Alyzarin

Approaching the Void [Trip Report]
Salvia divinorum
Date: August 10th, 2012

Dose:
T+0:00: 1 hit, smoked, Salvia divinorum (100 mg extract)

Last night, after my parents went to bed, I decided to get out the salvia I'd been holding on to for a while now. The extract I have is standardized to contain 100 mg of salvinorin A per gram, and if you know anything about salvinorin A then you'll know that's a lot! I wanted to be cautious as it had been at least a year and a half (if not more) since the last time I smoked salvia or really did anything like it, so I loaded a very small amount of it into one of my bongs that I've found to mask the taste and (usually) harshness of just about anything very well. This is significant, because salvia tastes pretty nasty and you often need big hits to get appreciable effects out of it. After filling it with water and preparing myself, I grabbed my torch lighter and took it all in one inhale.

I've read many reports of people smoking salvia and saying they always get a slow come-up, or they gets lots of psychedelic-like visuals over reality. While salvia has given me those things before, the first time in a session always hits me like a train with no warning whatsoever, and is nothing but pure dissociative ego loss. I was sitting upright on my bed after I put the bong down, and by the time I let out the hit I was already slipping away. My first thought, which I actually voiced, was "I remember this now." I think I at least mostly understood that when I said it. There was this feeling of approaching the void that salvia always gives me, like I was about to be unplugged from reality. Of course, higher doses actually put you in the void... but that's another story. I wasn't really sure whether or not I was hallucinating at the time, but I do recall that the left door to my room closet and the front-right corner of the bed (from my perspective) had now taken on distinctly humanoid personae, and I spent the rest of the trip talking half to them and half to no one in particular. I felt that they were trying to explain the situation to me, and I responded "Oh, I guess I should wait my turn. I'm supposed to just lie down like this?", after which I knelt down forward on to the bed, not actually fully changing from my sitting position. Immediately after I shot back up and asked "Wait, I'm in control of this, right?" This was a meaningless question, my ego's last attempt to save itself. At the time I wouldn't even have been able to tell you who I was. I felt (mistakenly) affirmed that I was indeed in control, and I so I got back down and rested the side of my face on the bed. I believe I was just waiting for the trip to start (a strange sensation I often get on low doses of salvia), but then shortly afterward cognition started returning to me and I realized that it was already ending. I got up and had an increased amount of energy while walking around, and I couldn't help giving in to the strange feeling of gravity constantly pulling me to the left and ended up twirling around a bit. Shortly thereafter, I returned to full sobriety.

This trip was weak but significant because it reminded me of something that I used to know, but that had been lost to hazy memories and too much drug use: With salvia, you either go for broke or you go home. Like I said, my first time in the session is always just an experience with the void, and afterwards I tend to get more powerful sensory hallucinations. I wanted to see if I could work around that by starting small, but I forgot that not experiencing that feeling all the way just makes me not want to do it again because it feels like I'm still going to have to break through before I get to anything worthwhile, so I might as well get the discomfort out of the way in the beginning. I won't be forgetting next time.