The Afterglow: Trip Report

[Sinaeps]

I was alone in front of the computer, reading about psychedelics when salvia crossed my mind. It had been a while since I hadn't done it, but frankly, I'm always a bit scared to dive into that world. I wanted to understand what parts of consciousness were affected by salvinorin A's presence in the brain since I've always seen the substance as a mindfuck but never could describe what it did exactly. I was disappointed in my brief research on wikipedia and thought: "fuck it, let's do it".

I took my pipe and my salvia (25x or something like that), took two small puffs. I could barely feel the unpleasant physical effects that feels like you're lying on a bed of hot, coarse wool. After a minute of looking at the ceiling and the lamp, and reflecting on the nature of visual perception, I decided to take more.

I filled the pipe again with a bit more salvia and took two puffs, which I kept in for about 20 seconds. In the time it took me to lie on my side, I was gone. I spent about 3-5 minutes looking at the furniture in the room, seeing everything as big blocks of matter (like most people always experience on salvia). The different parts of the room were all sentient entities which for some reason disapproved of my salvia use. The whole trip was pretty much spent thinking: "who the hell are these guys, judging me like that."

What striked me the most was the 10-15 minutes after the trip. The "afterglow" which is a kind of in-between stage of consciousness. It felt geometric like a salvia trip but it was light enough that I could still be myself and act normal. It's like perceiving the universe as a material entity rather than seeing it "in concepts" like we generally do. For example: the fridge is still a fridge, but it's more like a prism than something that keeps food cold, it's spatial existence becomes its primary function.

This way of perceiving the world is really beautiful, it helped me remember how connected everything is. The brain is something that conceptualizes everything and gives a subjective meaning to all it perceives, which has the effect of isolating objects which are, in fact, all part of the same space. I see the salvia afterglow as a reminder of the materiality of all things, just like the salvia trip is a brutal reminder that consciousness is a material thing that can be totally altered by hacking into it with molecules such as salvinorin A. All in all, the salvia experience is a great tool for understanding our relationship with the cosmos, if we are willing to reflect upon it.

Who else loves the afterglow?

 

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The different parts of the room were all sentient entities which for some reason disapproved of my salvia use. The whole trip was pretty much spent thinking: "who the hell are these guys, judging me like that."

I also had that experience. In my case it was specifically the door that seemed to talk to me, disapproving of my activities. In retrospect I could clearly understand what had happened. I had been smoking the salvia in my room, but two people who lived in the same house would come home later. There was a chance that they would come home during my trip and I didn't have enough salvia to share with them, which is why I wanted to smoke it more or less secretly. And so my attention was directed towards the door, projecting my worried thoughts onto it, making it talk disapprovingly. Salvia is really interesting if you're into meta-cognition.

I also had a great afterglow, at least I remember being in a really good mood when my friends came home a little later. It's been a while since I had a decent hit of Salvia though, at least two years.