An excerpt from my Salvia journal..

1



Introduction



My name is (edited...you can call me Witchdoctor.) I am beginning this journal as a documentation of my experiences and discoveries relating to the plant Salvia Divinorum, commonly known as Diviners Sage. I am 32 years old and live in (edited out)



I think that I first heard of this plant while reading about other entheogens on Internet sites like Erowid and the Lycaeum around 1998. I have been interested in entheogens much of my adult life and have had experiences with many of the more well known. Many of these experiences I have tried to relate to other subjects that interest me greatly such as Cosmology, studies of Consciousness and Reality, Anthropology, Chemistry, Biology, Botany and Ethno-botany, and Shamanism.



None of these subjects have I mastered, but in all of them I have come to have some understanding and have began to formulate many of my own theories and ideas, many times drawing on and relating to ideas from among all of these fields. It is in fact my love of Cosmology that has most drawn me to this study of Salvia Divinorum, as my ultimate goal is to formulate a “Theory of Everything”. I am hoping that I may find some clues to what has been overlooked in Cosmology by studying this mystical plant, or by becoming the plant’s understudy!



However, in this study I hope to not only make discoveries and notations regarding this interest of my own, but also to make descriptions and notations about anything possible in my experiences with Salvia, ranging from physical changes I experience to my own descriptions of any visions or feelings I have internally. Hopefully I will be able to bring a little more information to the table about this little known but highly interesting plant.



After having read about Salvia back in 1998 and making a mental bookmark to study it a bit more when I could, perhaps 3 years went by before my next encounter with Salvia. I often spoke with the owner of a local head shop in (edited)about many topics, mostly Buddhism and meditation, a bit about her business and the many herbs that she sold there, and some other herbs of common interest. I asked her if she had ever heard of Salvia Divinorum. She had no idea what it was but after some description of it she was interested enough that she ordered some raw leaf to sell in her shop.



Some time later when at that shop with a friend we purchased about 3 grams of this leaf product she had bought but the quality seemed fairly poor, almost all of the foliage being badly broken apart or almost powdered. At this point in time I had no experience and little knowledge about the plant and our attempts at going anywhere with it failed miserably.

2​

I had been sick all week, ironically with a severe case of constipation and bowel distension, sicknesses both treated by Curanderos with Salvia Divinorum! This was the first day I had felt well enough to get out of the house. I found myself by chance back in that same shop at that time needing other products sold there. Seeing the jar of leaves still there on her shelf I decided I should probably help her move a little bit of it, having been the one recommending she look into it many years prior. But when packaging this old leaf, the clerk there mentioned that he also had salvia extracts, which were said to be more potent. Perhaps she did find some people with interest in the Salvia. I decided that perhaps this extract would be the ticket to actually experiencing what I had been reading about.



This is where the experiment began.

3​

​

​

Chapter 1: Flapping My Arms In The Wind

​

Experiment 1.​

Dosage: 1.5g dried S. Divinorum leaf sublingually followed by 1/10th and 1/8th grams of smoked S. Divinorum extract “20X” strength but unverifiable. 1/8th gram Cannabis, smoked ​

​

​

I came home this day with the intent of seeing what this plant was all about once and for all. Upon arrival I immediately started chewing what seemed like a large amount, perhaps a gram and a half of the dried leaf, which as previously stated seemed to be of poor quality. I knew nothing about rehydrating them so the rather unpleasant dried leaves were quite a lot of work. I also was unsure of what I should do with the juices. I knew to keep the leaf in the mouth and that much of the action was through the mucous membranes but spit or swallowed much of the juice. Never the less, there I was all dripping with spit trying to see where I would go. I spent much of the time while I was chewing reading about Salvia, immediately finding much good information, including Daniel Siebert’s excellent Information Center.



After perhaps 20 or 30 minutes, I liberated the Salvia from my mouth deciding I couldn’t bear much more without much effect. The actual effects of this attempt were so negligible I am not sure that it had done much at all. Upon trying to note any difference all I could come up with was that it seemed like I often had to stop and re-read what I had just read in order to comprehend and that perhaps there was the TINIEST of visual distortion, but this may have just been wishful thinking.



After having read a bit and trying to get a little up to date on recent findings and experiments with Salvia and the emergence of extracts and Salvinorum-A while chewing on my ghetto quid, I decided to start experimenting with the extract. The salvia in question came in a small purple 1g-sized tub labeled “Purple Sticky Salvia” and was purported to be a 20x extraction, but I honestly doubt this claim having now seen what a decent 6x can do and realizing how “marketized” this product was and the fact that the extracts at this shop were labeled from the 20x all the way to 60x in 10x increments.



I packed a small amount, perhaps 1/10th of a gram, in my bowl with a small cannabis base and smoked it all. I sat back in my chair waiting to be taken away to somewhere, but in fact not going anywhere. Perhaps today would not be the day I learn all of this plants secrets.

4​

Having again failed I began to wonder what I was doing wrong or if this plant wasn’t all it was really hyped up to be. I gathered up my smoking materials and moved into my living room. I sat down and readied another bit of Salvia, this time perhaps 1/8th of a gram and smoked it, holding the smoke a fairly long time. I finally blew out the spent smoke and sat back, quietly waiting once again with my eyes wide open. This time I seemed to feel “something” but it was so vague I thought perhaps I was really just imagining any effect that I seemed to encounter.



My first impression was that there was some sound like chanting coming from behind me, sounding much like what I imagined could be a group of Indians chanting some ancient song. This seemed to go on in my mind some 15 seconds or so, all the while with me trying to think whether this was some effect of the salvia or just my imagination, much like how you often get the line of a song stuck in your head. My attention seemed to turn from this oddity to a small portion of my red corduroy sofa pillow, which was partly lit by sunlight coming into the room so that some parts were lit and others shadowed. I seemed to think I could see a sort of face in the way the shadows fell upon the material. …. “Wait I see a letter…X…. hmm… G.” This shadow seemed to take on many changing shapes which was somewhat amusing to me though I still wasn’t aware until sometime later that perhaps this was in fact an effect from the Salvia. But that was about it for this experience. I sat there a few minutes more before getting up and going about my normal business. This first experiment had peaked my interest and I felt there must be more here to see. I felt like I suddenly realized I might be able to fly but at that point I was just flapping my arms in the wind.



Some time later that day when my wife came home I started telling her about my impromptu experiment which was met with a strong degree of understandable questioning and reservation. She is very practical and doesn’t easily accept something out of the norm, which to her at the time, I’m sure this seemed to be. We have been married for almost 14 years and being veterans of the 90’s rave scene have seen a lot of different drugs but Salvia was something strange and foreign to her. She was very skeptical like many and thought that Salvia couldn’t be much of anything since it was so unheard of….”if it was so great everyone would be doing it”! She finally said that she would try it when she got some time, probably just to shut me up, as my babbling about things like this often outpace her attention level quite quickly.

5​

Experiment 2.

Dosage: 1/6th gram S. Divinorum extract (“20x”/unknown), smoked​

​

The next afternoon my wife and I broke away from our day for a moment to try and smoke some salvia. We both work and have a daughter so it is often difficult to find the right time to do this sort of thing. She was still clearly somewhat annoyed at my new toy but still decided to join anyway. I think in some ways her intent was to come and show me that there was nothing to be seen and to debunk this myth I had spoken about to her the previous night. I was of the opinion at this point that perhaps I had a high tolerance to the chemical or was missing some important step for absorption but thought that perhaps this wouldn’t apply to my wife. She went first and smoked a good portion of her dose. She held it for perhaps 18-25 seconds and blew out copious amounts of salvia smoke, immediately complaining of the harshness and taste of the smoke. She proclaimed, “I told you this stuff doesn’t do anything!” and got up off the bed leaving the room probably feeling I was wasting her time with nonsense. Perhaps I was, she seemed to get no effect at all from her humungous hit.



I decided I would continue on and administer my own dose alone. I was a bit upset about my wife dismissing the whole thing but wanted to continue the experiment! I had purchased a small butane torch lighter the night before having read that people reported better luck when using these and used it to torch my first hit. It was a big hit and I could feel it pounding in my chest. I sucked in a few more gasps of air on top and swallowed, intent on holding this one for 30 seconds. At around 25 seconds it was heaving to get out of me and I began to cough the hit out.



I took in a fresh breath and reached for another pinch of the salvia which was in it’s small purple container. I put the bowl to my mouth and lit the torch, noting that my vision seemed to be changing as well as my mental state, though neither seemed extremely impaired. As I tried to torch the salvia in the short glass bowl I suddenly realized I was in fact lighting the tip of my left middle finger on fire, as it was cradling the smoking end of the bowl. I immediately threw the bowl and lighter to the ground, with most of the salvia falling out around my bed, my finger seemingly melting. I looked at my finger which was scorched a pale white, sure to be a nasty blister later. For some reason though I closed my eyes, perhaps trying to ignore the pain for the sake of science!



Just as I found in experiment 1, there was a repeating voice in my head again. This time the voice was say “She’s not gonna see it”, over and over, perhaps 10 times, slow and pulsing. I laughed a bit to myself and realized though definitely an effect from the Salvia, I had apparently engineered this line in relation to my wife’s non experience with salvia just moments before.

6​

My eyes still closed I was sure something was going on, a sort of expanding feeling in my mind, a place similar to a DMT trip. I was still aware of my surroundings overall but it was now this strange combination of pain from my finger and drifting thoughts from the salvia. I realized I needed to take care of my finger regardless of whether or not it was going to interrupt my experience. I stood up, realizing quite quickly that my balance was moderately disrupted. I took a few steps trying to find a sort of rhythm to this new way of walking which was a bit difficult.



I was now 100% sure Salvia was no hoax or myth, my motor skills being somewhere between tired and drunken. I called out to my wife in the other room, “Hey, you must have done something wrong! Oh my God!” I came out of the room and she had already started towards me after I had called to her. “Are you ok??!” she asked. “I’m fine but I just burned the hell out of my finger! I answered back, holding my crème bruled finger out for display. “You know, even though I burned my finger, right now that seems really funny! Oh my God!”



It was at this point that an up roaring laughter came out from somewhere deep inside me. I laughed but I moved, walking into the kitchen to the faucet. Turning on the cold water I continue to laugh like never before, now cooling my burning wound, laughing like I had just seen the funniest thing ever! My wife stood there confused about my laughter, which she didn’t understand. “Stop laughing!” she said, to which I could only reply that I couldn’t stop. I was laughing so hard I was almost crying and I put my head to rest on my arm, which was over the sink where I soaked my finger.



My eyes closed again there and I seemed again to be in a huge mental space, again expanding as I continued to laugh. After perhaps a minute or so of this the laughter gradually seemed to pass and I began to talk to my wife about what had happened. If my first experience was flapping my arms and trying to fly, I think this one was like being pushed out of the nest.



Now had a feeling for what I might come to expect at these low levels of the experience to some degree and experimented a bit that night with very small amounts of salvia as a filler on top of my regular favorite, cannabis. The plant seemed to enhance meditative thought and had a generally mild and relaxing feeling. I spent much of that night reading about Salvia and its rich history with the Mazatec Indians. I was curious and wanted to know more.

Continued in next post.......

The Doc.