Project: Describing the Salvia Experience - A Detailed Analysis

I've been intensely interested in salvia for a few months now, and while I've been smoking the plain leaf for a few weeks now to get a feel for it (which I did, the feelings were intriguing), I wanted to go a little further. So I bought some 15x extract to experiment. I wanted to see if I could accurately describe that almost indescribable "thing" that happens on a sub-breakthrough dose of salvia, before going all the way.

What I would like to achieve (with your help) in this thread is to attempt outline these characteristics that currently seem so elusive to the human language. Ideally, we would want to end up with a list - set of key, universal "aspects" of the salvia experience, accompanied by an elaboration of each of these in the form of either a set of bullet points or a short paragraph. The important thing to note here is that we want to create a description of ANY salvia experience, despite their seemly varying quality from one person to another. Think of how particle-physicists attempt to discover the fundamental building blocks that make matter what it is; I want to discover what it is that makes the salvia experience what it is.


Ok, so this is my initial attempt at this. I'm actually a noob in terms of my usage with salvia at this point, but I hope to elaborate in the near future and add to this thread with each subsequent experience.

First I'll describe my first real experience with salvia that I had today to put things in context. I took a fairly large hit of 15x and held it in for about 25 seconds. I was lying on my bed, and the "effects" began to "arrive". I don't think I was close to having a breakthrough experience, seeing as I only took a medium hit of 15x extract.

In the simplest terms possible, it begins like a circling energy wave that starts at the corners of your vision, and then proceeds to encroach further into your field of view until its like looking through a pinhole... almost. There is a general sense of spinning or rotating, for me it was mostly clockwise. But as it come on even more, this "feeling" sort of crystalises out and whatever you happen to be looking at seems to be very "solid" in a new sense of the word, almost like you can feel it's texture. I was lying on my bed and facing my door (to the left) and my wardrobe (to the right), with the side of my wardrobe and my door being a dark wooden colour, with everything else being a lighter colour. On this low-medium dose of salvia, these darker objects seemed to be more prominent and wanted to flow up an "over" the other objects and join together somehow - and most crucially, I think, the shapes and colours of things became very "INSISTANT". The contours of objects were somehow of vital importance to something, they quite literally carried a lot of weight. They were almost imposing, almost menacing.

Then there's yet another aspect of this feeling, a sort of echoing quality, something about the shapes and objects that I was looking (as well as the thoughts I was having at the time) at that seemed to be repeating themselves, propelling themselves incrementally in a certain unknown direction. Almost as if my surroundings were insisting that they had a personality of their own. I only got a hint of this, and I'm interested to see what bigger doses could make of this feeling.

The experience is indeed very hard to explain, especially to someone who has never tried salvia before. Is any of what I have described so far resonating with anyone here? I'd love to get some clarification from some of you. I had been trying plain leaf for a while before I bought the extract so I have eased my way into the experience, and it is fascinating seeing
the "next level" that the extract shows me, and that the plain leaf was hinting at. I have read a lot of reports on salvia and I think what has been neglected from the descriptions is that weird feeling of INSISTANCE that I tried to describe. The feeling that objects and shapes are trying to say "look, I'm alive too, so don't ignore me OK?". I got the impression that they were characters of some kind. Intriguing.

Lastly, and this is probably because I wasn't that close to having a breakthrough, but its interesting that all of this seems to happen without actually ever hallucinating, in the traditional sense of the word. I haven’t tried any other drugs apart from salvia and alcohol, so I can't compare it to other psychedelics, but I get the feeling that things like mushrooms, LSD and especially DMT are much more obvious in the visual sense. I didn't see anything "new" appear to me or pop into existence on salvia - rather what was already there was taking on a completely new quality, new attributes that were previously unseen. Not to mention, becoming somehow connected to me in a way, as if the space between "me" and the rest of the room was becoming increasingly unimportant and meaningless.



Here's my condensed description of the qualities of a medium salvia dose, based on my experience so far. Hopefully we will be able to flesh this out when more people contribute to this thread and try to translate and distil their experiences in a similar way!


The Spin-Stretch Effect - The 'Spretch'

• Manifested in VISION. Peripheral vision seems the most affected by this, and is initially the most obvious effect.
• Manifested in SPATIAL AWARENESS. Depth of field becomes the least important attribute of 3D space, allowing the user to experience the 'Spretch' effect in a physical way. Feelings of drag and flowing of the body in one general direction is apparent at first, but small nuances in this flow can become apparent and multi-directional "pulling" can be felt. This is what distinguishes it from the usual feeling of vertigo or falling.


Importance & Intent- The 'Insisting' / 'Imposing' Nature of Objects
(So far, this only applies to an Open-Eye Experience)

• A general sense that 'something' is 'happening' for a reason, but the reason is just out of reach.
• This is apparent in way objects in the field of view are perceived. Whereas before they were lifeless and dead, they now seem to have acquired an extra quality that transcends their material attributes. A kind of semi-consciousness.
• Shape, contour and colour become much more 'imposing'. The diminishing perception of depth seems to accentuate this affect, and in combination with the 'spretching' effects, they seem to 'migrate' (or at least have the intention to do so) with the flow of this invisible force field.
• All of the above contribute to a feeling that things have an intention, or an objective. This in turn hints at one or many personalities dispersed throughout the user's surroundings, with certain shapes and colours having more of a 'presence' than others. More intense trips may amplify this feeling so as to make it seem like objects are communicating directly with you, while bad trips may indeed make them seem more menacing, like they have an agenda.
• While everything may still 'look' the same on the most basic level, salvia adds so much on top of it through sneaky perception changes and feelings of warping, that it seems like what you are looking at is only just recognisable. Salvia makes you to notice hidden attributes of what you are seeing and forces you to disregard others. This may be what differentiates itself from tryptamines such as DMT, mushrooms and LSD, which seem to cause more obvious visual hallucinations (I would like some clarification on this though for those who have tried both salvia and one of the above.


Echoes & Looping - Time Warping and Infinity
(This is the part that is the most difficult to recall for some reason)

• Intertwined with all of the above, there is an underlying sense that time is becoming fragmented. First, jittery (a start-stop-start-stop effect) and then a blending of 'moments' that seem to echo and repeat. It is difficult to directly notice this while it is happening, but one can catch an 'echo' just before it dissipates and a new one takes its place.
• These echoes can be triggered by a thought one had at the beginning of the trip: "Put bong down, bong down, bong down, put bong down, bong down, down...", or something more obscure, a general 'thing' or 'feeling' that becomes amplified for a few seconds. At the time, this unknown thing which is wordless, noiseless and unseen - lets call it "essence" - seems somehow familiar, almost as if you are noticing the fabric of time itself. My personal theory is that this thing that is being echoed and amplified is the space between thoughts. We cannot usually pinpoint it because it is a continuous flowing blend of 'moments', but salvia allows us to break the flow of time down into segments, and catch a glimpse of each second that passes in more detail.
• This same principle can be noticed in what the user is looking at. Objects may seems to infinitely regress into themselves, or leave trails of themselves when turning the head (though admittedly, I have yet to experience this myself).
• This seems to be the most confusing part of a mild-medium salvia trip. Possibly because our perception of the world relies almost completely on the unchanging flow of events. Salvia disrupts this flow, and forces us to deal with it. Processing this new kind of information is probably taxing on the brain and is probably why it is difficult to remember exactly what happened during the trip, and hinders our ability to accurately describe the phenomenon.


Alright, so there are my observations thus far. Please feel free to pick it apart and add to it, I'm only going off my limited experience (and I haven’t even broken through yet, although that seems to be a whole other realm of experience). Those who have done salvia more than me or have broken through are very welcome to add new key sections to the above list that specifically describe what happens in the more intense trips. The more the merrier! Hopefully this can become a collective effort to accurately describe salvia in words we can all understand!

 

nice post, op. i've broken through three times and i'm still not able to recollect so well the kind of effects i feel.

i have this feeling too, and it's quite strong. it feels like there are invisible entities floating around and every object is alive and have a personality of its own. i feel like i know their personalities and they know me very well, so everything is quite familiar. i normally feel that music, movies or television playing are talking to me too, like an intelligent independent being. i'm frequently able to put anything i'm hearing from them into the context of the trip or the context of my state of mind, so it really looks like it's directed to that moment, this can be fantastic or very scary (depending on what they say, lol). when hallucinations come, every object in that parallel reality is alive too, like in old mickey mouse cartoons, but without the smiling faces.

i experienced the looping thoughts thing in the start too, exactly as you explained.

let me try to pick other strongest aspects of my trips. probably most of them were already discussed in the forum, but whatever.

first, an opinion: every salvia experience is overwhelming and absolutely interesting. but non-breakthrough experiences are very nice and breakthrough experiences are nightmarish. the difference for me is that when i don't breakthrough, i'm still able to know that i exist in consensual reality, you still have this awareness, even when you think that you're experiencing something real. the feeling can be that there is an alternate reality, perhaps even more important than consensual reality, but the latter one is still there. in a breakthrough, though, you think that the dreamlike reality of the trip is everything that really exists and there is frequently a feeling of being trapped into nothingness, melted with the surroundings, which is absolute terror, because you realize at some point that this is the way things are going to be forever.

body feeling: even in mild trips, it is very strong. i feel like being strongly pulled or pushed in some direction. with eyes closed, this feeling is translated into hallucinations that show me melting with the surroundings of a dreamlike landscape or morphing into strange objects. the body load is unpleasant and the hallucinations related to it are scary in breakthrough experiences.

visuals: the character of them is something i could never imagine. it's very hard to describe, it's geometrical and cartoony, trails of blocks appear from nowhere and multiplicate themselves, everything pulsing and alive. if you have a breakthrough, they rapidly substitute reality... entirely. you lose awareness of everything else and they become very complex scenarios. difficult to precisely recall, though, cos it's very chaotic and there's a lot of movement.

familiarity: usually, you don't think you're seeing and feeling elements of a trip, but elements of reality. it's like that furniture is really alive and you're sure about it. it's like that new face of reality was always there and you knew it was. it feels like you're just remembering the essence of everything. this is very interesting, sometimes you feel like you discovered the most amazing secret of the universe, but you can't really put what that secret is into words, and when the trip is over and time passes, that feels just dumb (this part is frustrating, lol). also, sometimes when the trip is just starting and i start to see the blocks constructing shapes, i have a feeling of frustration like "oh no, i smoked salvia to have hallucinations, not to come back here".

comedown: in a breakthrough, this is the most unbelievable part, imo. in my experiences, i was always terrified, fighting to get back, and at some point i found a leak in that reality, something that i could use to escape (in the first time, it was a tunnel; in the second one i turned myself into a giant moving shell that was containing all the consensual reality, and i managed to rip that thing and get in; in the third one, there was an entity communicating with me during the trip. in the end, the entity told me they would allow me to experience the "illusion" of the human life a little more and i could see - and feel - myself and the surroundings morphing back into their normal forms). this is so special because you can see consensual reality perfectly integrated into the trip reality. in the first minute after you get back, you're still unable to identify anything as a trip, you just think that you had escaped, phew. real life feels like a continuation of the trip in the first minutes, and this makes your head spin, you are completely overwhelmed. it feels so real that afterwards you don't know in what you should doubt or believe. this feeling usually lasts a few hours, sometimes a few days.

in non-breakthrough doses, my comedowns are nothing special, though. the body load fades out, the hallucinations fade out and i get my coordination back. it's more like a drug losing its effect, not the "escaping from a sci-fi nightmare" thing i told above.

of course, experiences vary a lot, so i just can speak for myself. anyway, i saw a website some weeks ago that has a very nice list of salvia effects in various levels, way better than the official guide. it's here, enjoy: http://www.goatrance.de/goacidia/salvia/en-salvialevel.html

 

I agree with objects taking on a new realailty. I have smoked salvia four times, and have a lot on hand. I tend to only do it when the outside conditions are right, and I have ideas to explore. I've only smoke 10x, which I doubt is enough to break on through. BUT, I did have a hell of a time and learned something that I now see when looking at all four experiences. I learned, that in the end, as a person that I needed to learn to relax sometimes. As well as let somethings take their natural flow, and not fight it. (but, would you consider this breaking through?)

I have , however broken on through while on shrooms, and it BLEW my fucking mind forever

 

The experience of salvia cannot be described sufficiently by words because its essence come from a place that is utterly beyond words.

For me, its a holy sacrament, a tool for communing with the I in every particle of matter.

Salvia is most definitely a female intelligence, I've spoken to her on a few occasions.

She can get pretty angry though, if she's disrespected.


Nice post OP.