No experience lingers in the back of my mind quite like that of salvia divinorum. Salvia, as I'm sure many of you know, is a completely legal hallucinogen, with little side effects, and is virtually a safe substance, physically speaking. Mentally speaking, the salvia experience is a complete loss of contact with reality. You will transcend into a completely different world that you will believe at the time, is very real and also strangely familiar. I would like to share my own personal experience with salvia mainly to highlight the unique journey this substance puts your mind through.
My experience: It started with a gathering at a friends house. One of my friends brought along some salvia 20x extract. I had always wanted to try salvia and this being my first true psychedelic, I wanted to know what it felt like to trip also. A bong was passed around with the extract in it. I made sure I took a large hit and held it in for as long as possible. Within a few seconds, I felt the sensation of being pulled back. I enjoyed this sensation at the time, thinking that was basically all, but it was far from it. One more super-sized hit did it for me. The pulling sensation became incredibly strong. I began to feel like my body had become wax and was melting into the chair I was sitting in. I started to have a conversation with my friend sitting across the room about how strongly I was feeling all of these sensations. This is where everything gets very strange. My friend began enlightening me on the fact that we were not in the real world, that this world hasn't been real this whole time, and that it's time for me to come back. As I listened in confusion, I literally witnessed the fabric of reality peel away before my eyes. It was as if everything that held the pieces of the wall onto the wall, and what held the floor on the floor, began melting away like hot wax. Beneath our reality, was the surreal, beautiful, and terrifying salvia world. The world was made up of bright colors, mainly consisting of yellow, green, and pink. My friend was now an entity of this world, completely unrecognizable. Everyone else was gone as well. It was just me and the strange entities. At this point, all memory that I had smoked salvia was gone. I was certain that I had died, however I kept thinking that I was not ready to die and that I would like more than anything to be able to go home at the end of the night. There was a strong sense of urgency in this world. The entity that was once my friend, was telling me that there was work to be done. I started to panic as I thought about trying to continue my life in this world that didn't make sense. All around me, strange, cartoonish characters would morph into whole walls, or simply stay in a dancing limbo of they're transformation. It's all really too much for words to describe. I stumbled upon a stack of blocks. On the faces of these blocks were the various body parts of my friends. It was like some surreal puzzle to put them back together. An overpowering feeling of insignificance came over me. I thought, "THIS is what my friends really are? These fellow human beings who I personally knew, were just an illogical arrangement of blocks?" It was about this point that I heard my name being called. It was a connection to reality for me and I took it. I was launched out of the salvia world faster than I had been launched into it. Everyone was gathered around me asking me what happened. I didn't even know the answer, I felt as though I had just fainted. I was very sweaty, couldn't put together coherent sentences, and felt very irritable. As the fact that we had just smoked salvia dawned on me, I began to recall the experience. At the time I was too shaken to recall the most important parts, but it eventually all returned to me and it is now a very spiritual and respected experience that I look back on.
After thoughts: One interesting thing about the salvia journey is that no matter how alien the world feels, it all seems to be familiar in some way. Though I was terrified, throughout the whole experience I felt as though I had been there before. Also, I was told that from everyone else's point of view, all my trip consisted of was standing up from the chair, walking toward the bathroom, and stubbing someone's toe in the process. All in all, it lasted less than a minute. This fact truly baffles me as I felt like I was in this alternate reality for years. Every now and then I still have memories of an unknown place I visited while on the trip. Another thing I've found about salvia is that while it is very hallucinogenic, it borders on delusional. No one could have told me at the time that my friend was really not telling me that reality was fake, etc. The salvia world became my reality. I've always speculated what the salvia world could be. Could it be an afterlife? Could it really be another realm of existence, or could it simply be the most inner depths of my subconscious? I believe that is something I can never know. Salvia has allowed me to value just being alive and face the truth that everything is not always what it seems. Though I won't deny that salvia frightens me, I have a very great respect for it. I did not prepare myself for it's incredible power and it made me pay at the time, but in the end it left me with an amazing experience that questioned all I know to be real and true.
Some Words of Advice It's not a party drug: Salvia is a very introverted experience. Following my trip I did not want to be around anyone for awhile. The odd nature of the hallucinations can also make you feel very uncomfortable around people. The best way to experience salvia is by yourself or with a sitter, which brings me to my next bit of advice. Have a sitter: You can brave the territory alone if you wish, but just keep in mind that a full-blown trip is going to completely disconnect your mind from your body. The actual "YOU" will be off in some other dimension, while your physical body will most likely be thrashing around everywhere or doing something you don't really want it to. If you choose to have someone sit for you during your trip, you don't have to worry about coming out of the experience with a huge headache or a broken leg, or other accidents that can happen when your mind is completely absent from your body. Just make sure your sitter is a responsible person who you can trust. Do not drive: This should be an obvious one and the only way I can see it even being a possibility is if someone's smoking it while they're driving since you probably couldn't find you're way to a car. If you choose to make the unwise decision of driving under the influence of something, Salvia is definitely not the substance you want to pick. I can safely say, you will crash, probably immediately. It's not another weed-like drug: Weed can be psychedelic of course, but it is not classified as a true psychedelic. Salvia divinorum is a true psychedelic, with intense effects that I can only compare to a strong substance like DMT. Not even the mind-boggling effects of mushrooms and LSD can compare to the intensity and surreality of salvia.
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