DOSE:

2 hits

smoked

Salvia divinorum

(extract)

BODY WEIGHT:

195 lb

My life has in many ways become a series of seasons marked by intense interest rather than specific events. Some topic or concept will catch me, often totally unawares, keep me up at night and see me pouring over various texts for extended periods of time. These seasons change at varying intervals, some diminishing rapidly after intense focus, others carrying themselves on top of other seasons for quite a long time. One of the more consistent seasons in my life recently, arguably due to the fact that I am incredibly unhappy, has been the question of eternal consciousness. I’ve been faithfully hunting down and dissecting information on the subject of spirituality, reading through many of the religious scriptures and philosophies, as well as looking into the paranormal, out of body experiences and near death experiences.

When I read about salvia and subsequent claims of out of body experiences, I was intrigued and ordered some online. I hoped to substantiate the claims on my own, perhaps bringing about some kind of personal resolution of whether or not I am a soul inhabiting a body. I say personal, because I’ve become more and more certain that subjective experience is what really matters. Science and empiricism scoffs outright at OBEs and NDEs, because they would exist in a realm that is, for them, impenetrable. To likewise write them off entirely for myself would be tantamount to being left half made up, unfinished, and very possibly as hollow and dispirited as I am today.

Using salvia was not something that I wanted to jump into unprepared. I went online and read a lot of the other stories, noticing that a good number of them either involved the user being frightened of their experience or that they encountered something that they weren’t prepare for. I thought, perhaps, that reading through several of these experiences would prevent similar unexpected things to happen to me, or at least mitigate their effects. I also felt slightly more confident having already had other experiences with hallucinogens, including psilocybin, DXM and Morning Glory (also a dissociative) a decade earlier. However, part of me realized that no matter what I had done before or what preparation I undertook, a beyond-threshold hallucination was nothing that can be prepared for. Reading through some of the common threads of others’ experiences wouldn’t make the experience itself any less forceful, and probably wouldn’t be recognized until afterward.

One can’t know what it means to have your reality hijacked until it actually happens. Today, it happened to me.

I loaded a small first pinch of salvia 15x. The first hit I took through the bubbler (hand-made; I don’t smoke pot or use other drugs anymore) had very minor effects. I noticed that my awareness was aligned very closely with my body, which everywhere felt as if it were sinking back (in the opposite direction than that which my eyes were facing) and down (toward my feet and into the floor). I find it necessary to explain things in terms of directions for the first hit, because after the second hit and crossing the threshold, spatial terms in correlation to my surroundings changed drastically.

When the thick smoke of the second, much larger hit went into my lungs, I knew that I had done too much. I had wanted to build up to what I knew was about to happen. One of the biggest reasons I had wanted to wait was due to the fact that I was alone. I had wanted to take some small samples, familiarize myself with the general experience, and go beyond the threshold with a sitter. Now I’d committed the cardinal error of someone who has very little self control, and I was going to have to go through this whether I wanted to or not, ready or not.

I placed the bubbler on the window sill and withdrew my hand. I must have gone back onto my haunches and my vision, I think, was still filled by the window and the window sill and the curtain that I had partially draped over a small window-door that swings inward. I had opened it so that I could blow the smoke outside, because I don’t like smoke in my living area. In hindsight, I can only assume that this sight, this small, four by four area, was the totality of what would become my hallucination. I don’t know this with certainty. One of the reasons I can’t be sure that I was looking at the window the entire time is because I have a recollection of what I can only call a blank space between the moment I set the bubbler on the window sill and the full-blown terror of what I experienced afterward.

The feeling of a blank space is difficult to quantify. There was, and remains, the awareness of that space existing. Paradoxically, it was like having a bubble of nothingness wedged into a measurable space so that I feel as if I had been in that position, leaning back on my haunches, tilting away from the window, for a very long time. Likely it was only a matter of seconds. Nothing happened during that time; I certainly can recall nothing about it other than it existed (in its peculiar quality of being totally void of anything). The closest analogy I can think of is that it resembled the part of sleep that goes on for a very long time between dreams— except, of course, that I am more aware of it now than one is of a sleep cycle upon awakening. I find myself wondering if that empty, hollow place is what death would be like without a soul. Except, of course, it would never end. There would never be a moment like I have now to reflect on how blank and empty it really was.

There was also the vague impression of changing. There was darkness (ironic, considering I had been facing the bright, open window when I took the hit) and my head dropping down and to the right. This was important in relation to the next event. Out somewhere, I suddenly became aware of the universe. As I’ve mentioned before, that universe was incredibly limited and yet I thought that it was everything. I think it was composed of the sight of the window and the window sill and the light coming through, but I don’t know. Toward the end I found myself staring at this space, but during the peak of the event it had transformed so utterly and fully that to say that I had simply been staring out the window the entire time would be to dismiss the way in which what I was seeing had become EVERYTHING. I was staring at this space and realized, without the slightest reservation or disagreement, that here was the entire universe before me. I had absolutely no frame of reference. I did not know who I was; I was entirely without identity and a sense of “I”—at least at first. And even while the “I” returned by degrees (as the scope of my vision turned or moved to the left) I had no store of knowledge to compare it with anything. Imagine yourself trapped in a bottle and you believe that the interior of that bottle is the entirety of the universe. You completely forget that anything except what is right there in the bottle exists.

At any rate, I will interject briefly here the impossible nature of a reality-hijacking experience. One might want to imagine, quaintly (and in large part this is true of mushrooms and possibly other hallucinogens) that one is fully aware of being himself or herself and then when the trip begins, one can say “Well, now I’m tripping.” That was not the case here. I didn’t enter the hallucination. I became the hallucination. The sense of self dissolved completely and fused utterly with the experience. I think this is what many salvia users refer to as when they say that what they experience is more real than anything they've ever experienced. Now, everything that I was seeing was not only absolutely real to me, it was becoming increasingly terrifying. Out of the nothingness of earlier, it was becoming clearer and clearer and more solid—this construct of light and shape that I was looking at, perhaps whatever my mind was making out the window. Along with the clarity of vision came information. I wouldn’t call it a voice; it would be far more accurate to say that it was a telepathic communication, or an understanding that I was absorbing from the universe (this bottle I was now in).

And what it “said” was essentially, “Everything you’ve ever experienced is a lie. This is the real world.”

Now, because I had no frame of reference, it was difficult for me to dispute this feeling. It simply made me feel somewhat dismayed. I was disappointed, and afraid. Part of me regretted that I should lose everything, and I wanted to go back, but I didn’t know what I would be going back to. I still didn’t really understand what was happening. I’d totally forgotten that I’d smoked (remember, I had absolutely no frame of reference). But suddenly, and this seems to be a common occurrence on salvia, I had the notion of fleeing. But I didn’t physically move—not yet. I needed to turn, perhaps toward where I thought the voice was coming from. I turned to the left.

The act of making this turn took an eternity. All visuals began to split into countless, separate images, like one big giant trail of images. I felt like I was working really hard to turn, but my vision wasn’t going anywhere except perhaps to increase the number of fractured images. My panic increased with every moment. It reminds me now of the scientific theory that contends that time is really only a series of closely overlapping frozen moments. I was getting down to the very fabric of time. I truly began to realize what the “entity” meant when it said that this was the real world. I just kept becoming more and more aware, on a true level of understanding, that nothing else had been ever been real. I was seeing down to the very core of existence and was in a state of pure panic. It was terrifying.

At that point I began to fear that I would be stuck there forever. Although I didn’t know what else there was, I was beginning to think and hope that there was more than just this. I began to think, “OK, I’m done, let me go back to what was now,” only to turn harder to the left (as if looking in that direction would take me out and away from here) and to have the current reality snap back with an even harder reprimand. It was almost like the reply was, “You still don’t get it. THIS IS REALITY.” I got the feeling of the other presence around me watching me with derisive amusement. The panic was indescribably intense.

After an indeterminate length of time, the thought finally came through: “I’m hallucinating,” followed quite quickly by the realization of where I was and what I had been doing. I remembered that I had smoked something. I realized that some of the discomfort that I’d been feeling was the cold air coming in through the open window and hitting me through my thin shirt. I found myself looking out the window and was bewildered. Had that been the thing I’d been staring at all this time, the thing that had become my entire universe? I was still panicked, and in a way, worse off than before as I became aware of my body. I stood up, staggering, very frantically grabbed the salvia packets and tossed them into a box. I was thinking that I’d have to throw all of that away. I never wanted to experience that again. I felt a palpable sense of shame.

Then perhaps the worst feeling of all as I staggered into the room where my bed was, I couldn’t quite grip the sense of just being. I wanted to cover myself with my sheets and sleep and forget. I had this powerful and irritating sensation that my shoulders were exposed, so that I wanted to fold myself in two and put my head between my legs. I had an irksome desire to return to the womb. It was as if I still couldn’t come to grasp the notion that I was an intact, conscious, autonomous being outside of that damned place I’d just experienced.

Therein lies one of the greatest lessons in all of this, for it is exactly those claims (that I am a conscious, autonomous, free being) that are the most insurmountable in my existence. My subconscious is rife with anxieties and fears; I believe that salvia exposed them to me in a frighteningly real and yet figurative way. Their source is simply the helpless panic I feel when I intimate and truly understood that nothing in this world will ever happen unless I cause it to happen. My fanciful, unrealistic expectation that good things in this world will just fall in my lap has brought me to a point where I’ve stopped living. I don’t live as a cause, but as an effect. I’ve stopped making things happen, and either wait for them to occur or continue to exist as I always have, waiting in an empty, gray haze where nothing happens. I’ve allowed myself to fall into the bottle.

Salvia is a teacher. It connects one with a deeper, secret place that can scare the shit out of you. It is a terrifying thing to come face to face with what you are. While I still don’t have all of the answers, I know with certainty that I can’t continue to stop living because I’m afraid there may not be a metaphysical purpose for it. I may cease to exist when my body dies, but I’m alive now, and I need to start living.

Exp Year: 2011	ExpID: 90355
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 30
Published: Nov 16, 2025	Views: Not Supported
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Salvia divinorum (44) : Alone (16), Entities / Beings (37), Difficult Experiences (5), First Times (2)