Salvinorin: The Psychedelic Essence of Salvia Divinorum
1996
The Entheogen Review contains a report of a Salvia-LSD trip which has some parallels to my own experience with this combination. This journey was induced by smoking a small amount of dried Salvia divinorum leaf, which typically would yield only minimal effects when not potentiated by LSD.
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"Upon reading that a large initial intake is critical to the level of the experience, I smoked Salvia divinorum in a bong. One inhalation led to minimal effects when used alone. Desirous of the full spectrum, I tried smoking it while in the midst of my usual 35~450 mcg. of LSD. I inhaled deeply and then again. Sometime after the second inhalation I completely lost awareness of anything. After several seconds (or minutes, I really don't know) awareness returned, though only remotely. There was pain in my lungs and I began deep breathing. I started to panic and thought I'd burned my lungs somehow. While still desperately puffing in and out, my perception imploded. Our vision resolves images from each eye into one image: in this case, my perception became impossibly skewed: my consciousness was imploding! Totally confused, I felt that I was being electrocuted and I began spinning and moving around to tree myself from the "current." My face felt like it was also imploding and at one point it seemed like I could see its other side; my eyes were now facing each other! I was convinced that death was imminent. My girlfriend assured me that I appeared normal, which comforted me greatly. At this point I had no memory of having smoked the Salvia -- it took ten minutes before I remembered. I satin total confusion, still convinced that death was certain. Slowly, the familiar LSD awareness returned, though for a long time my central vision bulged as in Escher's "Balcony" and I felt that my mind had malfunctioned terribly. In retrospect, the phenomenon was much like a profound and relentless dizziness. I've smoked just Salvia twice since this experience and found that I need inhale only a minimal quantity (two small puffs) to stimulate a mild, short-acting recurrence of the phenomenon."
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