DOSE:		oral	Mushrooms
	2 hits	smoked	Salvia divinorum	(extract)
	2 hits	smoked	Salvia divinorum	(extract)
		smoked	Cannabis

BODY WEIGHT:

121 lb

I wrote this the days following my initial Salvia trip, slightly in the midst of a nervous breakdown, so it was mainly written for the sake of my own sanity. After completing it, I let a friend read it and he suggested I post it online. I've read other reports of Salvia trips and, although they tend to be somewhat similar in concept, mine seems very obscure. I sometimes wonder if it's a differentiation from the norm within me, some defect or syndrome that disconnects myself from normality. Of course, these thoughts of alienation are common traits of human beings, so I will simply leave you with the report and insist that you interpret it as you will. It is fairly long (8 pages) and I tend to ramble.

SALVIA.

I.

The substance was highly potent Salvia Divinorum, 80x, in a dried form of dark green leaves; seemingly insignificant and dull. I purchased the drug along with a good friend of mine, whom with I can communicate my thoughts and inquiries happily and without anxiety. At first we tested the drug with a simple bowl out of a non-water pipe, and without a torch lighter; therefore greatly decreasing the effect and overall experience of which it is capable. This first trip, you understand, was a miniscule figment of the insensible, horrifying realization- the dreaded second trip that fragmented my understanding of the universe of physical and metaphysical, conscious and unconscious reality- actuality- through the mind and the senses.

The first trip took place at my friend's house, within his right-angled cube of a room; sitting on the ground facing an open window, two of my friends to the right of me, my partner in buying the Salvia to my left, leaning on a mirror. Beforehand I had ingested a good, healthy amount of Psilocybin mushrooms with my good friend, the same with whom I bought the Salvia. We had originally planned to smoke the Salvia in the peak of our shroom trip, an interesting combination indeed: the emotional strife of mushrooms combined with the immerse unreality of Salvia would prove to be... interesting.

At this point, my peak had come and gone- instilled images of the past embedded into my subconscious. The trip was still running strong though; psychedelic visuals and the disturbing mind-fuck were all present, just significantly lower than earlier. No worry, I thought, the Salvia will do us in nicely. The pipe was loaded and passed around, a social occurrence with an utterly personal and introspective substance- what a joke! Yet, I contributed anyway, where else was I going to smoke Salvia? I recall being very confused upon my first hit, the bizarre Salvia-high blending with the Psilocybin to create some sort of disfigured mutant experience. At this point, I wasn't yet feeling the full trip of the Salvia, but that all changed with my second hit. As I exhaled, my central vision fragmented and divided into a baffling cesspool of minuscule corners and angles, repeating into infinity, all within the frame of the window I was staring at.

“Stairs- a bunch of stairs, just pure stairway, that's all I see.” I recall mumbling somewhat frantically, deep in the grip of confusion and shock. I kept gasping at the ultimate sharpness of everything, like I was seeing things in significantly greater detail than I had ever before. Soon thereafter, the unending abyss of angled chaos dissipated from the window, and I was left with an unbearable sensation of heat and panic. Mushrooms usually fluctuate my temperatures, so I assume that the Salvia maximized this effect. The attention of my three fellow inhabitants suddenly fell solely upon me, their bug-like eyes staring at me in deadly transfiguration, watching me intently. I felt as if they were one; vessels controlled by the same operator, used to watch, observe, and guide my life. Paranoia.

Some amount of time passed before they waved me off from their concern, moving on to the ramblings of another, going on and on about his trip that had just ended. I tried to listen, but strange things were happening all around us. The area of the window attracted all of my focus, and upon staring blankly into for a few moments, I felt my entire perception collapse around me. Now, only the window remained of my earthly realm, everything else exploding into random content. It's very difficult to explain the image that I saw at this point, and illustrating it would prove to be more effective, but that is a task for another time. The only significant aspect of it that I can recall is an ample series of gears and machinery in the chaotic background to my reality.

The Salvia trip ended as abruptly as it began, and with its absence returned the Psilocybin in full force. I spent the remainder of that day tripping happily, letting my precipitous Salvia glimpse fall back into the subconscious fissures of my thought.

II.

My second trip crushed any set questions and perceptions that my first had spawned. Was it a realization conceived by my own illusionist mind or a sliver of the ultimate outside, the metaphysical realm of outer being and existence? Is it my own self that conceived these hallucinations, or was it a glimpse of something beyond myself, yet within my own mind? Endless questions rattle my thoughts, yet I cannot answer any with true confidence. Nevertheless, I will explain to the best of my memory what exactly occurred within that bizarre, introspective, existential nightmare- that reality dissolving clusterfuck of chaos and infinity.

This was the next day, for we had planned to wait for good conditions and tools to preform the smoking with the best results. It took place within my friend's bedroom, a very comfortable and spacious room which I was greatly familiar with and at ease within. Our utensils consisted of a good sized water-bong, probably about 11'' in height, and a high-powered butane lighter, having heard of the added efficiency of the herb if burned at a certain heat not accessible with the average lighter. My fellow tripper smoked his amount first, and seemed to trip fairly, but not at all what was expected; he claimed it to give him a strange high, yet not true out-of-body hallucinations. I then loaded my amount into the bowl-piece, packing a bit more of the substance than my co-tripper, seeing the results of his hit. While I did this, I could already hear him pinching more Salvia, that mutant...

Igniting the butane lighter, I plunged into the dance of the divinorum. The bowl was gone within moments, and the smoke floated like milky mist within the multiple chambers of the glass contraption, waiting ominously to be inhaled into my unknowing lungs. The smoke was not too harsh, and I managed to hold my hit in for a fair while. As I blew the fiendish smoke out I immediately felt the effects. That familiar feeling of anticipation, the waiting. I then lied back onto the mattress, watching in vivid foreboding as my world slowly became more precise, with much greater detail and strangeness that brought terrible fear, along with greater interest and curiosity.

I, too, felt the Salvia without a doubt, yet I was not experiencing the true effects of it. This I can blame on the minuscule size of the bowl available, for it was slightly broken, yet still in working order. Therefore, after wandering about for a few minutes, still in my own body and in control of my motor functions, I loaded another hit and dived in. This time, immediately after hitting it, I knew my trip was nigh. All the recorded symptoms of the pre-trip were present: the back-tingling, the slow eye movement, the loss of normal thought and perception- along with a fair amount of common psychedelic visuals, such as pattern-movement and morphing.

I faintly recall my two friends looking at me, questioning whether I was tripping or not. Although I could understand what they were saying in my mind, I could no longer express my thoughts vocally. I tried to concentrate on replying, but I could not. Strange things were happening all around me. In a futile attempt at communication, I fumbled with my lips to say the word 'what', in a questioning manner. What came out, however, was an elongated manifestation of the word, much deeper in tone than I thought my voice capable. I am not sure if this was simply the beginnings of auditory hallucination, or the way I actually sounded; but that doesn't matter too much. Seconds later, I fell into an indescribable abyss of chaotic nothingness. I was suddenly without identity, some entity of essence, yet not consciousness; with direction, yet without memory. Thought, yet without conception. Movement was natural, it seemed, for without knowing I found myself slithering about in this amazing void of random vapors and essences of inhuman color and form. I pushed aside these alien fragments of matter, searching madly for something, yet I could not quite understand what it was. I was in a state of utter confusion and distress, I kept asking myself what I was- what being is- who am I- how am I?

To describe myself in this state is almost impossible. I knew I was myself, yet I did not know my name, or form, or anything. I recognized my consciousness as what it is, but I couldn't grasp the actuality of my existence. As I searched through this strange dimension of what seemed to be only sensation and color, within a plane restricted to what is most recognizable to me as length and height, I came to hear familiar voices. The voices inflicted unknown memories of some kind, yet I still could not determine who it was calling out to me, and innumerable possibilities fanned out within my thoughts. These voices, I later discovered, were the voices of my two friends; watching my empty body, unknowing that my mind was elsewhere- trapped within a maze of emptiness and alien abstractness.

Finally, this entity that I was discovered a distant hole, shining like a beacon of light in the middle of an unending sea of dark. I seemed to follow the voices, which were going along something like so, “Haha, look at Jeff.... What's he doing?... He can't get out!” I still am unknowing of the reasoning behind these words, but during my trip, they fucked my world over. I imagined that these voices were from the place in which I sought, laughing at my predicament, making humor out of my existential nightmare! Finally I closed in around the circle of light which I now know to of been my eyesight. I fought to return to my body, I could feel my wandering consciousness slowly return to my earthly corpse in some sort of insane struggle, emitting feelings within me of innate obscurity. I find it impossible to describe how it felt reentering one's own body after a trip such as mine, but I perceived as if there were a great emptiness that I slowly gripped, tightening my grasp as hard as I could; pulling, it seemed, away from that abhorred outside from which I came, as if some link existed between the two universes and I was trying my greatest to sever it's control over me.

Finally, after much struggle, I managed to return to my biological body, sight and all. Yet things were not as they should be. I saw my friends, starring at me, without words or expression it seemed. It was around this point that I apparently mumbled something along the lines of; “I created the world.” I have no recollection of saying this, you understand, but looking back I can relate to these words, as this idea surely was an innate possibility at that point. I recollect having amazing and indescribable realizations and overwhelming sensations of cosmic insignificance, definite nihilism- combined with equal ideologies concerning metaphysical solipsism. My friends, sure now that I was indeed tripping, left me to my mind and continued to load another bowl of Salvia, or something along those lines. As they left me, the trip began to return. A strange sensation engulfed me, and suddenly, lying on the bedspread, I could feel the alien numbness encompassing my entire backside, most prominently on the back of my skull. This feeling, although never enjoyable nor euphoric, was familiar to me as the rising sensation of a Salvia trip.

Moments later, I recalled looking up and gasping breathlessly at this unending stream of what seemed to be my reality, but mass produced atop an infinite conveyor belt, in a metaphorical sense. Looking down the stream, I could see my reality in eternal repetition, changing vaguely as the stream continued. It was then that I concluded this bizarre, unworldly dimension a glimpse of the Time Stream, that prophesied plane of endless time that us third-dimensional creatures can only view in minuscule fragments known as the present. I saw now a considerably larger fragment of the stream, the massive entirety of it being beyond my visual and mental comprehension, even when under the influence of this extraordinary drug. This stream replaced my friend's ceiling- it might of engulfed the whole of my reality at some point, but I was in far too much shock to recall that moment with confidence. I am quoted later saying something along the lines of “what the fuck!?” for a good while. This I remember, for I was actually comprehending the terrible realization of what was going on around me, and found myself in unexplainable confusion and horror.

As I peered deeply into this unending stream, I could see what my eyes would see in the next second, the next minute, the next hour, so on and so forth. These frames of time were presented through my own perception, and as I saw this I questioned the physics of the reality I've come to know; was my reality not but a blinded goat upon an eternal walkway, ignorantly striving forward without conception or consequence? This concept, you see, frightened me greatly. At this point, I looked back down at the walled chamber of my trip and began seeing the continuous passing of moments as I soared through the Time Stream, it's unending canals flying above me in maddening chaos. This I can relate to being in a stop-motion animation, everything being very choppy and unreal. I'm not sure how long I existed in this state, but I remember clearly my friends talking, and for the first time comprehending their words. They were saying something about the Salvia being shitty and not working. This is what fucked me over.

I don't know what mental processes came over me, but I suddenly could not get the notion out of my head that these people standing in front of me were not my friends, but just manifestations created by my own higher consciousness, that devious fucker. I felt as if this higher self was plotting against me, toying with my psychological well-being, tricking and manipulating my reality for it's own puzzling pleasure. I've come to dub this mischievous part of my being 'RAMSES', and although it is technically just a larger fraction of myself, I've titled it for the sake of the reader and my own sanity. You see, I dwelt upon the idea that Ramses was inserting voices into the bodies of my friends to provoke odd questioning thought within me. It wanted me to doubt the effectiveness of the drug as so I would assume this mystifying order of events actuality and not hallucination. The fucker was fucking with my sanity.

I existed in this surrealistic crossroads of realities for an undetermined amount of time. At the moment, I could not even comprehend the concept of time according to the socially-accepted sense of the idea, so it is impossible for me to reduce the experience into a series of seconds, minutes, or hours. The trip was defiantly running strong. Continually the foundations of my normal reality were eroding and dissipating into the unending chaos of the eternal Stream, myself pondering the event with great intensity, unable to relinquish my repeating sensations of a great transcendence -some unreal rebirth into a greater level of consciousness and perception- as well as the inability to restore the notion that what I was experiencing was mere hallucination. What is hallucination, though, but a vision of some ever-expanding inner universe of inhuman existence and being? Nevertheless, my trip eventually progressed to a point of dreaded climax; the point where my deemed reality finally dissolves and I am shown the fabled beyond of the mind and time. I recognized this happening immediately, having an entirely unique indication of existential transformation. At this point I had accepted what was happening, abandoning all human affairs and philosophies; all relationships and ideals, goals and aspirations, beliefs and inquiries- vanished, replaced unsympathetically with the current moment. I felt as if in any moment I would forever leave my known consciousness and jump blindly into the tunnels of my introverted universe.

These thoughts swirled about my mind for a moment, and then, as I looked up once more towards the abhorrent Time Stream, some crazed sensation struck me; I remembered that I had smoked Salvia, and that all of what I saw was possibly a hallucination, a false vision of pure imagination and subconscious gibberish; thus holding merit for doubt, which subjected me to question my sureness and confidence of my recently formed conclusions. Suddenly, as if it was the presence of doubt that 'saved' me, the Time Stream began to dissipate rapidly, and as my eyes frantically followed the last of the unreal stream I noticed one bit of it through the corners of my peripherals- yet as I focused on the surviving essence of the stream, it instantly transformed into a rectangular speaker and an orb-like object hanging off the wall. The stream was gone, replaced by real-life objects, but how!? Just then, I realized the horrid truth. It was Ramses, that bastard, that demonic jester of my own mind- it had created the speaker and orb to place a sense of illusion and trickery in me! These, you must understand, were my thoughts at the moment. Now, as I reflect on the situation, I still cannot make sense of it. I do remember the speaker from before my trip, yes, but the orb was unfamiliar, strange, out-of-place in this claustrophobic room. Was it there before? I don't know, I can't trust anything anymore. Ramses is in control.

Upon seeing this act of trickery, I apparently had some sort of panic attack. This is where things begin to fall out of chronological order and into bad craziness. Was that the end? Had my trip finally ended and come to a sudden halt? I quickly searched my surroundings for any signs of surviving outer vision- the Time Stream, Ramses, anything. At some point, I brought my observations to the lone window, a single glimpse into the outside world that I had utterly forgotten. It was here that I realized not was all as it seemed. Where the starry vista of the observable universe known as the sky was supposed to be; the vast, horrifyingly familiar actuality of the perpetual Time Stream now existed. To this date, I retain a single image of the entire proximity of the sky being nothing but the Stream, houses and streets visible in our earthly foreground. Now I began to question the reality of what was happening; was I still within a hallucination, still wandering in some sort of alien essence across that endless void, or had my reality truly fragmented? Things seemed to be in a state of static existence now, the Time Stream terribly visible across the dark, night sky- as well as being visible in the corridors of some neighboring house, it's familiar basketball hoop and black BMW parked in front; separate, somehow, from the abnormal tangles of duration flickering behind it.

It's difficult to explain how I perceived this at the time, and still today, as it remains clear in my memory. It was as if solid objects- earthly third-dimensional matter, seen through reflected light emitting from the sun- were nothing more than some cruel illusion, a shadowy foreground blocking view of the ever-expanding vista of time. When I moved about in this flimsy, cardboard universe I could see the awesome unknown through the sections of solid reality in which my mind could not identify and perceive. The Stream was visible in the excesses of anything unknown to my senses, any detail of matter that my mind could not comprehend and have knowledge of certainty; these areas would be replaced by the mystical background of chaos. Illusion is the basis of our normal existence- we are nothing but reflections of light. This would explain my full view of the Stream moments before, when I had looked up at the bright, blinding light atop the room's ceiling. The light acted as a portal for the estranging voids of inter-dimensional matter to enter my blissful sight. You must understand that, at the time, my mind was racing insanely around the unbelievable possibilities capable through my own perception. Even if this entire trip was nothing more than false dream sequences produced by my drug-activated brain, the immense creation of my imagination shocked me beyond words.

I recall attempting to discover if my fellow sentients could see what I was seeing, to confirm the trip as either an entirely introspective experience or possibly some coincidental event ironically corresponding with my Salvia experiment. A foolish notion, of course, but you must understand that at the time I was searching crazily for absolute answers and evidence of truth regarding this puzzling and disturbing enigma. I pointed out the window towards the fraction of the Stream visible through the bright light of a parallel house, acting a desperate madman on the verge of mental collapse, and failed in vain. My companions were clueless and dumb-stricken by my insane gestures, and all the while I could not help but feel the God-like interference of Ramses in play, his demonic bending of reality and manipulative nature being the source of my friends' ignorance in my mental plight. Was it that devilish higher being of myself that toyed with my perceptions and altered what I saw and heard? I darted away from the horrific window into the unknown in a crazed reaction to my fellow's inability to see the Stream so openly manifested through my senses.

I pondered aloud, albeit purposelessly, of the unmistakable realistic nature and colossal caliber of my mind, whether it be complex hallucinations or inter-dimensional portals- it didn't matter; somehow, someway, my cerebral cortex had produced the abstract perception of this alien world. I remember saying something along these lines to my confused and seemingly distant friends, from whom came intense vibrations of fallacy and unfamiliarity; as if some essence had possessed them, controlled them in a way, to say and do their strange actions/words. It was around now that I began to come down, seeing the psychedelic morphing and pattern-movement often seen in the effects of more common hallucinogens, such as LSD or Mescaline. I looked out the window once more and found the scene to be the same as in the midst of my trip, the colossal Stream visible in the vast sky and shadowed, unknown corners about our earth, in every blinding light and blackened shadow. It seemed static, no more was it dissolving and consuming as it was earlier, it simply existed- perhaps it was waiting. Across the street was the car of another one of my friends, who I then remembered was waiting impatiently for me to finish my trip and get in, as so she could give me a ride home, this being a school night.

The trip, however, had not ended. I was now getting the distinct weird high felt after a Salvia trip. No collection of words or imagery could ever fully describe this high, it was just something clearly out-of-this-world, totally strange and rare among human consciousnesses. The best way to put it in any adjective or verb would be confusing, utterly bewildering and greatly distressing; the incapability to keep track of any thought or action, a total loss of earthly correspondence. This, combined with the continued shock of your recent trip, leaves the individual in a baffled atmosphere of reality. Paranoia was defiantly present; I could not see or hear or think anything without suspecting deception at the hands of Ramses.

I walked around for a minute, deep in thought, until one of my friends- the inhabitant of this maddening room- mentioned that I was being waited upon by my ride home and that I should hurry and get down there. I obeyed without outer complaint, but inside I was frantic with rebellion. It was Ramses, I thought, he was guiding me to his desire, using my social associates to form my path. I was not in control of my destination, I was the victim of others, a consumer without means of his own free will. Silently I put on my shoes and searched for my jacket. So this was the end, leaving as if nothing had happened- simply another drug-experience, endowed completely out of mere pleasures and boredom? My two comrades had their backs facing me, their attention centered completely upon the bong, Salvia, and bowl piece. My co-tripper, with assumption, was loading another bowl. I said my farewells, yet my words fell upon deaf ears. It felt as if they were ignoring me, purposefully avoiding my glare and communication. I shrugged, and patted them on the back as I exited.

Still in disbelief and confusion, I stumbled about meaninglessly for a moment at the door, analyzing paranoid observations and wild thought processes, mainly concerning the possible arbitration of Ramses which seemed to be so obvious and present. “Man, it's a bummer to have to do Salvia in such a hurry like this...” I randomly muttered, receiving an unconcerned response from my friend along the lines of 'yeah' or 'whatever'. Then, just as I had entered, I exited quietly. I left the room in somewhat of a haze, still deep within that mutated strangeness of a Salvia after-high, not entirely in correspondence with my physical body. My mind was racked with questions; yet never answers. Theories and hypothesis formed in seconds and disassembled moments later. It was a state of confusion and mental chaos.

The dark hallway in which I now stood contrasted greatly with the brightly-lit, cubic cell that I had tripped in. This sudden change in setting came as great surprise to me, despite it being totally insignificant and expected. Thoughts raced through my conceptions like angry hornets; wild, unpredicted, and dangerous. However, somehow I was able to retain a single task- walk down the stairs, get to the car waiting for you. Not too hard, right? A mindless and simple task for my usual self, but I was nowhere near that at this moment. I was something else, a creature of misunderstood notion and abhorrent vibration; similar, in theory, to a man tossed through some dimensional rift, raped on all fronts by things beyond human imagination- bisected, trisected, dissected, and twisted into some grotesque matter- and then abruptly stitched back together into his original form and put back on Earth without the slightest indication that anything had ever happened, yet all of it still fresh and clear in the man's brain.

Was I supposed to act normal? How could I under these circumstances, after what I had just gone through? I walked carefully down the once-familiar stairway- it, along with all other physical matter, now being utterly new and bizarre to my senses- and reached the bottom without incident. As I stepped off the final stair, I saw to the right of me the estranged faces of my friend's unknowing and blissful parents. They were staring at me intently, violently almost, as if I were someone different and uncommon to their lives. I had known these people since childhood. We had smoked the Salvia without their permission or knowledge, had they any clue as to what alien portals were being stretched and opened in the floor above? Could they possible comprehend my state of thought or mental plight? What would they think, I wonder, if I were to fall upon them insanely with crazed ramblings of my bizarre hallucinations? Forget it, no use, they were just more victims of the drug generation, used up vessels existing in a rut; they would never understand a mind like my own.

So, I simply waved and voiced a polite goodbye; walking, with my back facing them, towards the door. As I walked, I felt the eyes of Ramses transfixed atop my spine. Was he in control of these uninvolved adults as well? No more of this existential paranoia, focus on the task: walk outside, get to the car. Massive sensations of fear and loathing boiled inside of me as I approached the door to the outside. I paused momentarily before opening the door. What would I find out there, I wonder; will it be the same as when I arrived? If I walked out this door, looked up and found the eternal Stream manifested in the sky, what would I do? Call for help? If the Stream was real, then Ramses must be too, meaning no human contact could save me from this perilous fate. Even if I did confront somebody, who would believe me? My ramblings would be textbook schizophrenia syndrome, another victim of mental collapse. I was on my own.

I opened the door and stepped outside, closing it behind my unseen back. I walked slowly towards the white SUV parked across the street, my accomplices waiting inside. Immediately, I looked above, to the sky. To my relief, or anguish(?), I found it to be normal, the same as I had seen it yesterday, the day before, so on and so forth! Strange feelings of happiness and loss fell upon me. In a way, I hoped for my reality to be destroyed- I wanted to transcend, to skip our pathetic human existence and become a creature of essence and super-consciousness. I scanned the entire street, looking now with a different perception at the things I had viewed from the dreaded window behind me. They all looked normal now- earthly, humanistic. Across the street, behind the basketball hoop and black BMW, was the brightly illuminated house and it's shining windows in which I saw the Stream vividly materialize. Now it was nothing more than yellow light, yet it seemed so profane and significant, as if it still retained hints of it's other-worldly nature. Maybe it did.

I walked with haste towards the car, sweating profusely, deep in a state of obscurity. As I stepped into the SUV, I felt the attention of three other human beings grip me. Their eyes glared at me with the utmost intensity, just as my friend's parents', and they quickly questioned the results of my trip. “How was it?” they asked, “Did you trip hard?” Internally, I felt the inclination to pour onto them the entirety of my trip, every detail and fraction of it's happening. Yet, as I sat there, still tripping even then, I concluded it to be easier to lie- deceive them into thinking that the past 15-20 minutes had been uneventful and insignificant. Why? I don't know. Some gut instinct told me to lie to them. Perhaps it was due to not fully understanding it myself. I felt as if everything that I was going through now was nothing but a flimsy illusion, false in it's content and physics. I was not sure of the realism behind my companion's minds, and felt overwhelming vibrations of deception and fallacy within them- clever creations of Ramses. And so, I told them that the Salvia was cheap, and didn't work to it's full extent. I didn't want their attention, not now.

The drive back was bizarre. Not only was I still deeply encompassed by the after-high, I was still tripping visually. As we drove past houses and trees, they seemed to repeat themselves, most notably when I blinked. I would see a tree pass by and upon blinking, I would see the same tree pass by again. The same went for houses, fences, signs, just about anything. I found myself blinking rapidly, testing the authenticity of this strange phenomena. My visual lobe was malfunctioning, removing from my mind any sense of rhythm or flow. This, of course, applied to music as well. The music being played- apparently some sort of electrohouse or something- sounded, to me, like random electronic chaos, complete gibberish noise. This couldn't be real, I thought, there were too many glitches. I kept getting the idea that the Salvia had somehow permanently fucked my perception, trapping me forever in this strange crossroads of dimensions and perception. The complete transformation had failed, yet I could still see it's progress, what it left behind.

To put this into understandable logic, I'll use the Doors of Perception analogy, originally created by William Blake and elaborated by the psychonaut Aldous Huxley. If the reader is not familiar, the Doors of Perception analogy is described as the Doors themselves being our normal, human perception: slight, smell, taste, touch, hearing, and thought. Beyond the Doors is the indescribable, infinite abyss of the universe and everything. Our minds are capable of opening these doors, but to do so we must either train our mind into transcendence or- as Aldous Huxley, myself, and many others have done- open the doors using chemical keys. The Salvia, I concluded, opened my Doors ever so slightly, just enough to where I could peek inside and get a glimpse of the eternal actuality of existence- and then, just as they opened, they were closed by some force, some internal entity that refused my mind access to the unreal vistas of eternity. This force was the being that I dubbed Ramses.

My friends questioned me of where I wanted to go; insisting, for some reason, that they drop me off at home. That was the last place I wanted to be, especially in this state. I needed more time to think, to ponder this astonishing trip and to let the Salvia wear off; I wanted to be out of this odd high before I confronted my parents and family. Then I remembered I had left my bike at my friend's house, coincidentally the exact place they were headed. I felt my pocket and felt the beautiful nug of pot that I still retained. Replace the high, I thought, with that familiar and always-enjoyable high of marijuana; get this demon Salvia out of your system. And so, we arrived at the destined house and I smoked the rest of my weed, matching many other bowls. I felt distant the entire time, not focusing on any conversation and completely transfixed on my own thoughts, exploring the recesses of my introspective mind.

Once I was successfully stoned and out of pot, I decided it was about time for me to head home, although really I just longed to be alone with my thoughts. I smiled and said my goodbyes, but even then I felt as if I were only talking to mannequins. The night air greeted me with a soft embrace as I soared through the streets on my bike, my concerns being beyond any human or earthly affair, focused solely on my brief metaphysical venture. After a moment, I decided to call my fellow tripper and converse with him about the experience. I discovered that he, too, had tripped very hard after I left, and as I tried to explain my trip to him I felt a fumbling of words and coherent sentences. It was too early to put the thing into words, more time was needed to put it all together. So, I promised him I would explain it better in person, which I did a couple days afterward. I then biked home happily, my general interest and curiosity behind the universe overriding any other thought or worry. As I came home, I ignored all homework and other pleasures- no video game or website could distract me now. I pondered for some time on my bed until I finally fell asleep.

I remember that night having the strangest of dreams, yet they are now lost in the tunnels of my memory, forever a fragment of my subconscious. Even now, I wonder what it was that I experienced. What had this Salvia given me a glimpse of? What I saw, felt, and heard that day will never leave my memory- it's detail and realism, it was far too intricate to be waved off as some hallucination. It was real, one way or another, that much is true. My interest has been peaked. I must return to that disturbing outside existence, I must travel through dimensions and see what no human can naturally see. I will search the world for more drugs and methods to activate the capabilities of my mind, and I will record each experience as I did this one- a frail attempt to save these memories from the inevitable black hole of mental erosion and death.

In the end, the Salvia neither did good nor bad for me. It's effects hit me deep, and loosened my dynamic grip on sanity and reality; and with it I now have the insane quest to explore further and dwell deeper- to reach those maddening planes of majestic terror and nothingness and finally discover what man has foolishly sought to avoid. Maybe not now, I'll let my mind rest and prepare itself for more such exploration, let it settle and re-adapt to this analytical world in which I walk.

Exp Year: 2010	ExpID: 89305
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 16
Published: Mar 15, 2011	Views: 25,226
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Salvia divinorum (44) : General (1), Retrospective / Summary (11), Mystical Experiences (9), Small Group (2-9) (17)