Hi guys. Thought I would share my latest experience with all of you, as I haven't really undergone anything like it before. My previous three experiences with salvia were very positive, euphoric experiences. The trips ranged from being in a state of consistent deja-vu, to having all the objects around me reduced to the shape of wet noodles which I could manipulate with my hands in a fit of genuine hysterical laughter. I had sitters for all these occasions, yet none of them had affected my trips in any way that I could notice or recall. I had read several reports of people preferring to take salvia alone, as any other people present in the room tend to distract from the experience, and so I came to the conclusion that I could probably handle the drug if I tried it by myself. A decision like this, in retrospect, just goes to show how little I truly understood about how powerful salvia really is. I decided to take the hit in my basement once everyone else had gone to sleep. I learned from various lone-trip reports that the key was simply to relax, remain calm and quiet while the salvia took you in and simply to enjoy the ride. I figured from my previous experiences that I could do just that relatively easily. I put on a playlist of calm chillout music in order to set the mood. I dimmed the lights and removed anything around the floor that could pose a potential hazard. Any sharp furniture corners I padded with spare couch cushions and pillows. I closed the door to the room and blocked it off with a full laundry basket in order to keep me inside if, by any chance, I suddenly had the urge to run out into the night. I also decided to set up a webcam on my laptop computer in order to record my experience, perhaps just as a future memento. I packed my bong with approximately 200 milligrams of 20x extract: the same dose I had taken prior to my last joyous noodle-manipulating venture. I had bought it from the same vendor, so I would expect it to have a consistent level of salvinorin. My mindset at the time, as I recall, was fairly positive. There were the standard stomach butterflies, of course, but I had had wonderful prior experiences on salvia despite being in the same disposition. I was definitely excited at the same time, wondering how this trip was going to be different. Where was this magical little plant going to take me this time? Only one way to find out. The sounds of Tangerine Dream’s “Love on a Real Train” quietly filled the room as I took my bic lighter to the sage, pulling the air out of the bong at a moderate pace. I ripped the salvia at the same speed as I would a hit of cannabis, a speed at which I have now been told is not the best for an easy onset. And sure enough, likely because of that fact alone, the effects hit me like a ton of bricks. I vaguely remember that the bong began to sound a little clogged as I finished my chop, and that I had gently set it down in the middle of the table in front of me and began to count the 20 seconds I was planning to hold the smoke in for. Other than that, I don’t remember the onset of the effects at all. I cannot recall any specific moment where I began to feel different. That “Oh, here we go…” moment that I expected was nowhere to be found. I don't even remember when I exhaled. Instead, the next thing I knew after putting the bong down was that I was somewhere else completely. I was outside, and the sky was a clear blue; it was no longer night. I was on the front lawn of a house, which I quickly recognized as the house I grew up in when my family and I still lived in Ontario. There may have been something odd or different about it, but I still immediately recognized it as our old house, a place I haven’t been in many years. It would be useful to note that at this point in time, since I had plunged under the water so quickly, that I had COMPLETELY forgotten that I just smoked salvia. That’s when things started to get weird. I suddenly felt a strange sensation that everything I was experiencing, the world even, was transient. Nothing had permanence. The objects surrounding me were made up of a fluid, rainbow-coloured energy that flowed through all matter like a wire frame, and the different textures and surfaces that made up the world were simply an illusion of this mysterious energy’s hypnotic dance. Although I don’t remember falling, I was eventually laying down on my stomach on the grass, staring at where the stern face of the house’s instantly recognizable Ontario brick wall met the shivering blades of the front lawn. And then the universe split apart. It didn’t shatter like you would imagine a pane of glass. Instead, everything was now divided into hundreds of 2D planes. There were likely thousands, millions more, but I could only focus on so many. My body was now physically bound to several of these sheets, separate from myself, yet totally one with the entire encompassing universe that surrounded it on its own divided slice of the world. I could say it was as if everything had been turned into a book, but since the pages of books more or less all converge to a single point, it is not a very good comparison. It was more like being inside a giant carpet sample display that you may find at a flooring shop. Each sheet of carpet is spaced away from the next in a vertical mosaic, all of them simultaneously visible, but can be lifted and flipped over each other if one happens to find a colour or pattern to their liking. However, this was not immediately apparent to me. Everything, while surreal, still seemed normal, three-dimensional, and somewhat tangible. It was only when some unknown, metaphysical customer decided to flip through the universal carpet sampler that I actually saw what was happening. The world bent over itself and collapsed inward. I found myself floating in the immaterial gap between two 2D planes of the now divided universes that, while having a significant gap between them, spread out infinitely at right angles from each other. I could see the profile of my body (now completely separate from “me”) on either plane. I wasn’t seeing the inner flesh of my body; it was as if a computer had taken a 3D surface-scan of me, sliced my body into several profiles, and just filled them in based on what colour was on the surface (i.e. my clothes, hair, etc.). The same applied to everything else that surrounded my physical body as far as I could see, the visual distortion indescribable. Before I could even react to what was happening, the carpet sampler flipped again, and again. Each layer slammed on top of the last with loud crashes, and I felt reality shift with each infinitely massive turn. To my horror I realized that I was being sucked away from what I thought was my own dimension of reality. It all fell terrifyingly real; I still had not remembered I was tripping on salvia. As the layers of the universe continued piling on top of one another, I found myself panicking. My old house, the image of my childhood, was gone. What was left of myself began to desperately claw at the massive folding planes of reality, trying to stop them, the “real world” still so close yet absolutely impossible to get through to. My friends, my family…gone. I started to scream, a pathetic attempt to plead the godlike carpet turner to stop what it was doing, to send me back, to save me, my voice only emerging in brief, glitch-like fragments, it too divided by the universal fragmentation. Everything I ever loved. Gone. My body. My happiness. Everything. Gone. Gone. Gone. I was in the centre of a cosmic cataclysm of unimaginable proportions. I was falling through the gap, caught in an interdimensional whirlwind instigated by God Himself. It was never going to end. I was going to fall forever. Now completely detached from my physical body, I did not even have the release of death to look forward to. This was my eternity. Forever doomed to fall, distort, split apart and spiral out of control, never to return. I have never been more terrified in all my life. While I clearly wasn’t aware of it at the time, back in the real world my horrific shrieking naturally caught people’s attention. My sister, thinking I had injured myself, came downstairs to see what was going on. When she found me in my state, likely unsure of what to do, she called out my name. And I heard it. Amidst the deafening crash of separate cosmos colliding into each other, I heard my sister’s voice. And that’s when it dawned on me. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. I was still here. The great carpet turner then suddenly decided it would only remain a potential customer at the interdimensional flooring warehouse, and gently let go of the planes of reality it had been browsing. In rapid succession I was sucked back the way I came, soaring through the 2D sheets of the universe as if they were a deck of cards being shuffled. I quickly found myself back at my old house again, which also began to distort. The sky became the ceiling of my room, the house the wooden panelling on one of the walls. My bong, still sitting on the table in front of me, gradually came into focus, and it was then and only then that I finally realized why I had experienced what I just went through. I had removed the hoodie I was previously wearing, was sweating profusely, and was shaking. Long story short, I have an entirely new respect for this plant. I’ve learned that no matter how many times you try it, you can NEVER expect what is going to happen to you, or where you’re going to go. If I ever decide to take salvia again (definitely not in the near future), having a sitter will be an absolute must. I believe the main reason why my experience was so damn horrifying was that I didn’t know I was hallucinating. I thought these things were actually happening. If there was someone there to remind me where I was, that I was actually tripping off salvia and to at least ground a part of me in the real world, this experience could have very well been a positive one. My overwhelming relief after hearing my sister’s voice cut through my trip like a hot knife through butter, I think, is a testament to that fact.
thanks for that report Shyftee! meant to consult with her the other day, but the moment just didn't seem right... now it seems right, and was going to smoke a cupla bowls of 10x extract this evening despite having no sitter, but after reading your report, maybe it is wise to wait until a sitter is available... amazing first post btw! thanks for sharing
wow! thanks for the report, that's amazing! I like very much your writting style too. Your report made me realize even more how difficult and different the salvia experience can be...Respect for this sacred plant! All in all, do you find your experience a constructive one - you feel like you learned something and improved your knowledge or do you find it too difficult and shattering to even think about that? This change of perception over the Universe, how does it influence your life now?
your sister's voice might have only been able to cut through your trip, because you might have already started to come down. i had a very similar experience to yours, and i did have a sitter. the feeling of different dimensions flipping like the pages of a book is very familiar. as they flipped, they were taking me with them, in a violent, glitchy way.
Were you aware than you were on salvia during your trip? That was the main thing that made my experience so terrifying--that I thought it was real, that the universe was literally coming to an end before my eyes. If that can happen regardless whether or not a sitter is present, that's a scary thought.
That's a good question. I've considered the possibility of multiple universes and dimensions before, but never thought what it would be like to be transported to one. All the things we live our lives according to...reason, order, predictability...could very well be the antithesis of what existence really is. It's something we can't really think about, and when we experience a simulation of it through substances, it can be absolutely bewildering and terrifying at the same time. I suppose I have an idea what it is like to truly fear a fate worse than death, and that's quite something. So my short answer: the trip itself was beyond the distinctions of "positive" and "negative", as with most salvia trips. It was just "fucked". But what I took away from the experience, what I learned, is overwhelmingly positive.
nope. i forgot all about smoking anything. i don't recall my friend taking the bong from me. i don't recall exhaling my 2nd hit. i was taken "somewhere else completely."
@ Shyftee Im glad to hear that, it seems you managed to see through your experience and to learn from salvia. I couldn't help observing that people try it once and than run away from it forever. Salvia trip is not comfortable but it is a learning experience. Some of the most powerfull ones, imo. It is not for everyone, definitely. Also, I apreciate that you decided not to hurry before (not to rush into) your next trip and to take a sitter. Good luck! *the formulation/spelling might be wrong/awkward - im not English
