DOSE:

4 seeds

oral

H.B. Woodrose

(seeds)

BODY WEIGHT:

68 kg

Some brief background: I am, at the time of writing, 19 years old university student, and roughly three days after experiencing my first trip on any substance. I had held an interest in psychedelics for quite a few years beforehand, though really I hadn't heard of any aside from LSD and vague 'magic mushroom' references. I had heard of ecstasy too, but didn't realise it was a psychedelic until recently. My main interest in these substances, aside from the obvious intriguing properties and effects on the human mind, were the possibilities of relation to mystical experiences, mind expansion, and creativity (and 'normal' recreational use, of course).

I had recently been talking with a friend over MSN and he linked to some pages about Salvia Divinorum (we had discussed psychedelics briefly before, so he knew of my interest). Previously I had never even considered that psychedelics might exist which were legal to possess, and this sparked my research into various legal-to-posess substances, ultimately leading to buying some of these seeds online. Mine were bought from a vendor who guarantees no chemical treatment has been performed on the seeds.

I initially tried a sublingual technique, using 7 seeds, but since I lacked the tools to properly grind up the seeds as required, it didn't work very well. I held what felt like vomit in my mouth for 15 mins before spitting the disgusting mess out. This was an almost complete failure- I experienced extremely subtle CEVs- mainly wavy patterns and a suggestion of points of light if I covered my eyes. In fact these were so vague they might just have been wishful imaginings. The next day, I decided to just go for it and deal with the nausea. I've tried to write my best account of taking the seeds, and the subsequent trip below.

5:00 PM - After making sure I felt happy in general, and ready to try the seeds, I put 4 into a mug half full of water, guessing that 4 is probably about right for me, this being a first time, and microwave this for 45 seconds on high, to soften them enough to chew. After fishing the seeds out with a spoon and allowing them briefly to drip dry to cool them down, I chew each one thoroughly and swallow in quick succession. The taste is neither wonderful or particularly dreadful. I retreat to my familiar room, and put on a playlist consisting mainly of my 'upbeat' tracks, with some extra psychedelic tracks thrown in for good measure, don my headphones and wait.

All times that follow are rough estimations in retrospect and from occasional glances at the time.

6:00 PM - At this point the nausea has started to kick in. I feel like I need to vomit, and spend some time crouched over the toilet bowl. Ultimately, I don't vomit now, or at any point in the trip, though at times I feel like I really want to. A slightly worrying effect aside from the nausea is that my throat feels very slightly constricted or swollen, but since it's not stopping me swallowing or interfering with my breathing at all, I decide to leave it, at least for now. As it turns out, this abated completely before the end of the trip, so I'm not totally sure if it was due to the seeds or not, but in any case this might be cause for hesitation in taking them.

6:15 PM - I've given up on vomiting for the time being, and have returned to my room. I'm starting to think that I'm not going to get any sort of trip, just nausea, and that this is a waste of time. I consider eating an extra seed or two but decide that it's probably best just to wait and see. After a while however, I start to feel a noticeable mood lift, and a brief bout of laughter ensues. This is where I can definitely say that the noticeable effects beyond nausea were taking effect. Nausea intensity renews a few minutes later, so I return to the toilet bowl. I start to notice vague and somewhat fuzzy, but clearly genuine OEVs- clusters of concentric circles around the middle of my vision. They look more or less like the fuzzy noise behind the eyelids at this point, and OEVs don't really get much stronger than this throughout the trip until quite near the end. I check my pupils in a nearby mirror, and they're noticeably dilated.

7:00 PM - The mental and body parts of the trip have really kicked in by now. I feel very happy and content. The music is directing my CEV's, which are mostly sort of vaguely human forms grooving with the music, in a swirling liquid way. I decide that I should try to dance, and stand up for the first time since the trip really kicked in. My body feels strange, slightly lightened and a physical inebriation kind of like that of alcohol as well. When I start to dance, I find myself moving in strange ways, just putting almost every limb through every twist I can. My body feels really fluid, and when I close my eyes, I see visuals vaguely resembling myself and the strange twisting dance I'm performing. These visuals twist and swirl as if they're appearing on a viscous fluid surface which is being stirred. I feel incredible and strange. I sit down again, though I get up to dance again several times more, with similar results.

I feel quite restless, and can't stop moving at this point, so I was constantly grinning and grinning! Things felt different, and really good. LSA apparently increases tactile sensitivity, and this is what was happening to me. I kept just running my hands through my hair, and over my body, and just feeling various surfaces, like the stucco-ish walls, wood, my bed-sheet covers... At one point, I tried licking them too, to see how it felt. Every breath, when I focused on them, felt wonderful, and I felt so pleased and giddy just to be alive. When I was washing my hands after using the toilet, the water flowing through my hands felt strange and wonderful.

The nausea remained with me, it's intensity oscillating between discomfort and 'please puke', but gradually diminishing. I had a strange discussion with a friend over MSN, where I'd kind of seized on the idea of a potato (which had been mentioned earlier on, whilst I was still relatively sober and waiting for the effects. Don't ask ;)). I realised what a beautifully complex thing a potato is, and then it sort of seemed bigger in my mind, and I found myself thinking about how the entire world seemed sort of like a potato, in a way- a strange notion I normally wouldn't come up with, or at least not in the kind of detail I did in this case. Cramps begin to occur in my legs if I bend them for too long, and I spend a while massaging and stretching gently to counter them. Throughout, there's a strange sensation of seeing two worlds when my eyes are open- things look pretty much normal, but there's still all the strange stuff going on with it in my head which I can feel at the same time.

Time from now to the end of the plateau is pretty difficult to relate to any specific happenings, so I'm not going to try. The following happened from probably 7:30-8:00 PM until roughly 9:30-10:00 PM, but that's about all I can really say.

The pronounced mood lift has faded somewhat, though I'm still feeling very much happy and content for the rest of the trip- just not as intensely as the initial brief lift. The body and mental effects are much the same, but the CEVs have intensified and become more varied- Along with the swirling, I start to see morphing fractal patterns, and weird corridor like structures which look somewhat like H.R. Giger works. A few Picasso-esque forms also appear at times. When I stand up, I feel like I keep going upwards for a second or two after fully straightening up, and at one point I actually feel as if I'm taking off, before I move and destroy the illusion. The sound of someone moving bottles out in the hall sounds somehow strange.

After a while, my eyes start to ache, mainly because I've been looking at a computer screen for quite a while. I go to lie on my bed after turning on the bedside light and turning off the main one. The CEVs continue, with things like spirals of blurred red and green spots, things with too many outlines (they look kind of like those cheap 3D effect books where each picture has a black outline, a red one, and a blue one, except these have red and green instead). A couple of rainbow blobs have become noticeable. When I open my eyes things look normal, but when I close them, the room remains as an afterimage, which is quickly swirled out of shape. I feel peaceful and content, and amazed at what's happening to me, and the world in general. I also have the strange sensation that I'm actually more awake than normal, and in tune with things.

After a while, I realise I haven't checked for the 'tracers' effect yet, and wave my hands around in front of my face, discovering that I am indeed experiencing mild tracers. I find this quite an interesting effect, and spend some time just letting my arms and hands groove in front of my face. After a while I find that I'm getting brief OEVs every time I open my eyes. Things gain what I can only describe as extra outlines, there's a bright blue glow in the gap between door and frame, and I get a kind of mind's eye overlay of the geometric patterns on, or branching off the normal objects in the room.

Old memories come and go, including some dream fragments that I'd forgotten until then. I get an interesting thought effect when I start looking at some photos on the net- I see a picture of a country road, for example, and suddenly a whole bunch of associations are kicking in, and I'm seeing the road as itself, but also feeling it as a whole bunch of other roads, and countrysides that I've experienced in my life. It's hard for me to adequately describe this feeling- the appearance of the road never seemed different, just how I was interpreting it. Sometimes I lie down for what seems like several minutes, and come back to find it's only been about one. Some straight lines, like the edges of the room, seem bent. After a while, I feel my mind start to return to a more normal state, and the visuals declining in intensity. Maybe half an hour after beginning to feel the intensity decline, I feel fairly close to baseline again, though there are still noticeable CEVs and brief but subtle OEVs, which are mainly minor distortions.

10:15 PM (I've checked the time again at last) - I leave my room and go to join my flatmates in the flat's kitchen/living room/common room. I notice a few more odd things- the same strange associations I'd experienced earlier were still happening, and I was seeing my flatmates in a new light. One struck me as looking kind of like the guy off Star Trek with the pointy ears, another like some sort of tall gnome (neither of these associations is particularly accurate though). The images on the TV were subject to the same strange thought process, and the floor in the corner seemed to be bent at about 45 degrees off flat. After another half hour I was basically down, aside from subtle CEVs and the occasional brief association. I watched a film (which admittedly still gained some additional strange qualities from the remnants of the trip), and went to bed by about 2:00 AM. My pupils were still dilated at this point, and had returned to normal by the following morning. I had no trouble getting to sleep.

The next day I still felt very slightly trippy, and very much tranquil and positive. The nausea had gone, and I was able to eat normally again. The trippy effect remnants had worn off by afternoon, but the positive feelings persisted, and even now I feel unusually positive about things (I'm usually a pretty calm and happy person, but this seems to be even more so than usual though), and generally more in tune with the world. I wouldn't claim it's been a total life turn-around experience or anything, like some people experience, but it definitely seems to have had fairly minor but real and lasting positive effects.

Overall, the experience was really enjoyable and positive, but I'm not sure that I'll repeat it for a while, and probably not with these seeds, mainly because of the toxins found in them. Sure, I wasn't even sick, but that's probably just down to luck.

Exp Year: 2008	ExpID: 71014
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 19
Published: Jan 20, 2010	Views: 35,518
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H.B. Woodrose (26) : General (1), First Times (2), Alone (16)