only way to describe it. It was just a river of the most intense colors beyond what someone can imagine. But in the color, I could see horizontal and vertical black lines that formed like a very loose grate. So loose that the size I felt as a child, I could have just walked through the gaps in the grate. I didn’t think this. I didn’t think anything but what was. I didn’t question what I saw because I didn’t know I was supposed to. In that realm, I was this child. That was all I knew. On the other side of the color and grate was the roller coaster. Nobody said that. Nobody really said anything. The sounds I heard just had meaning. It wasn’t like I analyzed their meaning and interpreted it. The meaning just was true. The thought that the roller coaster was on the other side of this “wall” was true because the thought existed in that realm.

At some point I remember I felt cold. It wasn’t much, but it was annoying. Then it stopped and I felt happy. Later found out that I kept trying to get up to close the door behind me in real life, and they kept sitting me down. Then Peter closed the door and I apparently said “Thank you”. The realm I was in felt like it lasted forever, but not in the normal time sense. It felt that that realm and that line for the roller coaster was what existed always. There was no before or after or any actual concept of time.
About 5 minutes into the trip, I panicked. The thought came into my head that the reality I was witnessing was wrong. My reactions to this were purely instinctual. I could not think out my actions at all. In the movies, when there are people in a science experiment or false reality and they figure out they are being lied to and held in this reality they know, they always try to escape it. They fight back, and constantly try to escape it. That was the only experience I feel my mind had to know how to react. So I tried to escape the reality. I just searched in the blur of color and everything for some way out. I apparently kept trying to stand and my friends kept making me sit down. I eventually became aware of getting up and down and up and down and up and down. Then I thought my friends were actually people of this false reality trying to pull me back to the realm of color. I remember yelling at them “you aren’t real!” but apparently all they heard were inaudible sounds. Finally, not even finally, just at a point at the same time as everything, I found the straight horizontal lines of the table in front of me.

Writing this actually just brought back a memory. Up until writing this I only remembered the roller coaster scene and that was the whole trip. I remember now that when I started to form full objects like the legs of the table, I wanted to piece together the square objects. All the curved objects like my backpack and couch, which I didn’t know was my backpack and couch just bothered me. They didn’t make sense. I was in terror, but everyone I knew seemed to know that I was in this new room. This weird carnival room. It wasn’t like a carnival how you’d normally imagine, but it is my only way to describe it right now. It wasn’t until know that I had thought about “salvia”. I actually couldn’t remember if I actually did the drug. I kept searching for evidence of the act of smoking while fighting my way back into reality. Then a word kept repeating: “hospital”. This single word conveyed the same as if someone had said all of the following: “This went horribly wrong. You need to go to the hospital. You will be alright, but the hospital might be necessary. You did a drug. Go to the hospital. Tell someone you need the hospital.” But then the word “legal” came into existence and it conveyed: “It’s alright if you actually do need the hospital. You are on a legal drug. You are fine. Stay calm.” And that calmed me enough to finish fighting for reality. I hope I never return to that room again.
Finally I had pulled myself back into reality, but the terror remained. I don’t even like the word terror for it. I was not scared for myself or my life. I just knew I was alright, but I feared for my existence and I feared for knowledge in general. During that fear, I thought. I thought a lot. I thought about drugs. I decided I would never touch another drug again. I didn’t think I could even smoke weed again. I didn’t think I would be able to use the bong ever again because the image of looking down the bong at the burning bowl was more terrifying than anything I could imagine.

At this point, I was pretty fine. Albert and Peter went outside to smoke weed since I had pretty much murdered their highs. Axel stayed because he was so baked. I looked at him and he wasn’t Axel to me. He was like the wise old sage that had answers. I just started talking to him about the experience and because of how high he was on weed, the old sage calmed me. I looked at the clock. I don’t remember any specific numbers, I just know every time I looked at the clock so much more time had passed than I had felt. But I didn’t really feel time at all. Time was just changing. And things were happening. They no longer felt connected.

After some more time, I began to move around. I was slightly twitchy, but everything was coming back to normal. It took me the longest time to conceptualize the television again. Looking towards the television was not an option. I just avoided looking at it until after I spoke with Axel. My friends explained to me that I periodically tried to stand up. I was flailing. I drooled. I actually walked around the side of the couch and Peter guided me back to my seat. I couldn’t believe that had happened. I remember moving in the carnival room, but in the roller coaster realm, nothing seemed to actually move. It all felt that it had movement, but it didn’t move like I was looking around. Sorry I cannot explain this sensation any better than that.

Once the drug had pretty much worn off, and I was just experiencing the twitchiness and loss of the ability to track time, I was alright. I realized the terror was the reason for me not wanting to do drugs. I realized I could still smoke weed so I went outside and took a single hit just to calm my twitching a little bit. I had to rebuild reality in my mind then. I realized my mind was blank. I had to relearn how to think by thinking. I had to reopen my memories and I tried to remember as much up to the point of smoking. I managed to remember all the way up to saying “whoa” after exhaling the hit.

Post thoughts:

Afterwards we emptied the bowl and realized I did leave some in the bowl. We estimated I smoked about .25g of 20x extract in that one hit, which we now know is a huge amount. Then taking into account my lack of experience and small body weight, the amount I smoked was ridiculous. I would not do the same excess dosage equivalent of any other drug except weed. Even though I felt more terrified than ever before, I would honestly do it again. I now can conceptualize thinking beyond our reality and beyond time much easier than before. It has opened my mind and I formed many opinions about salvia, drugs in general, reality, time, and pretty much everything. I definitely pulled myself out of the trip early from the panic. Next time, I will probably understand the situation better and I won’t rip myself out as hard. I am glad I had a bad ending to a trip on a drug that only lasts a few minutes. If I had been in that terror and escape mentality for maybe a minute longer, I would have gone insane. I believe that I would have tried to scream and run away.

I’ve read experience reports now and people say they had experiences like this new reality was truth and everything they knew before was wrong. That they had been lied to and kept in the dark from the secret of this true reality. I believe the opposite. I felt that the “realm” I was in was false and I needed to return to the true reality. Now that the trip is over, I honestly have a feeling of doubt about the reality we live in. Salvia Divinorum is one damn strange drug. Also, just calling it “salvia” gives me a feeling of disrespect. I still call it that for ease of communication, but I have this feeling that calling Salvia Divinorum just “salvia” is like insulting the drug.

For future experiences, I will definitely control my environment better. I feel there was just too much light and color in the room for the trip. Next time, I am going to smoke it in a much darker environment with nothing that I can harm myself on. I apparently almost hit my head on the edge of the table at one point. I will also smoke a much smaller amount. 0.25g of 20x extract was way too much. If I had the chance to go back in time, whatever that may mean, I honestly would not change it though. I am happy for the experience, but next time I will change the variables in an attempt for a more pleasant experience or mainly the come down.

Exp Year: 2015	ExpID: 105924
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 20
Published: Jan 9, 2021	Views: 1,207
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Salvia divinorum (44) : Difficult Experiences (5), Entities / Beings (37), First Times (2), Small Group (2-9) (17)