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Dream Within a Dream... Cliche but True
Salvia divinorum (5x extract)
by Pa
Citation:   Pa. "Dream Within a Dream... Cliche but True: An Experience with Salvia divinorum (5x extract) (exp32687)". Erowid.org. Feb 15, 2007. erowid.org/exp/32687

 
DOSE:
2 hits smoked Salvia divinorum (extract - 5x)
BODY WEIGHT: 155 lb
Ok I'm not really sure where to begin but here goes. I've tried many drugs in my life. I'm currently 21 years of age. I've taken many hits of LSD, had a few really bad trips along with many good ones. I have taken mushrooms on numerous ocassions, nitrous, pot, alcohol, various perscription pills, heroin, coke, ecstasy, etc. You name it I've done it. So I figured what the hell could this legal drug salvia really do to my head that so many people have been talking about. So I ordered some.

2 grams of 5X to be exact. Me and some friends smoked it all over the course of a week or so, and wow. This was a new high. It was sorta like acid but it seemed less intense and it had a sort of mushroom/nitrous vibe to it as well. So time went on and I didn't really think much about it until I decided to quit smoking pot again for employment reasons and ordered some more off the internet. It had been about a year or so since I had done salvia and I ordered another 2 grams of 5X to play around with from the same online company. I smoked it a few days in a row, always tripping pretty hard tunnel vision, reality wrapping, weird head trips and mind changes, but nothing too crazy. That is until about the fourth time.

I went over to a friend's house to show him what it was all about. I wasn't in the mood to smoke any as I had been doing it the past few days, so I packed him a big bowl and watched as he sucked it down, choked, coughed and tripped out in his house on the couch. Then he turned to me and said, 'Well... now it's your turn. Do some.' So I was like, 'Well... I have been tripping the last few days.. I dono... but what the hell?' I figured I've done it so many times, it's no big deal. Nothing to be scared of right? So I finished the bowl he was unable to finish himself and it started to come on slowly as it usually does and I felt my mind begin to change, and my limbs begin to feel weighed down.

But it was absolutely nothing, so I decided to pack a huge bowl for myself before it completely wore off. And I did. I took the bigest hit of that shit I have ever attempted. So much in fact that I choked as if I was hitting a big bowl of good chronic. That's when I knew that I only had a few seconds before I was going to be very fucked up. I set the bong on the table and sat back in the recliner to let it take my mind away and do what it does best. I must have blacked out or something at this point because I remember putting the bong on the table and sitting back in the chair and then nothing.

Then something. I was there, but I wasn't. I felt the strange body effects that usually come with Salvia, the pulling, heaving limbs, strange thoughts etc., but something else wasn't right. It felt as though my mind, or consciousness was pulled right out of my head. Now I was looking down at myself as well as the room I was sitting in. My friend was to the right on the couch and I could see my body below. It looked lifeless in the chair. Seinfield was on TV and next thing I know I'm GONE.

Like THAT! BAM! Someone is waking me up in some sort of hospital/set/movie/stage and trying to explain to me that 'it was all fake.' 'It's over now, none of that was real' I was very confused by this and it seemed as though the entire life I thought I had lived in reality was just a big act. Like it was all for nothing. This scared me to death and immediately I wanted my self, my feelings, my mind, my life BACK! I wanted it back! Then the strangest thing happened. The TV came into view.

I was back in the world I was sucked out of. The real world. But there was an infinite number of them sprialing out of my body which was a few feet below my point of view as my mind was outside it all. Above my body looking down. Now here's where things go complete out of wack. Elane and Cramer on the TV show stopped speaking their lines and looked right at me. Elane looks at Cramer and says 'Well, he did it this time.' Cramer responds. 'Yes he sure did' Now I'm freaking out. I'm convinced they are talking about me.

Then as if things couldn't get any weirder, Elane looks right at me and says.. 'You have to go back now' and I could hear her word for word as if she was there talking to me in the room. I was confused by her statement, and sort of telepathicly asked her what she meant. Then she responded. 'You have to go back to your body.' I realized my body was still on the chair lifeless as my mind drifted through these multiple realities. Each one a little different from the next. In some of them I was dead on the couch, in others I was alive, in some I chose not to smoke the salvia, some I was smarter, some I stupider.

Again I was baffled. I couldn't figure out how to return to my body and in a more serious, drastic, almost frantic way, Elane raised her voice and got my attention. 'You have to go back to your body NOW! or else you will DIE!' Now I was completely terrified. I was convinced that if I did not figure out how to get back, my body would remain lifeless in the reality I left. I immediately saw visions of ambulances arriving and carring me out, my friend freaking out, calling 911, trying to revive me etc.

At the same moment I saw time folding up into a big ball, it felt as though I could repeat what had just happened and redo it all. I saw myself walking into my friend's house, talking about the Salvia, packing him bowl, everything that lead up to the state I was in, all while I was stuck outside of my body trying to return. Caught in an endless loop of time. It seemed that each time I would attempt to return I would miss the reality I came from and try to slip into an incorrect, yet similar one.

I attempted to chose one in which I was smarter and Elane and Cramer looked at each other a laughed out loud. Then Cramer said something along the lines of, 'No, no, no, you can't do that! You can only chose one where you are stupider or stay the same, you can't come here and decide to return smarter than you were in the reality you left.' So I was forced back out into a sort of limbo. I sat and watched as thousands and thousands of similar worlds all parallel to each other swirled around and around, each one just a tad different than the next. Then Elane said, 'Come on you have to go back OK? Go Back!', the way a mother would to a child who wanted chose something that she knew was wrong yet was determined to let the child make the choice on their own and learn from their mistake if they made the wrong choice.

Then she faded away along with all the choices, and I missed my chance. I was dead. I could never return. I woke up in another world. As some kid on a table in a hospital who had just come out of a coma. Everyone in the operating room was so happy that he had woken up and now I was HIM! But I knew this was wrong! I had chosen the wrong reality to return to once again. So I left. I don't know how, but I did, and as I was leaving all the people's faces in the room took on a very sad expression as if the kid had awoken and then gone back into his coma or died.

As for 'me'? Back to the void. To limbo. Realities swirling around once again and now I could see my body again on the chair still lifeless. And I felt that there was still hope! I leaped into it with all my heart, mind, and soul. I thought I had made it back, but Elane returned in my field of vision and said. 'No! You can't do that.' 'It's too late to return now.' But I fought her words as they peirced through my mind. I somehow had control of my once lifeless body now and I jumped up from the chair and turned to my friend.

'CIGARETTE !' I screamed at him. He looked shocked and just said what!? I said back 'I neeed a cigarette! NOW! I need to smoke and get out of this chair err house err world.. somehow....' very disoriented still. He later told me I looked like mad man who was about to lose it. That I looked insane. Elane kept telling me 'It's too late, you missed your chance' and the limbo land kept trying to return, trying to pull me back in away from myself, and I could feel it washing over me. But I fought it harder and walked away almost running into the front door, and then the kitchen counter all while mumbling that I need a cigarette.

I very nervously said, 'TURN OFF THE TV.. PLEASE TURN IT OFF PLEASE! IT'S FUCKING WITH MY HEAD!' and luckily my friend did. And POOF! Elane vanished... still hallucinating pretty hard but almost 95% sure I had made it back and was not dead, relief spread over me. I felt as though I had won. Just barely. It felt so good to have control once again. I was back and my reality was real again. Though I was still extremely agitated and fucked up. I realized that I had smoked Salvia and was tripping. Something that I had previously been completely unaware of once the drug took hold of me.

We went outside and smoked. I saw people walking by his apartment glaring at me, whispering to each other. 'They're talking about me' I thought to myself. I was later told that this was all just some paranoid delusion I was continuing to have from the drug. So slowly but surely it wore off. I realized about 10 to 15 mins had passed, but to me it felt like an eternity. It was very similar to a bad acid trip I had in the past where I lost control of my mind and thought I was dying or was dead.

Like waking from reality and being totally convinced it was all a dream. A joke. Then waking from the joke and thinking that it was also unreal, over and over until the brink of insanity. Very unnerving. Extremely frightening. I begin to wonder how fast my heart must have been racing while sitting on that chair.

So all in all, very bizarre but I learned something. Though I can sometimes sit and swear I'm ready to leave this world at any moment, that death is natural and I could and WOULD embrace it. This drug showed me how much I really do value life. It showed me how much pain and fear comes with the realization that it is all gone. And how happy I was to discover that it was all still there waiting for me, and that I made it. I found my way out. I still to this day wonder what would have happened had I not listened to Elane telling me to go back to my body or if I had believed her when she said it was too late to go back after screwing up my return a number of times.

I may try Salvia once more and do just that, but it will be a long time from now. I don't really have the nerve to attempt it again. Sitting here now with a bag of 5X left and I have no desire to lose my mind like I did that day. I like my mind. I like sobriety. I like what this drug has taught me and taking it again, I'm not sure I can learn anything else. I can only fall down further, and come back stupider as Cramer explained. It's crazy I know. Cramer and Elane weren't really there, but that's what I experienced and I hold experience higher than any rational thought that could ever abstractly show me it was false.

Thanks for listening.

Exp Year: 2004ExpID: 32687
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Feb 15, 2007Views: 75,298
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OBE (332), Salvia divinorum (44) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Entities / Beings (37), Mystical Experiences (9), Difficult Experiences (5), General (1)

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