The following report of a highly alarming experience is excerpted from
any
early experiment utilizing approximately 1.7 mg. of salvinorin. The
subject
was highly experienced in the use of other psychedelics and gave the
following preface to his report.
"I have smoked DMT several times, it was the ultimate disembodied,
colorful and blissful realm I had known. I have taken full doses of ayahuasca
where the DMT is allowed to become orally active after mixing with another
plant, with its own array of psychoactive properties. I was healed by ayahuasca,
and saw her face. I have used a large dose of ibogaine and was propelled
through multiple universes, breaking through barrier after barrier, out
of body for 4 hours, and had seen the spirit of ibogaine. I also had climbed
over the shoulder of a Kuan-Yin several hundred feet tall. I have been
injected with Ketamine, and was flung into a pin-ball universe of feelings
having colors, and thought I had been taken to a hospital, and had been
cared for a long time, tube-fed, helpless, and realized that was fine.
I was looking forward to a disembodied journey into heretofore undescribedblissful
realms, perhaps occupied by entities with whom I might relate or simply
marvel at, all the while. I knew my drugs, and was a relative "hard-head,"
needing more than most to break through. It was a minute amount of material,
and flew into the pipe immediately upon vaporizing. There was no taste,
nor any throat irritation. I remember thinking 'This is just a little bit
of material, but I got it all.' I had plenty of time to lay back, and during
so, laid my glasses to my left. I exhaled. and the vapor looked like my
breath condensing in the cold dry air outside. I closed my eyes as I felt
the onset of effects. I began to say,
as I have so many times before, 'Welcome. I'm back. It's nice to be
here
again.' My face began spreading in a wide grin. It felt like my face
could
not contain the grin. I must have lost consciousness briefly. Or, there
was no transition. The next thing I experienced was the feeling of my stretching
grin extending outside of my face, or, beyond the borders of what I have
learned to experience as my face. Was there a ripping sound? Was there
a painful feeling of pins and needles, a feeling of the skin being stretched
beyond what is normal? I was laying on my back, on the bed, and the right
half of my body was being stretched out and somehow below me. The left
half of my body was being pulled up and out. The vaulted arch ofour ceiling
opened up, and a Caucasian man, with a hat like a bowler, leaned down to
his fight, down to the brown leg of his slacks. He looked at me, from what
seemed nearly a hundred feet, and said, 'It's time to GO NOW,' and began
moving his right leg forward in a step. As his right leg
swung forward, my body was merging into his pant leg, below his knee,
this part of his body being as tall as I am. Rather, most of my body was
being pulled into his leg. My neck, arms, and head were being dragged forward
as the bed was being stretched.
The visual experience was as if the world, including my body and all
that I
saw, had become flat, two-dimensional, and was a sheet, or a thin rubber
skin, a layer. As the pulling forward and out was taking place, the
colored
forms of what I saw were smeared, as if a running palette of colors,
pulled, stretched, thinned. I pulled back, wondering if I could pull
away
from this tearing of the world. 'It's time to go now.' My body and
the world as I knew it, was being pulled into the black universe, stars
studding the space, while the outline of this man was covered with the
"being pulled", "smeared" reality, of which I was an integral part.
I was stunned, frightened, disbelieving. I think it hurt, but even more
painful was the idea that 'this was it.' My mind began trying to sort
out
what had happened. I saw my wife, (who had not smoked any salvinorin)
I was in our room, on the bed. I was looking at my arms, my legs, and they
were being pulled like rubber cement into the surface of the world as it
was disappearing, moving forward into the brown material of his pant leg.
'Is this all the world is? Part of some big man's pant leg? Its just too
bizarre.' But it was happening. 'It's time to go now.' Almost with
some
impatience, as if I were so muddled as to not know that this was the
end,
the end of this reality, gone. going, being rent, stretched, pulled
into
another very small and insignificant part of something so big it was
incomprehensible. It did not seem right. I tried saying 'I can't believe
this is happening to me. This is too weird. Is this how it ends? A pant
leg, being ripped out and forward. I had no warning, this is not what I
expected.' I was completely convinced that this was taking place. But the
right half of my mouth was not there to properly form the words. My wife
later said that I was speaking gibberish, but there was a sense of wondered
revelation to my tone. She said I looked relatively normal when I opened
my eyes, no enlarged dilated pupils. But she knew, when she heard me, that
I was far gone.
"I looked at my wife. She, too, was being pulled up and out, the right
half
of her body streaming into the movement forward. I thought it was happening
to her, but she was more concerned about how I was reacting than for her
own demise. I thought of the person who had given me the substance, that
this was something he knew, and that my taking this substance was the trigger
for the end of the universe, space, time, all history, all people and things,
and feelings and thoughts, all flattened and streaming forward, into a
smeared palette of colors. My wife later told me I was staring in disbelief
around me and at my body and saying 'It's smeared, it's smearing. It's
the universe. We are moving into the universe, it's ending.' I looked carefully
at my left forearm and hand. I saw the transition between my flesh, and
tiny bubbles of color, streaming upward and outward into the pulling canvas
of matter. My legs were doing the same thing, as was the entire room. 'It's
time to go now!'
The sense continued, hammering. I felt, but did not think, 'No, I'm
not
ready. There is so much undone, unfelt, unsaid.' I felt I should have
been
better warned or prepared. I thought of the Buddha, my patron saint,
and
the teachings he promulgated. There was nothing in them that was even
close to the enormity of what I was experiencing. Did he know about this?
Was he and all his teaching, the life of thousands of years of followers
of his and other religions ending as a thin two-dimensional sheet? It seemed
so trivial compared to how it was ending. I wondered about the plant from
which this material was derived. Is this the reason for the plant's
existence To mediate the ending of the universe?
"To one of my requests for reassurance my wife said it's happening.
relax,
lay back in bed.' I'd been twisting and turning, trying to move away
from
the dissolving edge. I said to my wife 'If this is how it ends, I ought
to
just relax. I will miss you, I'm glad we met. Please lay by my side
so we
can go out together.' She lay down next to me and I kissed her forehead.
She then lay across my chest. enveloping me with her body. I felt her
love, and felt we were ending together. I felt us both merging with the
edges of
the end, and felt my body merging more fully with the sheet of reality
that
we were becoming.
"Some moments later I opened my eyes again. and felt the ripping and
pulling diminishing. I looked up and saw that the ceiling was beginning
to congeal around a well-demarcated line. I looked at my left hand and
saw
there was an irregular line, curving in the same pattern as that of
the
ceiling. My hand was slowly filling in with substance again. I used
all my
strength to roll onto my left side. away from the force that had been
sucking and stretching everything forward. I sat up next to it, and
could
see the outline of the force in the air. I said to my wife 'It's less,
its
over. I need to get out of here.' I was afraid it would start up again
and
felt if I was not in the room 1 could escape it. I said 'I'm down,
I'm not
tripping anymore, I'm fine. I just need to get out of here fast.' I
went to
the door leading outside. My truck was outside. a vehicle I'd had for
12
years. I wanted to look at it to verify its solidity and see how it
was
faring. My wife later said I was crouched and moving extremely rapidly.
and appeared psychotic. The deadbolt was locked, and for a second I thought,
its because there's no way to escape the ending. I then remembered my wife
had locked the deadbolt and went to the dresser where the keys are usually
kept. but was unable to find them. On my way to the other door my wife
managed to get me back in the bed.
"The experience continued to subside. The colors were no longer coming
off my body. I sat on the bed staring at my extremities, shaken, disturbed,
completely baffled, upset, alarmed. exhausted, sad, frightened, stunned.
The room now looked fine, I was no longer "tripping," but still altered.
I
kept saying to my wife. 'I'm fine, now, but I just had an unbelievable
experience. I do not know what to say."
This report provides an excellent description of how frighteningly shocking
and unpredictable a salvinorin journey can be. It also shows another
variation of the bizarre physical dimensions encountered on this substance,
and hints at some of the possible dangers that can arise through its use.
The next report describes
a quite different journey with highly positive results.
