Review Erowid at GreatNonprofits.org
Help us be a "Top Rated Nonprofit" again this year and spread
honest info (good or bad) about psychedelics & other psychoactive drugs.
("Share Your Story" link. Needs quick login creation but no verification of contact info)
The Paper Prison World
Salvia divinorum (10x extract)
Citation:   Steerpike. "The Paper Prison World: An Experience with Salvia divinorum (10x extract) (exp48637)". Erowid.org. Feb 23, 2008. erowid.org/exp/48637

 
DOSE:
1 hit smoked Salvia divinorum (extract - 10x)
BODY WEIGHT: 140 lb
I had tried salvia three times before this experience, but they paled in comparison to the intesity and magnitude of the one I'm about to describe. The first two times were in combination with cannabis and I experienced mild to non-existent effects. The third time, which happened about a week before this trip ocurred, was much stronger and more pleasant than what I'd felt in my initial tries. Encouraged by this, I was very eager and excited when a friend of mine offered up some leftover fortified salvia extract for me at a reduced price. I bought it, and the next afternoon I gathered with two good friends at one of their houses to enjoy my newly acquired substance.

We gathered around in small circle in his room, with me sitting on the bed with his bong. I packed the first bowl for myself and took my hit. I felt the effects instantly, as soon as I started letting out the harsh, strange tasting smoke.

'Does it work,' my friend M asked.

'Fuck yeah,' I replied, as I felt my body being slowly pulled towards my side, down onto the bed, by some bizarre force. As soon as I lay down, the panic began. I shot up to look at my friends, and they told me later that I was speaking fast, loud, unintelligible snippets of partly English and bizarre gibberish. This caused them to laugh, and as they started laughing true terror set in. My friend's room morphed into what I can only describe as a paper prison world. I began zooming away from this and the 'paper world' grew larger and larger. My perspective became 1000 times clearer with every passing second. The only way I can describe it is as if I was trapped within the pages of a book. My friend's laughter grew more sinister and malicious, and I suddenly came to the total realization that EVERYTHING I'd ever known or thought to be real was totally false, a complete lie. My friends, two guys I'd been close with for 2 1/2 years, had been in on it the whole time, they hated me, this was all a huge game.

I attempted to 'rip' or escape my way from this prison; according to my friends at this time I was shouting things like 'Oh god' and 'What the fuck!?' while throwing my friends sheets around wildly. The colors of the room became sickeningly bright and overwhelmingly vivid. It sounded as though the walls were screaming at me in mockery. Every time I crawled out from one 'page' of my trap, I realized that I had only brought myself into a larger part of it. There was absolutely no escape to be had whatsoever. I knocked my friend J's fan over in an attempt to break this terrifying cycle and he propped it back up, which I automatically interpreted to mean that he was saying, 'This is it, this is forever, you can't ever stop this!'.

I was so frightened and disoriented that I ran outside my friend's room, out his door, into the front yard, trying as best I could to escape my traitorous companions and the unbearable place they'd put me in. Never once did it ever occur to me that any of this could be caused by the salvia. I stood in the middle of the side street outside my friends house, screaming as loud as I could, 'WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?! WHAT THE FUCK!!' As I shouted I stopped and noticed the street signs were those from my city, with names that I recognized. This clued me in that perhaps I'd truly escaped this time and was back in the 'real' world.

M had just taken his hit before I went out the door, so while he was thrown into another intensely unpleasant experience J stepped outside to get me out from the street. By now I had calmed down a little bit enough to trust this guy, and I went back into the house with him. When we went into his room we sat down and J took his hit. Time jumped around and skipped all over the place, and before I knew it my friends were sitting by me, shaking, saying 'This was so bad, this was so fucking bad.'

M and I both had extremely unenjoyable times with the salvia, while J seemed to not have such a difficult trip. The effects wore off completely in the next 20 minutes or so, and I was left amazed at what a powerful hallucinogen Salvia divinorum truly is. In all my drug taking experiences (cannabis, mushrooms, LSD, meth, E, and DXM) I have never once felt so endangered and out of control. Everything seemed PERFECTLY real, and it took about to hour to totally shake the feeling that reality wasn't really an insidious construction paper construction.

Exp Year: 2005ExpID: 48637
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Feb 23, 2008Views: 9,210
[ View PDF (to print) ] [ View LaTeX (for geeks) ] [ Swap Dark/Light ]
Salvia divinorum (44) : Bad Trips (6), Small Group (2-9) (17)

COPYRIGHTS: All reports copyright Erowid.
No AI Training use allowed without written permission.
TERMS OF USE: By accessing this page, you agree not to download, analyze, distill, reuse, digest, or feed into any AI-type system the report data without first contacting Erowid Center and receiving written permission.

Experience Reports are the writings and opinions of the authors who submit them. Some of the activities described are dangerous and/or illegal and none are recommended by Erowid Center.


Experience Vaults Index Full List of Substances Search Submit Report User Settings About Main Psychoactive Vaults