DOSE:	3.5 leaves	smoked	Salvia divinorum	(dried)
	1 leaf	smoked	Salvia divinorum	(dried)

BODY WEIGHT:

65 kg

I have been living in Japan for almost a year, and given the rather Draconian drug laws (and this is in comparision with that of the U.S.!!!) here I have not partaken of any mind-altering substances other than caffeine, tobacco, and alcohol during that time (save for a mild Morning Glory seed excursion a few weeks ago). In the past, stateside, I was a regular cannibis user. I had had ample experience with other psychedelics as well, although the last time was probably about three years ago. (Psilocybin, if memory serves.) I am also asthmatic and regularly take salbutamol and fluticasone inhalers. (don't give me a lecture about asthma and smoking...)

Well, a good nine months or so of subjective reality left my mind hungering for outward growth, and around that time I stumbled upon an add in a japanese subculture magazine called 'Burst' offering several very interesting substances through mail order.
Needless to say I was very surprised to find that in a country where simple marijuana posession can warrant up to five-year jail sentences there was such a dazzling array of entheogens available legally. (Most of which are also available in the U.S., the most notable exception being Peyote.)

One substance that I had never heard of before was Salvia Divinorum. After doing a great deal of research online, I decided to order 10 grams, for 5000 (about $38 US).
My package arrived at around 10:30 this morning, and by 10:45 I was preparing for a threshold dose, (I had to work at 12:30, but I couldn't contain my curiousity.) With perhaps overly brash enthusiasm, I made myself comfortable on the floor of my room, and packed two leaves into the bong I had fashioned from a plastic oolong tea bottle, the shaft of a ball-point pen, and two rachet iron sockets. (Plus a lot of duct tape on the exterior, hey it doesn't look like much but it gets the job done, as I soon found out.)
(Please excuse my gratuitous use of parantheses!)

I evenly torched the dry leaves, and drew one rather healthy lungful, holding it in for as long as possible, but feeling a profound tingle rising inside of me, which grew as I exhaled. I quickly tried to inhale the remaining smoke in the chamber, but was soon distracted by the strange sensation welling up. With some amount of anticipatory fear I felt my sense of equilibrium shift radically, and my peripheral vision was rotating and seemingly replicating images of itself. The hardwood floor of my room seemed very intense, the woodgrain patterns suddenly very convincingly echoing the living trees that had produced them. I was sitting on the edge of my futon, which was rolled out on the floor (this is not the americanized version of a futon with the wooden frame, but a simple floor-bedding system) and looked behind me at the futon and the wall, feeling the presence of an entity or entities welcoming me to her or their domain, (The fact that I perceived it as a female presence may have been influenced by some of the reports I had read, but at this point I had pretty much lost contact with my 'self', focusing only on the moment, so I tend to think that there's something to this assignment of gender.)

There was a sing-song mantra playing in my head, something along the lines of 'Who's feeling worse than today's boy...' Several times I looked behind me, and back to the front with hesitation as I received the invitation (or order) to lie down on the bed from this entity. I thought that she might become angry if I didn't respect her wishes. However, lying back I felt uncomfortable, especially since at this point I was sweatting rather profusely and couldn't deal with the heat of my bedcovers touching my skin. Sitting back upright I began to experience some anxiety and more general discomfort, something familiar that I had forgotten about psychedelics, given my three-year long hiatus, a general 'I wanna jump out of my skin' feeling. At this point I was past the peak, and just feeling bummed out, and worrying if I would be straight for work in just over an hour.

This was T+20 minutes or so, and at this point I felt as if I had made a grave mistake, even though the experience had been very interesting, as it had been unnerving as well.
I was able to get up and walk around now, (albeit against better judgement, but I was feeling antsy.) I went out to my kitchen and lit a cigarette, but lacked the coordination and focus to smoke it, as I still had one foot in a dimensional door, and soon butted it out hastily. Returning to my room, I sat for a few more minutes until I had calmed down a bit, and then went to my porch for another attempt at smoking a butt.
So I took some notes as I smoked, writing about how the experience was probably too powerful to experience alone. (Too bad most of the friends I've made here are relatively square in terms of drug experience and inclination.) I noted the fear of what harm I might cause to myself in such a state, and gave thanks for the fact that I resisted the urge to stand at the height of the rush. (My room is quite cluttered, so had I done so, I would have likely been injured.)

Well, after clearing up my head a bit and relaxing, I decided to call my girlfriend.
She doesn't approve of psychedelics, (although when we lived in the states she used to smoke marijuana with me, but usually to treat her frequent stomachaches and nausea. Another testimonial to the power of medical marijuana!) henceforth I did not mention the event that was foremost on my mind. She observed that I seemed a bit 'down' from the tone of my voice. Later I was just fine for work, although all day I could feel a subtle foreign presence in the back of my head, and during a meeting with coworkers, while heartily laughing at a conversation, I think I shook loose some Salvinoin molecules in my brain, because I felt genuinely strange in much the same way for a few seconds.

After work, at about 9pm, I decided to have another go with the leaf, because all day the negative feelings I was feeling toward it were dwindling. I think I was in the wrong mindset, since it was before work, and I was in a potentially dangerous, cluttered room. My apartment has a classroom in it, the floor of which is covered with foam rubber mats. I figured that this would be the ideal place to experiment, (especially at night, no pressure to straighten up) and locked myself in the room, figuring that in the state I had been in, I wouldn't be able to figure out the locks and lumber into a more dangerous part of the apartment. The room was lit only by streetlights, which are actually rather bright, but I decided to go for it anyway.

Since I had an idea of what to expect, and the determination to surrender myself to the experience, what transpired gave me quite a different perspective on the plant in question. My heart was racing a bit so I tried to meditate for a minute. I loaded about three and a half leaves into the bong and managed to get two good hits, before I was carried off. I gently lay down on the foam mats, and became conscious of myself as a composite of intelligent particles, as if the 'I' that I usually associate as being located in my brain was extended to all parts of my body, or at least those parts which were in contact with the floor. Very tactile sensations of being enveloped by the floor as well. With eyes closed, this particle consciousness was played out as shapes projecting from where I percieved my line of sight and my arms to be, out into infinity. The spirit of the salvia was once again perceived, this time, genderless but still beckoning me. There was another sing-song mantra repeating in my head, which I resolved to remember, but soon forgot. I know that it had the word 'great' in it, and seemed beautifully appropriate at the time. When I became just coordinated enough to reload and fire again, (one leaf) I decided to keep my eyes open and enjoy the perceptual shift.

I was made aware, as the 3 dimensional space around me was flattened, that entities exist within these gaps between perceptual spaces. Somehow not in the spaces themselves, but they actually live in the perception of their spaces! (Huh? This seemed very profound at the time.) I was drawn to staring at a spot in the dimly lit room where the line created by the edge of the rubber mats intersected with the bottom of the door. Seeing this reduced to 2 dimensions and rendered somewhat fake and otherworldly by the salvia in synergy with the orange streetlight, created some kind of dynamic visual tension which I undertood to be the domain of such an entity. This idea struck me as very comical, and I began to regard the salvia entity as benevolent and even playful, in a similar vein as some of my best prior experiences with mushrooms. (Much preferrable to the somewhat frightening spirit I had encountered the first time.)

This time when I came back, instead feeling like I might be better off flushing the remainder of my supply down the crapper, I felt grateful to have discovered this plant that can remind me of the existence of other realities in such an instantaneous and even humorous manner.

About T+20 minutes, I was able to safely walk out to my balcony and have a cig, feeling at ease with my new friend, about whom I had originally had strong doubts. While more research is definitely required, I think I have discovered a valuable ally. It seems to easily show me things that I believe to be true with the rational part of my brain, but which are very difficult to feel with the whole of my being during times of unaltered consciousness.

Exp Year: 2003	ExpID: 24086
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Mar 7, 2006	Views: 19,874
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Salvia divinorum (44) : Entities / Beings (37), First Times (2), General (1), Alone (16)