DOSE:

1 hit

smoked

Salvia divinorum

(extract)

BODY WEIGHT:

140 lb

It was late august and I had just quit smoking weed because I was going into the army. It had been exactly one week since I had quit, so I was bored and had nothing to do. When I quit smoking weed I don’t get withdrawal symptoms, but I realize how much time of my day I spend just getting stoned. I wanted to get high, but if I did I would fail my drug test and that simply was not an option. It was Saturday and as the day progressed on I felt the need to trip for some reason. I have done LSD several times before so deciding to trip was not very difficult because I thought I knew what to expect. I decided to call my friend, M, to see if he was holding anything. After a few phone calls and some texting I found out that nobody he or I knew was holding anything, so I gave up hope there.

Early afternoon rolled around and I came to the sudden realization that I had Salvia! There was only one problem though; I did not know where I put it. My good friend’s girlfriend had given me salvia as a graduation present a week earlier. I decided that before I was going to do it, I needed a sitter. I originally asked my brother, R, and he said that he wanted to do it with me. I didn’t have a problem with the idea because we had done LSD together and had amazing and spiritual trips before without a problem. I had already read about Salvia so I thought I was prepared for what the trip might hold. I called up my friend’s girlfriend who gave me the Salvia to ask how powerful it was. She got it from her friend so she had no way of knowing how powerful it was. This intimidated me because for all I know it could have been the most powerful form of Salvia on the planet, but I figured if I handled LSD without a problem, I could handle Salvia without a problem. I was wrong.

We went to my room, which was commonly referred to as the universe because of all the weed and LSD we had done in there. There were blue and green Christmas lights hung at the top of the walls all around the room and lava lamps everywhere. The room was completely dark except the glow of the lights and the lava lamps which gave the room a tint of green, blue and red. This was a normal atmosphere because we smoked in the universe daily. My brother and I knew Salvia did not last very long so we only had to put on one song for the majority of the trip. We picked “St. Stephen” by the Grateful Dead.

I packed the Salvia in a bong that had a neck that is about a foot and a half long. I heard that Salvia had a rough taste so I decided a bong would be best. My heart began to race because I was both nervous and excited as to what would happen on a Salvia trip. I grabbed my torch lighter that burned hotter than common BIC lights, light it, and inhaled. My brother sat patiently beside me waiting for his hit. I took the biggest hit I could and held it for about one minute. I passed the bong to my brother while still holding the hit in. As I released the hit, my last conscious thought was, “there’s no going back now”. All the army training and drug experimenting in the world could have prepared me for what happened next. (This next section I wrote just after I was able to function in the real world.)

Glancing across the universe that appears to be normal, I feel a sudden sensation of things beginning to change. The feeling is very familiar; it’s something that has become common place in my days of experimenting. After less than five seconds the world starts to glow. All the objects in my view become very significant. Colors appear to be more transparent. Reflections from the light peering through the window begin to turn into solid lines, instead of mere refractions off of objects.

As if there was some sort of inner magnet pulling everything I knew to be physical into a singularity, the universe began to slow down and recede into itself. The center focal point of all that was happening felt to be right behind my vision. Nothing more than ten seconds could have passed before all this began to occur. A photograph of the entire universe, even what was outside of my line of sight, was snapped and everything remained as a picture. Everything I knew to be true and constant no longer existed. It was just a singular still photograph that was slowly receding into the infinite nothing. All my friends, memories, laws of space and time, everything that was and was going to be, stood still and began to fade away. Terror and panic began to ensue at this point. All that I and everyone else had worked for meant nothing because this universe was compromised. I was not dead, I did not even exist. I had graduated to a place beyond space and time into where I thought I would be post-mortem.

After what felt like one-hundred thousand years, a beam of hope shined through the desolate wasteland that was the existence that I had been thrown into. Another universe opened up that was identical to the one that I had left so long ago. There was a chance; there was hope that everything that once was may not yet be lost. My hand lunged out to grab the table that I had been facing to feel the tender embrace of something physical that had been lost to my inner mind for so long. Joy, ecstasy, love, gratitude all were feelings that my mind was overflown with.

It was far from the end. A dark feeling replaced the previous optimism that I had too soon taken on. Just as the first universe had been paused in a single moment and began to recede, so did this second one. My spirit was latching onto the second one, hoping that I could stop the feeling of everything I once knew from fading, but there was no point. It was a vicious cycle. The feelings of terror and fear once again came upon me. My mind was engulfed with fright just as it was before. The sheer fear is something that cannot be replicated by even the worst horror movies. It is impossible to describe how terrifying it is to watch everything you once knew to be true fade away in an instant with nothing you can do to stop it.

The cycle repeated itself again. Every time there was a new glisten of hope, it disappeared just as before. I wanted to scream. I wanted someone to reach through the photographs, through the desolate abyss that was the reality that I was plunged through and yank me out. There was nothing more that I wanted into my life than to be like a fish on a hook being dragged through the dark water that had consumed my existence. It was futile, I had no lungs. No vocal cords or mouth to formulate words that could reach someone. Stuck in the wasteland I gave up all hope. There was nothing left of the world that I once knew. I was trapped by the cycle that had consumed everything that once was and will be.

Far in the distance, I heard my first contact with reality in what seemed like millennia. The voice and words were indecipherable. Slowly my senses started to come back to me. I felt my heartbeat. The feeling of air permeated my lungs and was released throughout the entire rest of the room. I snapped my head to the right to see my brother. He was alive. He spoke in plain words and I understood. It was over. I had traveled to a place beyond heaven and hell, and made it back. I never wish to return there. It had been two and a half minutes.

My heart beat was racing and I felt cold sweat all over my body. The first real sentence I heard in millions of years was, “Dude you took Salvia” and it was uttered my brother. As I tried to piece together my broken reality I managed to slip out the words, “Whaaa, did you take it too?”. I repeated this phrase five or six times before I tore the shirt off my torso because the heat and sweat from my increased heart rate was a huge annoyance. He told me that it was hot in the room and he said we should cross the hallway into his room where there was an air conditioner. I was in no state argue and I trusted my brother so I followed him.

I sat on the floor and the first thing I noticed about his room was he had a poster of a tiger. When I first glanced at the poster, I thought that my mind was going to go into a state of extreme terror because it could have been perceived as a threat. I stared at the tiger for about a minute, gazing at the orange, black and white colors that made up its fur. For some reason that I could not explain, the tiger posed no threat to me and it allowed my mind to be at peace for a moment knowing that pictures of something frightening were not perceived as real problems. The colors of the tiger then became extremely bright and my vision went on a sort of sensory overload. My mind decided that it was best to block out these visuals by closing my eyes.

When I closed my eyes I realized that I was still under the effects of Salvia quite heavily. My brain felt like it was underground, deep in the earth and the pressure of the ground was caving in on it. I thought that if I kept my eyes closed any longer, the pressure that was placed on my brain would cause my head to rupture and my brain to explode. I shot my eyes open and took inventory of my surroundings. I still was trying to shake off the fear of my brain exploding and I was tired of being terrified for so long. The trip began to wind down and I saw things in the normal light.

After the trip began to end, I had never felt a feeling of such pure joy. I was so happy that my universe did not end and that all my friends were still alive! I felt as if I escaped some sort of torture chamber and I had my entire life ahead of me with no more pain and suffering. It made the other problems of life seem less significant because, after all, I was alive! I had this feeling for the rest of the evening and was grateful for everything I had.

Salvia changed my life. It brought me to hell and back. It showed me that there are so much worse things that can happen in this lifetime than what happen on a regular day basis. Every time something bad happens in my lifetime, I think of what happened on my Salvia trip. The day I did Salvia was the worst, more horrendous day of my life, but it was a life changing day. I would consider myself more of an optimist after the trip than before.

I personally would not recommend Salvia, nor do it again. If someone is going to do it, I would recommend they have a sitter, know how strong of a dose they are taking, and treat it like a spiritual experience.

Exp Year: 2011	ExpID: 93166
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 19
Published: Sep 21, 2021	Views: 676
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Salvia divinorum (44) : Difficult Experiences (5), Guides / Sitters (39), First Times (2), Small Group (2-9) (17)