tomrocker
Matrice périnatale
- Inscrit
- 13 Mar 2007
- Messages
- 10
This is long, but it's a paste from something already written and I figured it doesn't hurt to just post it..I made a post below about how I'm becoming quite insensitive to salvia.
If you're interested in the interaction of salvia with someone with a history of "poor" mental health, here it is. I'd REALLY REALLY appreciate and love feedback on this...
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First and foremost I am diagnosed with bipolar I disorder w/psychotic features (I'm sure some doctors would probably have me diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder instead...a bipolar/schizophrenia hybrid that is just the same treatment as bipolar w/psychotic features..it kind of depends on the doctor which diagnosis you get and it can change over time). My doctor says he hasn't given me the schizoaffective diagnosis because my hallucinations are strangely mostly visual rather than auditory and that I do not show very many of the negative symptoms..so I dunno. Though I have heard of people with similar symptoms as me diagnosed as schizoaffective..so it's just a stupid label...
I have been hospitalized once (for over 2 weeks) and have had extended
psychotic episodes involving mostly visual hallucinations and delusions. The first time I smoked pot (or even got drunk) was actually after I had been diagnosed bipolar, at age 19. [Not sure how I stayed away from drugs with the amount of emotional problems I had at the time.]
I am currently 22 and have tried these 'recreational' drugs.
once, MDMA (ecstasy)
many, marijuana (with EXTREMELY varying effects)
salvia
twice, Dextromethorphan (low dose, enough for a subtle spacy echo)
once, opium, smoked.
once, nutmeg (a light several day thing)
many, alcohol
once, Inhaled Nitrous Oxide
prescribed: provigil, ativan, klonopin (sort of recreationals..scheduled)
I've never done acid (it's a really bad idea to combine acid with lithium, so I've heard). I've never done mushrooms either. I have witnessed and talked with many people on both..(you can also take that another way as I've talked with one guy on both at the same time).
My current (I've been on a lot) psychiatric drug regiment consists of 900mg lithium, 150 mg seroquel (that's a low dose), and 150mg lamictal daily.
The only two of these that might have contributed to a worsening of my condition are alcohol and marijuana, likely because of greater use and them being done during a much more "unstable" time.
-----------------The Salvia Experience---------------------------
I will leave the decision on why I chose to experience this out of the report for now.
I purchased a 10x extract from a smoke shop on Telegraph, here in Berkeley. I sat in my room in mid-afternoon and packed a bowl in
my bubbler. I'm not a big pot smoker, but I do end up smoking here and there.
There was some intermittent construction noise in the background and I played Music for Airports (Brian Eno). This is a very great
minimalist ambient album.
I alone on my bed with a lighter (just a normal one) in hand and devoured the extract. I held it in for as long as I could (about 15-20 seconds) and let it go. I felt kind of light at first, but decided another would be good...and then another.
Suddenly a strike in the music gave me a very different emotional perspective on my room. It was akin to any very beautiful emotional moment.
I kept expecting the unknown but was instead hit by a wave of familiarity. The experience was just like one of the strongest marijuana highs I've ever had, the first time I ever smoked MJ. Not the overall thoughts, but the detachment. The feeling that my room and I had been cast out into space, released from temporal and spatial reference points. I knew I was tripping, but I kept on smoking. I wanted to go higher.
I began to talk to myself out loud. It seemed various objects in the room drew my attention, and that the answers to my various questions
emanated from them (not auditory). I remember at first asking why I was all alone. At first I thought I was referring to nobody else being in the room, but received a response from my other self that built upon the question. I began to realize that I am surrounded by good people and was not at all alone..but had been holing myself away as I had been laying in bed on a mild nutmeg for two days before..
This experience was not foreign to me either. In one of my 'psychotic episodes' I walked around talking to various trees that I acquired knowledge and wisdom from. The salvia experience was the same in the "pull" that these objects gave me...
I remember shouting (at least I felt like I was shouting) what must of been a somewhat incoherent argument about why people talk to themselves.
I began to hear people outside whispering and talking about me. At one point it felt like people had all gathered around my door and were
mocking me for all that I had said out loud....This too I was completely familiar with as these are actually called 'delusions of reference' in psychotic episodes. However, that didn't stop me from walking to the door and checking...nobody there.
Things started to take a bad turn when the thought processes of the trip started to take shades of my "worst" pot trip (on two small
cookies during an unstable time). This is in quotes because although it caused anxiety at the time, it was quite interesting and a good
experience in retrospect...
During this pot cookie trip I had actually ended up laying on my bed and couldn't figure out if my eyes were open or not and went through some warped train of thought that severely bothered me at the time....and this was the train of thought that was coming back in the
salvia.
I guess it goes like this (though I haven't completely figured it out): I begin to realize how a true delusion forms and how intrinsic it feels to the person..I then start to believe I've broken from "reality" and have permanently *snaped* and can't come back..However, I seemed to possess a strange sense of calm while on salvia and told myself that *snapping* is not a big deal and not really a phenomenon at all, most certainly not in this sceneario.
Everyone believes things that are not true in other's frames of conception... The fact that I had plenty risperdal (a potent antipsychotic) sitting around helped quite a bit too.
...It's not that big of a deal. I then sit down and stare at the window. The window starts to take on a slight movement toward the type of visual hallucinations I've seen in the past on pot, but somehow I stop it by resisting the temptation to indugle myself in that direction.
...I start to get anxious and remembered that I hadn't set the timer on my watch (I wanted to keep good track in case of a bad trip). I set it. I stared at it...I remember staring at it for about 15 minutes, telling myself I was done here..
The trip ended and I was left with a sense of peace, contentment, happiness and a good amount of energy.
It was like some of my most powerful and often more negative trips combined into one whole powerful and positive entity.
I also smoked the whole gram during the trip....
...I was under the impression that I would be completely knocked back and be unable to keep hitting..so I kept hitting until it was gone (did spill some due to the altered state).
I wonder about the meds decreasing the effectiveness, especially the seroquel (though it is a low dose). 10x is relatively low. I used a
regular lighter and didn't hold the smoke in as long as others are able...
I also had my eyes open the whole time, and heard it's helpful to just close your eyes, relax, and imagine..I'll definitely keep that in mind next time.
Overall this wound up being an expensive trip! I'd like to try again. But next time with more preparation to get more bang for my buck.
It very much surprised me that for the most part I have already experienced most of what happened in this trip before. The overall feel was unique, but that was mostly because of the unique situation....The trip was very much a positive one, though it did have a few moments of mild anxiety.
However, I will say that this is probably the best recreational drug I've taken. If I try again I'll try for a more meditative stance as this drug was definitely forcing a good deal of introspection on my part.
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-PART TWO
After my first experience (written in another report) I moved from 10x up to 17x (one gram). In my previous report I ended up consuming
an entire gram of 10x in one setting...This time I wanted to conserve my salvia and definitely my money...
I think I only ended up with about two or three good experiences out of the 17x. I also upgraded to a torch lighter.
When I first started I was cautious and only used a little bit with pitiful results. I ended up piling it on and finally got some results.
On my first reaction the visuals began to take on the exact form of my worst pot cookie experience mentioned in the previous report (My
previous trip mimicked the thought processes, not the visuals). My surroundings started to warp in on themselves and became somewhat two
dimensional, sort of like I was floating through a real life wet painting. The concept sort of reminds me of the film What Dreams My Come with Robin Williams...a movie I happened to watch during my psychotic episode that occurred after during and after I was hospitalized in October 2005...I probably had the pot cookie experience in November or December 2005.
This was extraordinarily the same visual experience I had on the two pot cookies..(this time lacking the mental element found in my first salvia experience and that particular pot experience).
----this part is also an old pot experience----------------
My roommate during those days was a highly experimental drug user and the night before I left for my parent's house in late December 2005.. I saw a bud of pot sitting on the table and smoked it in his bong (he didn't care) and ended up walking around touching things and feeling like they were touching me before I touched them...My sense of touch was severely altered and almost felt like things were touching me without me feeling them..I then ended up walking in a circle in the room for 2 hours, laying down in this warped state until coming out of it around 5am. I've never met anyone who has had highs this intense on marijuana...
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This exact same sensation came back to me in the salvia and I became so excited that I ran upstairs and I told someone (I don't know her
that well) that the bud of pot I had picked up must've been SALVIA! not pot. I then started repeating how the cookies I ate a year and a
half ago must've been SALVIA! She responded by telling me I should try the 100 something extract and how you're "so fucked up...(memory lapse)." (I didn't hallucinate this, this girl's done a lot of different drugs..)
I then walked to the store and ate a tub of ice cream...Running upstairs and talking to people seemed to completely end the trip.
--------------TRIP 2 ON 17X---------------------------------
This experience was pretty unique.
I went straight back into the realm mentioned in the previous experiences, I had split into two selves and talked openly, out loud, to myself
(I think some people refer to this person perhaps as "lord salvia" in other reports). I ended up laying on my bed and closing my eyes. I felt myself being folded up and pulled down into and out of the earth, further and further....I began talking out, "You want me to go down, you want me to think I'm never going to come back up again. But I know you're wrong, I know I'm coming back. You can't fool me." Right then and there I realized, arguing out loud, that although I knew I was coming back I had to try to let go and try to believe, without fear, that I will not....I let go and let myself float in and through ....but the trip felt like it was cut short and I don't at all remember what happened after that.
----------TRIP 3 ON 17X-------------------------------------
In the last trip I hadn't smoked too much and had come to the conclusion that I didn't really need to smoke that much, I just had to relax, close my eyes and explore...This concept ended up working rather poorly...
I found myself smoking small bits and acheiving minimal results...I tried lining up a few small hits and taking them in succession and getting a slight altered buzz. I would lay down and close my eyes and ended up feeling myself trying to force a journey.. I tried altering my smoking methods. I poked a hole in the bottom of a 20oz bottle, filled it with water and lit a small amount of salvia at the top while I released my thumb. After the bottle filled up with smoke I inhaled it, held it, released it, and only to once again just get a slight buzz...
I was a little annoyed because of the distractingly great cost of this stuff (I hadn't bought it online) and the extraordinary clues I was getting left me wanting to delve much further into this...
I finally gave in and just poured the entirety of what I had into my bubbler and smoked it all in several huge hits.
..And once again my surroundings began to turn flat and it felt as if it was happening slowly in a rotaing sweep. It started from the corner to my right where I heard an actual voice repeating the same thing over and over... I actually can't remember exactly what it was
saying...but it was something along the lines of "come down, come down, come down, come down..." The voice actually felt surprisingly real, but not entirely so. I have met people with mental illness that have head voices as real as day. This voice still had a dream-like quality to it.
Everything wrapped around me and I started talking out loud again.
AN IMPORTANT THING I haven't mentioned yet is that when I'm in a significant salvia trip I get slightly angered and start swearing much more than usual...I started swearing and saying how goofy this was. As it began to finish wrapping around it began to feel like something huge was going to happen when it finished..
...I started mildly shouting something like, "you want me to believe this is going to happen when you finish!? HA!"
When it finished wrapping around and everything became completely compressed into a mesh of color my head hit the wall with a slight
bump and my visual field returned back to normal.
For some reason I don't fully understand. I happily just jumped up, ran upstairs, sat down at the table and started talking to sober people eating and in a normal conversation..I felt a little more self-conscious than usual, but not nearly as much as I do sometimes on marijuana...that pretty much ended the trip.
I had a thought that maybe I was afraid to go back into salvia land, but I don't think that was it at all...I was incredibly fascinated by what had just happened, but for some reason I had a surge of energy and burst upstairs...
I thought about how I had found out that I needed to let go and believe..but then I realized that my refusing to believe was actually an intrinsic part of some of the trips.
..The fact that I would sometimes get somewhat angry and start swearing simply due to the drug itself verified this for me...though that previous time I was able to let the anger go and escape..
--------------40x salvia..to be continued..................
I have since then obtained a good screen for the pipe and half a gram of 40x salvia. I have tried smoking a little, and then a little more with barely any result. I smoked some and started to listen to Echoes by Pink Floyd and began typing this second part. I noticed it well..and the sounds struck pure beauty, but it only lasted a couple minutes.
I SEEM TO BE FAIRLY INSENSITIVE TO SALVIA.. so far...
I've also noticed that salvia gives me muscle aches. It's the similar ache to when I get drunk off wine and have a hangover in morning. I've heard this is perhaps due to poor blood circulation in the muscles involved.
-----THOUGHTS ON SALVIA AND MORE ON MY HISTORY OF PSYCHOSIS IN PARTICULAR--------
**Salvia seems to draw me in due to its strange ability to mimic symptoms of the 3 most important and interesting marijuana trips I've had to an impeccable degree.**** My first marijuana experience, the two pot cookies, and the time I smoked the nug on the table.
I thought that the solution was that they had been salvia, but that's impossible. I know what marijuana looks like, and it was marijuana on that table. I know what marijuana smells like, and it certainly didn't smell like salvia when I finished that off.. It lasted for hours and hours and hours. The cookie experience lasted even longer..and the first time I smoked pot..it was pretty obviously pot my friend was giving me...
I've mentioned that there are some symptoms and experiences similar to the psychotic episodes I've had, but overall salvia and my form of
psychosis are actually quite a bit different. In my psychosis, the hallucinations are much more REAL. I mean I actually would see things in other things, or strange creatures in the form of shadows coming off the floor...quite real..Salvia is real, but at the same time the most intense hallucinations actually happen with your eyes closed...though the two dimensional room thing and the warping was with my eyes open, it wasn't the same..It felt more like space was warping rather than that I was hallucinating.....
The delusions of reference(thinking people outisde are all talking/thinking about you or relating mundane things to yourself) in salvia are actually a pretty accurate rendition of those found in my psychosis though...although this time it's pretty much based on them thinking and laughing about how I'm tripping.......in my psychotic episodes they're laughing about what I'm thinking or saying.
I am also able to rub it off amazingly easy on salvia. I was upstairs and it sort of felt they were all laughing and talking about how I was
tripping, but I just told myself it was the salvia and it was no big deal...in psychosis it's so constant and persistent that it starts to really bother me after a while.
The same goes for any delusion (and after a while they are so constant it's hard to resist not believing them anymore)...this doesn't appear
in salvia because there just isn't enough time and it really dosen't portray those actual types of feelings...at least not from your direct
environment, for me.
In my psychotic states strange bizarre ideas seemed to just come at me from the environment like sharp lightning bolts....A few times the
amount of strange uncommon ideas (what can become delusions) would come at me so fast from all directions that it's hard to keep saying no, no, no, no, no, no, no to all of them all the time..
For example, one time I was in a doctor's office and a fat girl walked in and I felt a sudden urge to scream out, "you're fat" at the same time I was resisting a feeling of emanating whispers from a light socket and communication from a group of sentient plants from the vent behind me......
I think salvia can help people understand this kind of thing more...not so much in the symptoms it produces, but in the way of how the experience can seem so involuntary...sort of dragging your mind in a certain direction....That's how my delusions worked..Pot sort of does this with paranoia for me, but with salvia it's just so much more real. I am aware everyone's reaction this drug is very different...I've just kind of read this helplessness in a few of the trip reports I've read, and it might be one of the reasons some people find salvia so unpleasant..it's just a thought.
--------------------REFLECTING----(wandering might be better--what salvia is all about)--------
But yeah,
...it's the similarity to those few extremely powerful marijuana trips that strikes me.
...It makes me think about what the salvia is helping me to understand about myself.
I have noticed that salvia has actually got me thinking a lot...about myself. The experience itself is short, but then for days my mind spins with wonderful thoughts.
....It has helped me not to fear changing perspectives. Life is my experience and all my altered states (suicidally depressed, full-blown
manic, psychotic, salviatic, stoned, drunk, etc) have helped me to understand there really aren't many true, objective, universal truths....I think about 2+2=4 though... that's a hard one to grasp...I also thought about how me thinking there are no universal truths actually being a universal truth and it turns into a paradox...But this is the best way to live a satisfying life for myself. It helps me grasp abstract concepts, keep an open-mind, feel more empathy, fear less the unknown, sense beyond normal bound of ordinary perception...a sixth sense is the salvia I think.
..We can know things within our framework, but can never assume they are true when we extend outside our perceptual capabilities...
I am a physics major (although not making it a career choice as of now) and am immediately reminded of newtonian mechanics...it describes
apparent reality remarkably well, but then at a closer glance it actually turns out to be all wrong.....and only a very good approximation that fits our "scale," our actual physical size and the slow speeds of everyday objects in relation to us....200 years ago this was outside the experience of every being on the Earth...and 200 years from now humans will likely see far beyond our perceptions here today...depending on how history plays out.....keeping in mind it is forever out of our reach to perceive it all, due to our small (and large) size, and limited perceptual abilities in relation to everything around us.
....I believe many tribal civilizations must've (and do still) felt extradinary things. Perhaps not particularly in science, but in regards to wisdom and their very intimate connection with nature and the stars, heavens, cosmos...this is a lost concept on a broad generalized look at United States society... I think people should be allowed to relate to their surroundings in whatever way they find comfortable, but I find so much beauty and peace in a harmonious connection to all things....knowing that even though we can never fully conceptualize it, we are a part of it...
--------------------------------
I'm certain what makes reality reality is simply other people. We share a consensus with them about what is true and real, and when things deviate far from others people's conceptions then things get tricky.
All words carry connotations, and even somewhat different
connotations for different people...words are a poor medium for describing what goes on when we depart from a standard consensus of
opinion and "feeling" (as in psychosis, depression, mania, or a salvia trip)...I have read a few trip reports and although I can never fully understand what a tripper has experienced internally, it seems like
statements of "all reality is a lie" are hard to grasp...because lie has certain connotations....who is lying? what is "reality" as defined here? Does lie mean there is something else? Does it simply mean we are incomprehensibly small, becasue we are. Are we the dream of someone else? Are they someone elses dream? Then again we only understand dreams through our own context...dream simply means something the brain remarkably does when we are asleep....it's just a word to describe an experience in this experience...it's hard to tell what goes on unless you've been there..
I no longer see any sense in having anxiety or worrying about things I cannot do anything about..(Although I do understand that
knowning that doesn't change the fact that someone may be experiencing worry or anxiety over these things).....My mind has played these
tricks on me before (more than I would like)...
I would like to take the spiritual trips, to leave my immediate self and travel....But that has not been in my cards thus far.
I think a possible explanation is that perhaps subconsciously I may be resilient to open my mind on salvia becasue of some amount of lingering pain that has been associated with where I've been before...That's why I become this comically swearing and mildly angry fellow (though the experience does not feel negative at all)..
I think taking some time to meditate and explore this idea without salvia is a good idea.
I am seemingly quite resistent to the effects of salvia, but it certainly has got me thinking about things...
I do know that I want to be very considerate and careful with this drug. Its nature very much requests this as such.
--update: I just smoked about a quarter of a gram of 40x and got just a light buzz and a minor headache. I'm all out and this stuff is too expensive for me to keep continuing in this fashion..
-Tom
If you're interested in the interaction of salvia with someone with a history of "poor" mental health, here it is. I'd REALLY REALLY appreciate and love feedback on this...
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First and foremost I am diagnosed with bipolar I disorder w/psychotic features (I'm sure some doctors would probably have me diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder instead...a bipolar/schizophrenia hybrid that is just the same treatment as bipolar w/psychotic features..it kind of depends on the doctor which diagnosis you get and it can change over time). My doctor says he hasn't given me the schizoaffective diagnosis because my hallucinations are strangely mostly visual rather than auditory and that I do not show very many of the negative symptoms..so I dunno. Though I have heard of people with similar symptoms as me diagnosed as schizoaffective..so it's just a stupid label...
I have been hospitalized once (for over 2 weeks) and have had extended
psychotic episodes involving mostly visual hallucinations and delusions. The first time I smoked pot (or even got drunk) was actually after I had been diagnosed bipolar, at age 19. [Not sure how I stayed away from drugs with the amount of emotional problems I had at the time.]
I am currently 22 and have tried these 'recreational' drugs.
once, MDMA (ecstasy)
many, marijuana (with EXTREMELY varying effects)
salvia
twice, Dextromethorphan (low dose, enough for a subtle spacy echo)
once, opium, smoked.
once, nutmeg (a light several day thing)
many, alcohol
once, Inhaled Nitrous Oxide
prescribed: provigil, ativan, klonopin (sort of recreationals..scheduled)
I've never done acid (it's a really bad idea to combine acid with lithium, so I've heard). I've never done mushrooms either. I have witnessed and talked with many people on both..(you can also take that another way as I've talked with one guy on both at the same time).
My current (I've been on a lot) psychiatric drug regiment consists of 900mg lithium, 150 mg seroquel (that's a low dose), and 150mg lamictal daily.
The only two of these that might have contributed to a worsening of my condition are alcohol and marijuana, likely because of greater use and them being done during a much more "unstable" time.
-----------------The Salvia Experience---------------------------
I will leave the decision on why I chose to experience this out of the report for now.
I purchased a 10x extract from a smoke shop on Telegraph, here in Berkeley. I sat in my room in mid-afternoon and packed a bowl in
my bubbler. I'm not a big pot smoker, but I do end up smoking here and there.
There was some intermittent construction noise in the background and I played Music for Airports (Brian Eno). This is a very great
minimalist ambient album.
I alone on my bed with a lighter (just a normal one) in hand and devoured the extract. I held it in for as long as I could (about 15-20 seconds) and let it go. I felt kind of light at first, but decided another would be good...and then another.
Suddenly a strike in the music gave me a very different emotional perspective on my room. It was akin to any very beautiful emotional moment.
I kept expecting the unknown but was instead hit by a wave of familiarity. The experience was just like one of the strongest marijuana highs I've ever had, the first time I ever smoked MJ. Not the overall thoughts, but the detachment. The feeling that my room and I had been cast out into space, released from temporal and spatial reference points. I knew I was tripping, but I kept on smoking. I wanted to go higher.
I began to talk to myself out loud. It seemed various objects in the room drew my attention, and that the answers to my various questions
emanated from them (not auditory). I remember at first asking why I was all alone. At first I thought I was referring to nobody else being in the room, but received a response from my other self that built upon the question. I began to realize that I am surrounded by good people and was not at all alone..but had been holing myself away as I had been laying in bed on a mild nutmeg for two days before..
This experience was not foreign to me either. In one of my 'psychotic episodes' I walked around talking to various trees that I acquired knowledge and wisdom from. The salvia experience was the same in the "pull" that these objects gave me...
I remember shouting (at least I felt like I was shouting) what must of been a somewhat incoherent argument about why people talk to themselves.
I began to hear people outside whispering and talking about me. At one point it felt like people had all gathered around my door and were
mocking me for all that I had said out loud....This too I was completely familiar with as these are actually called 'delusions of reference' in psychotic episodes. However, that didn't stop me from walking to the door and checking...nobody there.
Things started to take a bad turn when the thought processes of the trip started to take shades of my "worst" pot trip (on two small
cookies during an unstable time). This is in quotes because although it caused anxiety at the time, it was quite interesting and a good
experience in retrospect...
During this pot cookie trip I had actually ended up laying on my bed and couldn't figure out if my eyes were open or not and went through some warped train of thought that severely bothered me at the time....and this was the train of thought that was coming back in the
salvia.
I guess it goes like this (though I haven't completely figured it out): I begin to realize how a true delusion forms and how intrinsic it feels to the person..I then start to believe I've broken from "reality" and have permanently *snaped* and can't come back..However, I seemed to possess a strange sense of calm while on salvia and told myself that *snapping* is not a big deal and not really a phenomenon at all, most certainly not in this sceneario.
Everyone believes things that are not true in other's frames of conception... The fact that I had plenty risperdal (a potent antipsychotic) sitting around helped quite a bit too.
...It's not that big of a deal. I then sit down and stare at the window. The window starts to take on a slight movement toward the type of visual hallucinations I've seen in the past on pot, but somehow I stop it by resisting the temptation to indugle myself in that direction.
...I start to get anxious and remembered that I hadn't set the timer on my watch (I wanted to keep good track in case of a bad trip). I set it. I stared at it...I remember staring at it for about 15 minutes, telling myself I was done here..
The trip ended and I was left with a sense of peace, contentment, happiness and a good amount of energy.
It was like some of my most powerful and often more negative trips combined into one whole powerful and positive entity.
I also smoked the whole gram during the trip....
...I was under the impression that I would be completely knocked back and be unable to keep hitting..so I kept hitting until it was gone (did spill some due to the altered state).
I wonder about the meds decreasing the effectiveness, especially the seroquel (though it is a low dose). 10x is relatively low. I used a
regular lighter and didn't hold the smoke in as long as others are able...
I also had my eyes open the whole time, and heard it's helpful to just close your eyes, relax, and imagine..I'll definitely keep that in mind next time.
Overall this wound up being an expensive trip! I'd like to try again. But next time with more preparation to get more bang for my buck.
It very much surprised me that for the most part I have already experienced most of what happened in this trip before. The overall feel was unique, but that was mostly because of the unique situation....The trip was very much a positive one, though it did have a few moments of mild anxiety.
However, I will say that this is probably the best recreational drug I've taken. If I try again I'll try for a more meditative stance as this drug was definitely forcing a good deal of introspection on my part.
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-PART TWO
After my first experience (written in another report) I moved from 10x up to 17x (one gram). In my previous report I ended up consuming
an entire gram of 10x in one setting...This time I wanted to conserve my salvia and definitely my money...
I think I only ended up with about two or three good experiences out of the 17x. I also upgraded to a torch lighter.
When I first started I was cautious and only used a little bit with pitiful results. I ended up piling it on and finally got some results.
On my first reaction the visuals began to take on the exact form of my worst pot cookie experience mentioned in the previous report (My
previous trip mimicked the thought processes, not the visuals). My surroundings started to warp in on themselves and became somewhat two
dimensional, sort of like I was floating through a real life wet painting. The concept sort of reminds me of the film What Dreams My Come with Robin Williams...a movie I happened to watch during my psychotic episode that occurred after during and after I was hospitalized in October 2005...I probably had the pot cookie experience in November or December 2005.
This was extraordinarily the same visual experience I had on the two pot cookies..(this time lacking the mental element found in my first salvia experience and that particular pot experience).
----this part is also an old pot experience----------------
My roommate during those days was a highly experimental drug user and the night before I left for my parent's house in late December 2005.. I saw a bud of pot sitting on the table and smoked it in his bong (he didn't care) and ended up walking around touching things and feeling like they were touching me before I touched them...My sense of touch was severely altered and almost felt like things were touching me without me feeling them..I then ended up walking in a circle in the room for 2 hours, laying down in this warped state until coming out of it around 5am. I've never met anyone who has had highs this intense on marijuana...
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This exact same sensation came back to me in the salvia and I became so excited that I ran upstairs and I told someone (I don't know her
that well) that the bud of pot I had picked up must've been SALVIA! not pot. I then started repeating how the cookies I ate a year and a
half ago must've been SALVIA! She responded by telling me I should try the 100 something extract and how you're "so fucked up...(memory lapse)." (I didn't hallucinate this, this girl's done a lot of different drugs..)
I then walked to the store and ate a tub of ice cream...Running upstairs and talking to people seemed to completely end the trip.
--------------TRIP 2 ON 17X---------------------------------
This experience was pretty unique.
I went straight back into the realm mentioned in the previous experiences, I had split into two selves and talked openly, out loud, to myself
(I think some people refer to this person perhaps as "lord salvia" in other reports). I ended up laying on my bed and closing my eyes. I felt myself being folded up and pulled down into and out of the earth, further and further....I began talking out, "You want me to go down, you want me to think I'm never going to come back up again. But I know you're wrong, I know I'm coming back. You can't fool me." Right then and there I realized, arguing out loud, that although I knew I was coming back I had to try to let go and try to believe, without fear, that I will not....I let go and let myself float in and through ....but the trip felt like it was cut short and I don't at all remember what happened after that.
----------TRIP 3 ON 17X-------------------------------------
In the last trip I hadn't smoked too much and had come to the conclusion that I didn't really need to smoke that much, I just had to relax, close my eyes and explore...This concept ended up working rather poorly...
I found myself smoking small bits and acheiving minimal results...I tried lining up a few small hits and taking them in succession and getting a slight altered buzz. I would lay down and close my eyes and ended up feeling myself trying to force a journey.. I tried altering my smoking methods. I poked a hole in the bottom of a 20oz bottle, filled it with water and lit a small amount of salvia at the top while I released my thumb. After the bottle filled up with smoke I inhaled it, held it, released it, and only to once again just get a slight buzz...
I was a little annoyed because of the distractingly great cost of this stuff (I hadn't bought it online) and the extraordinary clues I was getting left me wanting to delve much further into this...
I finally gave in and just poured the entirety of what I had into my bubbler and smoked it all in several huge hits.
..And once again my surroundings began to turn flat and it felt as if it was happening slowly in a rotaing sweep. It started from the corner to my right where I heard an actual voice repeating the same thing over and over... I actually can't remember exactly what it was
saying...but it was something along the lines of "come down, come down, come down, come down..." The voice actually felt surprisingly real, but not entirely so. I have met people with mental illness that have head voices as real as day. This voice still had a dream-like quality to it.
Everything wrapped around me and I started talking out loud again.
AN IMPORTANT THING I haven't mentioned yet is that when I'm in a significant salvia trip I get slightly angered and start swearing much more than usual...I started swearing and saying how goofy this was. As it began to finish wrapping around it began to feel like something huge was going to happen when it finished..
...I started mildly shouting something like, "you want me to believe this is going to happen when you finish!? HA!"
When it finished wrapping around and everything became completely compressed into a mesh of color my head hit the wall with a slight
bump and my visual field returned back to normal.
For some reason I don't fully understand. I happily just jumped up, ran upstairs, sat down at the table and started talking to sober people eating and in a normal conversation..I felt a little more self-conscious than usual, but not nearly as much as I do sometimes on marijuana...that pretty much ended the trip.
I had a thought that maybe I was afraid to go back into salvia land, but I don't think that was it at all...I was incredibly fascinated by what had just happened, but for some reason I had a surge of energy and burst upstairs...
I thought about how I had found out that I needed to let go and believe..but then I realized that my refusing to believe was actually an intrinsic part of some of the trips.
..The fact that I would sometimes get somewhat angry and start swearing simply due to the drug itself verified this for me...though that previous time I was able to let the anger go and escape..
--------------40x salvia..to be continued..................
I have since then obtained a good screen for the pipe and half a gram of 40x salvia. I have tried smoking a little, and then a little more with barely any result. I smoked some and started to listen to Echoes by Pink Floyd and began typing this second part. I noticed it well..and the sounds struck pure beauty, but it only lasted a couple minutes.
I SEEM TO BE FAIRLY INSENSITIVE TO SALVIA.. so far...
I've also noticed that salvia gives me muscle aches. It's the similar ache to when I get drunk off wine and have a hangover in morning. I've heard this is perhaps due to poor blood circulation in the muscles involved.
-----THOUGHTS ON SALVIA AND MORE ON MY HISTORY OF PSYCHOSIS IN PARTICULAR--------
**Salvia seems to draw me in due to its strange ability to mimic symptoms of the 3 most important and interesting marijuana trips I've had to an impeccable degree.**** My first marijuana experience, the two pot cookies, and the time I smoked the nug on the table.
I thought that the solution was that they had been salvia, but that's impossible. I know what marijuana looks like, and it was marijuana on that table. I know what marijuana smells like, and it certainly didn't smell like salvia when I finished that off.. It lasted for hours and hours and hours. The cookie experience lasted even longer..and the first time I smoked pot..it was pretty obviously pot my friend was giving me...
I've mentioned that there are some symptoms and experiences similar to the psychotic episodes I've had, but overall salvia and my form of
psychosis are actually quite a bit different. In my psychosis, the hallucinations are much more REAL. I mean I actually would see things in other things, or strange creatures in the form of shadows coming off the floor...quite real..Salvia is real, but at the same time the most intense hallucinations actually happen with your eyes closed...though the two dimensional room thing and the warping was with my eyes open, it wasn't the same..It felt more like space was warping rather than that I was hallucinating.....
The delusions of reference(thinking people outisde are all talking/thinking about you or relating mundane things to yourself) in salvia are actually a pretty accurate rendition of those found in my psychosis though...although this time it's pretty much based on them thinking and laughing about how I'm tripping.......in my psychotic episodes they're laughing about what I'm thinking or saying.
I am also able to rub it off amazingly easy on salvia. I was upstairs and it sort of felt they were all laughing and talking about how I was
tripping, but I just told myself it was the salvia and it was no big deal...in psychosis it's so constant and persistent that it starts to really bother me after a while.
The same goes for any delusion (and after a while they are so constant it's hard to resist not believing them anymore)...this doesn't appear
in salvia because there just isn't enough time and it really dosen't portray those actual types of feelings...at least not from your direct
environment, for me.
In my psychotic states strange bizarre ideas seemed to just come at me from the environment like sharp lightning bolts....A few times the
amount of strange uncommon ideas (what can become delusions) would come at me so fast from all directions that it's hard to keep saying no, no, no, no, no, no, no to all of them all the time..
For example, one time I was in a doctor's office and a fat girl walked in and I felt a sudden urge to scream out, "you're fat" at the same time I was resisting a feeling of emanating whispers from a light socket and communication from a group of sentient plants from the vent behind me......
I think salvia can help people understand this kind of thing more...not so much in the symptoms it produces, but in the way of how the experience can seem so involuntary...sort of dragging your mind in a certain direction....That's how my delusions worked..Pot sort of does this with paranoia for me, but with salvia it's just so much more real. I am aware everyone's reaction this drug is very different...I've just kind of read this helplessness in a few of the trip reports I've read, and it might be one of the reasons some people find salvia so unpleasant..it's just a thought.
--------------------REFLECTING----(wandering might be better--what salvia is all about)--------
But yeah,
...it's the similarity to those few extremely powerful marijuana trips that strikes me.
...It makes me think about what the salvia is helping me to understand about myself.
I have noticed that salvia has actually got me thinking a lot...about myself. The experience itself is short, but then for days my mind spins with wonderful thoughts.
....It has helped me not to fear changing perspectives. Life is my experience and all my altered states (suicidally depressed, full-blown
manic, psychotic, salviatic, stoned, drunk, etc) have helped me to understand there really aren't many true, objective, universal truths....I think about 2+2=4 though... that's a hard one to grasp...I also thought about how me thinking there are no universal truths actually being a universal truth and it turns into a paradox...But this is the best way to live a satisfying life for myself. It helps me grasp abstract concepts, keep an open-mind, feel more empathy, fear less the unknown, sense beyond normal bound of ordinary perception...a sixth sense is the salvia I think.
..We can know things within our framework, but can never assume they are true when we extend outside our perceptual capabilities...
I am a physics major (although not making it a career choice as of now) and am immediately reminded of newtonian mechanics...it describes
apparent reality remarkably well, but then at a closer glance it actually turns out to be all wrong.....and only a very good approximation that fits our "scale," our actual physical size and the slow speeds of everyday objects in relation to us....200 years ago this was outside the experience of every being on the Earth...and 200 years from now humans will likely see far beyond our perceptions here today...depending on how history plays out.....keeping in mind it is forever out of our reach to perceive it all, due to our small (and large) size, and limited perceptual abilities in relation to everything around us.
....I believe many tribal civilizations must've (and do still) felt extradinary things. Perhaps not particularly in science, but in regards to wisdom and their very intimate connection with nature and the stars, heavens, cosmos...this is a lost concept on a broad generalized look at United States society... I think people should be allowed to relate to their surroundings in whatever way they find comfortable, but I find so much beauty and peace in a harmonious connection to all things....knowing that even though we can never fully conceptualize it, we are a part of it...
--------------------------------
I'm certain what makes reality reality is simply other people. We share a consensus with them about what is true and real, and when things deviate far from others people's conceptions then things get tricky.
All words carry connotations, and even somewhat different
connotations for different people...words are a poor medium for describing what goes on when we depart from a standard consensus of
opinion and "feeling" (as in psychosis, depression, mania, or a salvia trip)...I have read a few trip reports and although I can never fully understand what a tripper has experienced internally, it seems like
statements of "all reality is a lie" are hard to grasp...because lie has certain connotations....who is lying? what is "reality" as defined here? Does lie mean there is something else? Does it simply mean we are incomprehensibly small, becasue we are. Are we the dream of someone else? Are they someone elses dream? Then again we only understand dreams through our own context...dream simply means something the brain remarkably does when we are asleep....it's just a word to describe an experience in this experience...it's hard to tell what goes on unless you've been there..
I no longer see any sense in having anxiety or worrying about things I cannot do anything about..(Although I do understand that
knowning that doesn't change the fact that someone may be experiencing worry or anxiety over these things).....My mind has played these
tricks on me before (more than I would like)...
I would like to take the spiritual trips, to leave my immediate self and travel....But that has not been in my cards thus far.
I think a possible explanation is that perhaps subconsciously I may be resilient to open my mind on salvia becasue of some amount of lingering pain that has been associated with where I've been before...That's why I become this comically swearing and mildly angry fellow (though the experience does not feel negative at all)..
I think taking some time to meditate and explore this idea without salvia is a good idea.
I am seemingly quite resistent to the effects of salvia, but it certainly has got me thinking about things...
I do know that I want to be very considerate and careful with this drug. Its nature very much requests this as such.
--update: I just smoked about a quarter of a gram of 40x and got just a light buzz and a minor headache. I'm all out and this stuff is too expensive for me to keep continuing in this fashion..
-Tom
