Do Not Try this Alone

It said so right in the literature.

Now, I have smoked my fair share of marijuana and hash. I like it. It’s natural. My reluctance to LSD has always been that it is man made and that it is the result of some experiment gone astray. Plus, by not doing it, I can thumb my nose at all of the red-dressed-Nancy Reagan-clones who just say “no” and proclaim that marijuana is a gateway drug to bigger, badder things. Once again on that subject: Go to Hell.

Okay…so, now I have never tuned in, turned on, and dropped out. My bad.

You know what they say about curiosity though. Sure you do. You went to school in the same country as I did, right? Salvia Divinorum. Cat; let me introduce you to life outside of the bag.
I in no way encourage or endorse the use of Salvia. Though it is legal, natural and widely available, I believe that it could be dangerous if not treated with the proper amount of respect that it deserves. Miscue number one.

I bought the Salvia herb when I was back in my hometown, and I decided that I would try it when I returned to my new place later that weekend. I had known about the drug for a number of years, had seen it advertised on various websites and felt, based on my marijuana experience that I had everything under control. Salvia is not a substitute for marijuana. Miscue numero dos.

The biggest mistake was not having a guide with me for the experience. Salvia is widely used in rituals and as such there are usually a fair amount of observers who remain on the sidelines to assist the shaman or priest.

The experience only lasts a few minutes, but my perception of the experience made it feel like weeks had gone by. This perceived duration, as extreme as it seems, could be unique to me, but others have also reported a complete distortion of time. Cosmos surfing, anyone?

The onset of the experience was also frightening. Again, I had no reference for what was about to occur and smoked a fair “pinch” of the extract (Miscue number four: 20X strength extract, whereas most of what I had read was about pure extract of normal strength). Like marijuana, it is “impossible to overdose” on salvia.

I smoked the salvia as one would smoke a bowl. I held the smoke deep in my lungs for the roughly 30 or so seconds recommended. I do not recall exhaling. What actually happened next is pure conjecture based solely on my bruised and battered knees, but I am rather sure that I fell out of the chair in front of the computer.

The memories are a bit hazy and this seems fairly common to most reports. I remember a swirl of strobe effects not unlike the experience of phosphenes (press your palms gently against your closed eyes). The closed-eye light show was accompanied by a metronome-like ticking. At some point, the flashes of light took on “personality.” Each began to twist, shape and mold my body into what “they” desired as the perfect representation of “me.” The experience of the phosphenes overlapped the rest of the experience. At best, I would describe it as a simultaneous trip that was allowed to occur simply because time and space did not matter all that much. The lights were as annoying as they were informative. If I were to title this ballet, I would call it the Soup of Life. The purpose: to graphically illustrate the “zipping up” of the original strand of DNA that is me.

Overlap: Mitosis. DNA unzips and rezips itself repeatedly. It is the thing of life. It hurts. I became each of my cells. Aware of all of them and understood that some flake away, some get replaced and some are irreplaceable.

Overlap: Paranoia. Again, perhaps unique to me. I am a paranoid person by nature. This may have only been magnified by the drug. Somethings or someones began to kidnap these individual bits. Where they were dragging them I do not know because there was a final realization that amongst all of these cells, there was one and only one that was the true core of me-ness. That one refused to follow.

The visual experience of kidnapping was that of being turned completely inside out my toes were pushed up through my feet, ankles, shins, thighs, gut, throat ( at which point I felt as though I was being suffocated or drowning). As my feet began to emerge from my mouth, I felt as though I was on the brink of becoming aware. And what I was aware of was not pleasant. I could not stop the process; I could not speed the process; I was at the mercy of the process. This awareness provided me with one bit of relief: I could not hide, but I could hold onto that piece of “me,” inside out or not. The turning out did not end until my front tooth was the last bit to pop into inverted place.

Overlap: I was plagued by the idea that somehow there was a conspiracy that led me to the shop where I purchased the salvia. Those responsible were from this plane and “another” and had worked out a way to completely zap me from existence: past, present and future. Not only would I not continue to move forward in time, but all memory of me would be erased as well. I felt taunted by voices to submit to whatever there collective will demanded. I was given permission to do and be a myriad of things at their suggestion. None of which seemed remotely appealing. And I felt as though I were being “observed” alien-abduction style. The next day, when I was recounting my experience, I could only think of cheap knock-offs of Philip K. Dick stories.

Overlap: Just past the toes in the mouth experience, and persisting and coexisting throughout the rest of the experience was the sensation of drowning. Gurgling. Helpless. Arms flailed to pull me back to the surface of some golden lake. I could pull myself to the surface, gain half a breath and half a mouthful of liquid and I would be pulled under again. Each visit to the surface, I would briefly see a brown sun in a sepia tone sky. And I remember thinking that if I could only get one mouthful of that sun, if I could only bite into its surface, I could hang on for however long it took. I managed to get an arm up and around the sun to take that bite and felt my teeth pierce the surface. I locked on, and as the sun made it path through the sky it pulled me along, up and out of the golden lake.

Overall it felt as though I were dreaming several dreams all at once. I was “unseparated” from each.

It happened. It should not have happened alone. The final thought was simply that. Isolated and populated..