DOSE:	repeated	oral	Alcohol - Beer/Wine	(liquid)
	1 hit	smoked	Salvia divinorum	(extract - 5x)

BODY WEIGHT:

175 lb

Mein gott....two days ago, I finally hit the wall with salvia. I mean it was like jumping out of a car at 100 miles an hour, right into a concrete wall or something equally hard & soul crunching!

I'm no newbie to salvia, having had many fun, strong experiences in the past. Ever since my first 10x experience (that left me in spasms of laughter) I had been intrigued by this sweet 'lil ol' girl, the Green Goddess. Out here in Hawaii, it is rather popular with the locals, as Terence McKenna planted the stuff all over the damn island. So I consider myself sorta of a salvia farmer, as I have been growing the plant for about a year now. It has been really nice cultivating a relationship with the plant, and the bonding betwixt man & plant has really helped me a lot on my trips.

I have always had good experiences, by good I mean that I have felt the raw force of this substance, and it was as if I was a puppet being jerked around by a benevolent mistress, usually I just laugh insanely for ten minutes or so, and have so much fun!! But, as many of you people know, salvia has reverse tolerance....so the more I do it, the easier & more intensely it seems to affect me.

This past Saturday night, I had a fresh batch of extract waiting for me when I got home from work. In the past, I have used various extraction techniques, from denatured alcohol (very effective, but really poisonous) to rubbing alcohol (weaker but not as bad on the health) so this time, I decided to use a cold acetone tek, just to try out something different.

Good lord, it was fucking EFFECTIVE. I mean, stick your head in a blender effective!! I chilled the leaf that I was gonna extract from in the freezer, then did the same with some acetone. When it was pretty damn cold, I just covered the leaf with acetone and stirred it for about three minutes or so. A quick decant and I then repeated the action. I combined the extracts and evaporated it down, then mixed the plain leaf I had set aside into the brew. It didn't turn dark at all, like enhanced leaf does with alcohol. I assumed that the tec didn't strip out much good stuff, but was still willing to give it a go.

I called up a couple of buddies to come up and drink wine with me, and to have a good 'ol night of drinking and salvia smokin' with the boys. Personally, I like to combine my salvia with alcohol (esp. vino) as it seems to potentiate it rather well. So they all come up to my house I share with three other people (including my girlfriend) and we start having a good old time. I had been drinking wine all day, while drying the extract, and was very buzzed even before my buddies got there. While we were drinking, I nearly smashed my hip from falling on concrete because I tried to kick the Christmas lights that were hanging off the garage for some unknown drunken reason. My standing foot went out from under me, and I came down hard. As you can see, I was pretty loaded, something to keep in mind as I relate this tale. Like I said, usually the Lady likes to just play around with me, but maybe she didn't like the way I was being especially frivolous that night, what with all of the wild drinking and general nuttiness. Usually I try to approach powerful substances like salvia with more respect, but I was feeling footloose & fancy-free and didn't see the need for ritual that eve.

Oh boy, soon I was to pay for my error. Big time. Now, I should probably also tell ya'll that I have been doing alot of tryptamines lately (AMT & ayahuasca) and my brain was feeling pretty 'loose' as of late. As those who are in the know do indeed know, the tryptamines give a person ALOT of fucking information to ponder. For the past two months, totally new dimensions have been opening up to me, and I have been doing my damnest to interpret them. As a college student who is majoring in creative writing but minoring in Psychedelics, I have been putting my brain through a hell of a lot lately. I'm just trying to figure out what in the hell brought on this experience that I'm about to relate. Salvia is weird stuff....no trip is ever the same. I have done everything from Ketamine to LSD to DMT to aya to just about everything else multiple times, and am struck by just how varying the experiences can be from time to time. Salvia was my lover, but that bitch pulled a Lorena Bobbit on me, in short.

Anyway, back to my tale of warped dimensionality. My buddies and I were in high drunken spirits when I felt the urge to bring out the freshly-dried extract. I went and retrieved it from my room, and brought it out onto the porch where we were sitting. Casually, without any kind of ceremony other than that which you would do in the smoking of your everyday cannabis, I loaded the bowl of my friend's pipe with extract and hit it with da fire. I remember tasting that familiar taste, kinda dark and lush, but good, too. That good smoke went deep into my lungs, and I held it in, waiting to take my customary three hits of good stuff.

I didn't quite make it to three hits.

For the first time, one hit was enough. I felt my lungs start to tingle, I think I told my friends that the salvia was indeed active & potent, then I was gone. Absolutely, inconceivably gone. It was like I had just woken up into another totally different reality. Only this reality wasn't reality, no siree bobtail, it was the antithesis of reality. One time on LSD at JazzFest in New Orleans, I had what I call the Ultimate Vision. Ya'll know what I am talking about. 'Behind the scenes of reality' and 'that perception that makes people institutionalized forever'. The True View of Reality. You know when a person gets to that point past that little crust of perception that we call 'Our Lives' and 'Our world'? Where they suddenly realize their ultimate position in life & the Universe? It's not fun, as it totally invalidates our lives.

I mean, when you realize everybody you love, everything you take for granted about 'this world' are merely props on an intergalactic stage? All of our hopes, dreams, fears, just soap bubbles on the plate of existence? I mean, we all know that we are merely shells, walking around on this earth, but when you actually SEE that, oh god, it SUCKS, SUCKS, SUCKS. Somethings we aren't meant to see while we are still bound in meat reality.

I returned to this reality, this Ultimate Vision. Death would have been kind if it had taken me right then and there. At least on acid that time in New Orleans, experiencing the similar vision, I knew that when the acid faded off, I could return to the comfortable delusion that is (was?) my life, that the acid was allowing me to see something that I wasn't meant to see, and when the peak wore off I would be OK. It wasn't like that on the salvia. It was like suddenly, out of the blue, I was watching the credits roll on my entire life. I knew I was a goner. Even if I survived, what did it matter? You can't have infinity and humanity at the same time, they don't work well together!!

I vaguely remember hearing the conversations that were going on around me at the time at the table. Except that I didn't quite hear normal conversation, I heard the 'metamessage' that everyone was saying. For instance, one of my friends was talking to this chick he liked a lot, and he was telling her about his life. But instead of hearing things like 'My father is in the military, my mom is a nurse, my dog is named Fluffy' and other such getting-to-know one another kinda thing, I heard 'Well, crystallinesheen finally did it, he broke through, I knew he would find the truth at some point. It was good being in his movie, let's all say goodbye to him, he's about to leave us, but watch out, you don't want to go with him now!' The realization that my friends were cardboard cutouts just killed me, I mean I would have been less shocked if my friends had pulled out a pistol right then and there and shot me. It felt like that, but so much worse. I can deal with pain & injury, but not the Ultimate Vision. Damnit, Lady Salvia, why did you have to go and show me that? God, that wasn't cool at all!!

I remember jumping up and running, trying to outrun the meltdown that was occurring all around me. Everyone I had ever known was popping up everywhere, wishing me goodbye, and they were all sad that I figured out the game so early in my life. I ran into the house, nearly knocking out people in my mad dash to my bedroom. Amazingly, I felt like I actually ran THROUGH one of my housemates, like I was a ghost already and I didn't even matter anymore. Vaguely, I remember running to my room and laying down on my bed, waiting to finally die, to end the torment of having thought my life was real, only to find out it was just a fucking movie. The room dissolved, and the only thing that existed was my hands, and my bed (I guess because my hands were clutching my bed in a deathgrip) The door to my room was opened wide, and I knew that all of the people I had ever known were all about to walk through that doorway and mock me, laughing because I had believed in the delusion, and they had all participated in that lie. (Thankfully, that didn't happen).

Downstairs, I heard our neighbors (we live in a duplex) talking, and I swear to god, they were talking about me, and what I had just done. I only vaguely know these people, but they knew exactly what I had done, and were laughing at the role they had played in my life delusion. I knew I was a goner. Oh god, I almost get sick to my stomach recalling this, it was worse than any torture, any kind of bad thing I can imagine, from anal rape to being drawn & quartered to having your fingernails pulled out by the roots. It was beyond the catagories of 'good' and 'bad', like I said it was the Real Deal. I know this is part of the bad shit that happens when you die, before your spirit goes back home & everything is good, you have to leave this world behind, and in doing that, you realize that is was all just a dream........

After a few minutes, (I guess, as I felt I was in purgatory an eternity) I felt that I wanted to live the lie, I wanted to return to all of those things that I enjoyed & loved. In short, I needed some grounding in a big way. I managed to make my way back out to the garage to relate to my friends my experience. But reality was still vibrating, and mostly molten. My friends were still gloating about their roles in my delusion, and they were laughing about incidents in my life they had witnessed, because they were plastic gods that had designed my life to that point anyway. But that didn't shock me anymore. I think I was resigned to death by that point. Slowly, as I sat there in the company of my friends, it was like I came up to the surface of the ocean having dived down to the depths, and those conversations started making sense again.

Suddenly, my friends were talking about normal, drunken subjects once again. It's as if mid-sentence, everything that they were saying starting making sense again (as pertaining to the great, wonderful lie that is Reality) This is the weirdest part of the experience, I mean it was like I was hearing subliminal messages in the voices of everyone around me or something!! SCARY!! They were talking normally the whole time!!

Okay, I was back down after one of the most mind-blowing experiences of my life. I thought everyone would have been concerned about me, but hardly anyone thought I had even left! They all thought I had went to go take a piss or something. Oh man, I started riffing on the near death experience I had just had. But this didn't seem to sway my friends any, and they immediately packed their own bowls and took off themselves. I was still too far gone to observe what happened to them, but I did something that I still can't believe I did. After all that I had just went through, probably one of the worst experiences of my life, what do I do? I take another hit of salvia!! It all came back, but mercifully, I think I blacked out, as I remember coming back slamming my head into the metal table saying 'Why, oh WHY did I do that to myself again?'

I immediately drank up the rest of the wine in great swallows. I needed intoxication, not for the drunkeness, but for grounding. It was necessary, because I felt that my soul was not quite back into my body. Now, two days later, I am just about back to normal. I passed out, thankfully, not long after the experience, and have felt weak ever since. It is as if my mind & spirit was so jarred by this experience that I have suffered kind of a mini-death or somesuch. I keep trying to tell my girlfriend about this, and more comes to me as the days go by. I know myself & of the other realms enough to know that I needed to undergo that experience for some reason. Why? I keep asking myself. Why did I have to go there? I went out and meditated with my salvia plants, hoping for an answer. It's almost like I feel betrayed. Salvia has always been kind to me, almost lighthearted. But I feel my extraction tec may have been a little too strong, and maybe, I dunno, maybe it was time for my bitch-slapping of the century.

I live for the psychedelic experience. Will I ever do salvia again? Most definitely, but until then, I have a lot to do in the way of centering myself. To me, it is if like I just lost a battle in the consciousness wars. I feel the shaman's spirit, the need to have to 'go to war with the spirit world' is starting to awaken in me. Not a battle to do any spirit any harm, but to fight to maintain my position in the universe. We fight this battle everyday, by eating, sleeping, keeping death away by living. Just tonight, I have gotten my power back that I had lost. I made a huge beef stew (I'm a carnivore, meat helps me to ground really well) and that did wonders for my spirit. I now have to focus on gaining strength for the next battle. This is like a quest for me, I realize that I'm in too deep to turn around now, I have to dive to the very heart of this mystery that I have uncovered.

Until then, love and light...... and just because it's a lie doesn't mean it doesn't mean something....somewhere....I don't exist, and you don't either!! HA HA!!!

Exp Year: 2002	ExpID: 19206
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Nov 12, 2004	Views: 77,652
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Salvia divinorum (44) : Combinations (3), General (1), Small Group (2-9) (17)