DOSE:

250 mg

smoked

Salvia divinorum

(extract)

BODY WEIGHT:

140 lb

I entered my Salvia experience as a complete newb to any type of hallucinogen. The only drugs I had taken before had only been smoking weed off and on and a little alcohol. In short, I had no idea what I was in for.

My Buddy Joe had purple 50X salvia that didn’t exactly work on him. I think his lack of reaction to salvia is due to his heavy smoking habits (an occurring trend in some stoners). In turn, he decided to just let his friends use it until his stash was finished.

Joe had been hanging out with me most of the day and we decided we were overdue for a visit of our Scottish friend, Steve. Steve lived in a subdivision that was completely surrounded by beautiful forests of cedar and oak trees. Living in Texas meant that the climate for a summer day would be hot, dry and unforgiving.

All three of us jumped into my car and started towards our destination: The Magical Forest. The place was dubbed “The Magical Forest” by Steve who, along with me, thought it had many trippy features. In reality, the forest is actually private property owned by ranchers and apparently drunks because Red Stripe bottles were strewn randomly throughout the vast deserted place. Walking through the forest caused deja vu alone, but while stoned out of your mind, created a massive (but feasible) maze.

We parked my car and walked a quarter mile to a barbed wire fence. Always an interesting experience, we all took turns climbing over the fence in our own way. After retreating deeper and deeper into the forest we had finally arrived at our destination. A small clearing surrounded by a few trees seemed like the perfect place to smoke, given the circumstances. The thought of where I tripped salvia didn’t occur to me as a great importance (a massive mistake). I entered not thinking about what the experience would be like nor did I know what I was in for.

We grabbed Steve’s ghetto bong made out of a pen, two Ozarka water bottles, foil and masking tape. Not the ideal smoking utensil but “it gets the job done!” We sat in a circle (if you could call it that), with both Steve and Joe facing me with their back to the thicker part of the forest. Since I had never tried Salvia before, they decided it was only fair to watch me trip out for my first time. Joe used a small knife to load the foil bowl full of salvia (won’t work if touched by human hands), which most likely equaled about a ½ of a gram. I took purples (I guess you could call it) and man, did I take a giant hit! I held the hit in as I was earlier instructed to do for about 30 seconds.

I blew my hit to the right and as soon as I turned left, I was sucked into Salvia’s wrath. I remember the feeling the most vividly. The feeling was that of going on an amusement park ride that is actually more frightening than previously thought. As soon as I started my trip, I was so amazed by the effects that I forgot what had happened literally 2 seconds earlier.

There were three stages of my intense trip the coincidentally linked together to make sense. I will explain in order of most vivid to less clear. One, to my left, a vast pattern of colors with faces (mostly primary colors) creating a magnificent background to my new world. How do I know these colors had faces? I’ll tell you. I felt like I was in an entire stadium aside from lack of noise of people cracking up at me. Not exactly open laughter, but self-contained laughter as if the colored faces could get into trouble if they laughed too hard in front of me. By the time I had a better idea where I was, I realized these faces were actually taunting me.

The taunting faces were making a fool out of me because I wasn’t sure what exactly was happening. I tried to talk back at them and maybe give an explanation to my confusion but I was unable to form words. It took nearly half my trip to realize that a certain force was holding my tongue enough for the inability to talk but loose enough to make my tongue move around and cause extreme discomfort. Next, I realized that the hate displayed by the colors with faces could only be matched by the behavior of popular students in school toward people that weren’t as accepted (in short: losers/geeks). This one face had a voice which was that of a male (much like most schoolyard bullies) and kept receiving nonstop entertainment by my every action. To add to my discomfort this voice kept saying “Cat got your tongue? Huh? Does He have your tongue?” To be honest, I’m surprised I didn’t cry. That was how humiliating the experience was. Now that I think of it, I think I was too shocked to cry.

I scanned the background of faces very slowly to get the whole effect. When I finally got back to my friends, I didn’t know who they were. I know I looked at both of my friends but I only remember looking at Joe, who was wearing a polo shirt consisting of many shades of blue, and was actually apart of my beautiful background. All I remember was seeing his face, hair, and shirt. His face looked like it was poorly camouflaged in blue along with his hair. I noticed later that I thought many people were laughing at me because my friends were the only actual people laughing at me. At the time, I thought they were laughing because I had just realized that my life was a lie and that I didn’t really have any control.

All of what I saw during this stage of my trip seemed familiar to me in a way that maybe I saw the same kind of thing when I was a little kid or even a baby or while I was in a dream. Both occurrences are similar experiences to hallucinogens in that I remember certain things vaguely but not completely.

Stage Two was what I would compare to film falling off the reel while still playing. When this happened, I realized that the film was my life reel actually finishing because my life was complete. This switched back and forth between the reel and a swirl of a person figure appearing profile to me that had a wide midsection but narrowing when reaching toward the head and feet. The person figure looked like a Mario character with poor graphics remaining profile and was flat except for approximately an inch around the border which was curved. After I figured out that my life was ending, I was waiting for a sign to tell me what to do next. The salvia trip made me realized that I’m very open-minded and accepting to what I think is the truth.

Stage Three took me about a month to remember because I started to think about all the features of my trip and finally filled in the blanks. I’m not sure if it was the most interesting to me but it did stand out because it didn’t allow me to stand or move from where I was sitting. This stage was time-oriented somehow but more importantly the most physical. I felt as though I was in some kind of plastic world where everything I did made something else that was plastic move. The colors that stood out once again were the primary colors.

I’ve finished explaining my trip and I am now ready to tell what occurred later. Slowly, the world transformed back into the more familiar world I knew much like the way I fell into the trip. The confusion didn’t leave me when the salvia finally wore off. It took me a few seconds to catch my bearings for my experience had been a potentially traumatic one. I started to ask my friends questions and I started to remember what reality was once again. For the first few minutes, was doing my best to figure out what I just saw. As time grew, my trip became more clear. All during this, I was very hot and extremely uncomfortable. I felt so bad that I thought that I may never be happy again. I tried to think of something to look forward to, maybe I could go home in the nice air-conditioning and relax by jamming to my favorite songs on my guitar. Nothing. I was still really sad and I just wanted to leave the scene for good. We drove for a while afterwards to search for some bud although I didn’t feel like smoking anymore that day. Finally, the intense depression and fatigue had worn off and I could find something to do to decompress.

In conclusion, I learned a lot from my experience. Although the physical effects were very painful at the time, I realize now that I have learned more about myself than I ever will. This one experience has been enough for a month and now being more experienced I am going to try it again soon. There are two after effects of the drug. One, is the more positive where I just feel very baked and amazed at what I saw and two, the negative where I felt very hot and uncomfortable (I’ve even seen people sick to their stomach) and extremely depressed. I’m not sure if these effects can tell more about my personality but they definitely vary for each person.

Exp Year: 2006	ExpID: 54271
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jun 25, 2007	Views: 13,609
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Salvia divinorum (44) : Small Group (2-9) (17), First Times (2)