NOTE: SAVLIA IS A PERFECTLY LEGAL ANCIENT HERBS USED BY SHAMANS/WITCHES IN CERTAIN TRIBES FOR RITUALS AND WHATNOT, AND YOU CAN EASILY BUY SOME ONLINE.
Smoking Salvia Divinorum was my first hallucinatory experience, and one I will never forget. Throughout this writing I’ll try to explain my mindset before trying the drug, what I felt / experienced, and my afterthoughts. However, my sense of time was extremely distorted, so events that are described in detail could be what I felt in a fleeting instant (although it felt like more). Let’s get started.
It was the first day of school and I was looking for something to do after school. My plan was to go smoke a copious amount of marijuana with my friends and spend the rest of my day in a daze, but when I was offered Salvia Divinorum I couldn’t resist. Salvia, this magical herb I had been researching for the past two months. I bought it, told my friends, got them hyped, and then we set off to a park. It was about noon and the sky was clear blue and sunny, it was comfortably warm. I and five of my friends entered the park jittery and excited. I had been telling them of what I knew about salvia, and the potency of it (especially extract). I had butterflies in my stomach as I did not know what to expect of my first experience hallucinating.
My friend had a large blanket in his bag, designed with concentric squares. Each square had a different colour, so looking at the middle of the blanket it could give the illusion of looking a far distance. We set down the bong and decided how we should go about smoking the extract I had purchased. We decided that meditation would be a good thing, to relax us and get the nervousness out of our heads. Our sitter, who had already experimented with salvia, led us through the meditation and after I felt slightly more relaxed, but the butterflies were still there. I was both excited and scared when I packed the bowl, then I took my first hit.
Nothing. Didn’t feel anything, so I took another rip, then another, and another. Four tokes later and I put down the bong. After putting down the bong I immediately felt a strong, sleepy buzz settle over me. It was like a shroud that started from my head and gradually moved down my body, putting my body in a sleeplike state. All of a sudden my sense of reality was shattered when I felt my perception get divided into thirds. It was if my vision was a circle, and it was divided into three portions, but I could only focus at one at a time, which was the one on the right of my vision. The thirds weren’t perfect though, the two that weren’t in my vision were skewed and pushed to the left side of my head, and dim so that I couldn’t see into them. I noticed I actually couldn’t move my head out of the third it was focusing on, so I gave up the attempt. None of this felt remotely scary though, I felt calm because it was all so natural… then my trip was kicked into overdrive.
All of a sudden my ribcage on the right side of my body exploded outwards into the distance, which I later noticed was the blanket. The small square in the middle of the blanket was the furthest peak of a mountain, and the largest square on the edge was right by my body, and all the squares between them were fitting perfectly into this. I saw a massive mountain chain right in front of my eyes. I then looked down at my right side of my body and saw that my flesh melding with the closest peak of the mountain, and then continued on in the distance. I felt like I was this massive mountain range, which can only be described by the word awesome. I don’t mean to use it in the ‘whoa dude that’s awesome’ way, I mean I was completely filled with awe and wonder. I was this majestic mountain chain that extended so far into the distance, and each of the mountains’ slopes was a different colour. It seemed like this was some amazing reflection of the sunset off the snow. The sky was clear blue, but in the mountain chain the sun was setting. But afterwards I realized that was because each square was a different colour.
Then an indescribable amount of time passed, it seemed like millions of years, but I was a mountain so millions of years wasn’t a particularly long stretch of time, while I was fused with this mountain chain, while I was this mountain chain. I still felt the presence of my body, but it felt like the left side of my body, including my head, was at the top of the peak of one of the mountains, while my right side was fused with the mountain chain. I had an incredible feeling of being very high up in the mountain, and I felt the wind racing against me and my body teetering on top of this peak… but I was held from falling by the mountain chain part of me that was planted in the ground. Not only did I physically feel like a mountain, but also I mentally felt like one. Vast ecosystems were spread across my slopes, and I felt the responsibility of being a mountain, of always being there. I felt that it was my duty to always stay there, and I felt rewarded by the fact that I was a constant in these living things’ lives. I was something that could always be depended upon, I would always be there. This all felt perfectly natural and I was not as terrifying as you might imagine it to be.
When I came out of this trip I realized that the bong hadn’t even made it to the third person yet, they were all staring intently at me. “What did you feel?” “How was it?” they badgered me and I simply told them to smoke some for themselves, which they promptly went about doing. I felt buzzed, kind of like I had smoked some marijuana and I watched them pass the bong around. Two of my friends felt no effects, but one of them was having an intense trip.
