It's only ridiculous because you ridicule it.
I don't know, it tends to give me a good chuckle.
Sometimes it's a strange, winding road to arrive at yourself.
I remember many years ago getting that practical afterglow. I think we all suffer from degrees of everything. Including OCD. LIke we all have a little of that. After a Salvia session that goes away in me and makes no practical sense for a few days. Dale Pendell also said it nicely when he said they leaves work best when you are in a total funk and have no idea what to do. It always propels me past that.
Totally get that. Even without having to accept any theories about what salvia's action is and means on a more complex level, it's easy to see pharmacologically that it basically works in some significant way as the opposite of standard rewarding addictive drugs, and seems like it causes a rebound into more natural stimulation as opposed to how stimulants cause a rebound into a lower level of activity than normal. That alone definitely seems like it could have an effect on OCD-related behaviors as well.
One other aspect struck me and not sure I can articulate it. When I have my Spring or Fall acid or cactus trips sometimes I like nature. Go hiking, include pretty things in my trip in front of me to witness. So every Spring I like to take a trip when my cherry blossom is full on pink and look at it. Well I did not get a trip in in the Spring. But I did get a Salvia trip in and while I was in a dark and silent basement the fact that that tree even existed meant it was included in my trip. Can't explain that well.
I'm not certain I can relate directly to what you experienced based just on this description, but it reminds me of an aspect of this type of dissociation that I have experienced many times. I think part of what salvia reveals is how an important aspect of the underlying workings of the brain, which I can again directly relate to natural dissociative conditions in meaningful ways, involves the brain's simulation of the physical world being formed in such a way that every single thing that can be conceived as an "object" separate from other objects to a human consciousness is wired to function in the same way as things that are explicitly obviously alive and need to be simulated by the brain as having a conscious perspective via theory of mind, which is to say, for example, I think the brain creates a node of information for simulating the consciousness and relationships of all the people and other animals you've ever encountered like instances of them that you meet in dreams, but it also contains the same kind of "consciousness" nodes for things like plants, rocks, clothing, furniture, drops of rain falling from the sky, spit as it's flying out of your mouth, and anything you can possibly think of that you can perceive as a physical mass separate from other physical masses, and I think that the extremely complex web of interconnected relationships between all of the different nodes of "consciousness" in the self, the others that are simulations of living things, and the others that are not all converge to create the totality of what you feel about yourself in relation to every single other thing that your brain has loaded in your perceptual environment at any given time.
I suspect that this setup for the simulated inner universe of the brain is likely an important aspect of the working of natural dissociation in that it allows the consciousness focused in the body and its equivalent node in the inner world to be shifted to a different perspective matching literally anything else that brain can possibly conceive of in its simulated world, allowing the mind to "escape" in a number of complex ways that can be manipulated in various ways that either help the mind move beyond the situation, simply remain dissociated and immobile until the stressor ends, or shift into a different behavioral mode that might be able to react to the situation in a way more efficient for survival, and I imagine that salvia, simply by chemically stimulating the same functional pathways involved in these brain activities, may cause its sensations of connections to and/or transformations into various other lifeforms or inanimate objects via this same theoretical inner setup.
One of these days I would like to try in light and maybe in the woods. Not sure what happens at that point. All my trips have been dark and silent settings except my very first 5x breakthrough. It was late afternoon and I was on my bed but I was so immersed I forgot where or what I was. It was funny, I had been trying to get something from plain leaf and nothing but little dizziness. Then I got frustrated and crammed in a large pinch of 5x. Too much. Took a hit and science fiction meets a drug. I heard a lady say "Ok well he has been trying to see what has been going on here all his life (meaning through trips) so let's show him". Then some smaller beings did that thing to reality but a definite female headed it up that time. That was when I almost got up, heard a lady whisper "Shhh lay back and stay put". Ever since then I can not get up off a couch if I am in a trance. Thankfully. Also ever since then plain leaf is plenty strong. Like it did lay down a pathway. Half a gram in a tobacco pipe totally immerses me. I don't what to say about people that get thrown out windows. Maybe a disrespect of that plane? Not sure.
I've been told to stay put on salvia as well. I never waited my turn and I was reprimanded for it.
Those crazy things happening to people are I imagine just them freaking out about what's happening to the point that their adrenaline is capable of totally overwhelming the heavy sedative-ish effects and probably makes the hallucinations even more intense. I'm sure those reactions are a lot fewer and further between than they seem and if you consider that some people seem to get deep and powerful effects from salvia from the very first time they used it (which seems worth noting because I know many more who did not) and the people in those videos often smoke high-strength extracts, I can imagine that every so often, you're going to get somehow who is naturally highly sensitive + smoking a hugely potent extract for their very first time = completely delirious and stimulated fear behaviors with a lack of proper sensory perception as they try to regain their sanity. I've seen a number of people freak out on salvia right in front of me too, sometimes doing things like flailing around on the ground and breaking the pipe they smoked it with, and usually they're just confused as hell about what's happening to them. One guy just wanted to be held while he shook all over looking terrified and claimed that with every shake back and forth he would completely thrust into a new alternate reality none of which ever actually contained him, and he had no idea what to do about it.
"Ok well he has been trying to see what has been going on here all his life (meaning through trips) so let's show him".
This relates to what I was saying before. I've come to mostly believe that the realm that salvia shows (or at least seems to often show, as it may do multiple things like any drug) is one that always exists as an underlying operation in the human brain, which just happens to only sometimes become more conscious for the consciousness that is controlling the body, and that it's inhabited by entities (who may or may not be conscious, which is a related but separate philosophical discussion, but regardless they act like they are) who are aware of this general lack of awareness by the consciousness of the body, and thus are responsible for the general repertoire of inner conversations that occur in relation to the core consciousness breaching this plane - recognizing whether or not you've done so before, responding differently depending, and so on.
Glad you did stop by RhythmSpring and Kaleida. It kicked off some Salvia discussion which seems lacking sometimes. If something can scare you and be difficult that it can also embrace you and give the total opposite feeling of ease and Love.
We should have put these in the Salvia thread. That thread never kicks up. I am going to save these posts. Some good ideas in them.
Happy to contribute. I'd definitely discuss things more in the salvia thread sometimes if it was ever active.
I love salvia!! I was perfectly happy ordering plain leaf online before it became popular, before high potency extracts blew up, and before everybody and their brother was smoking it for crazy high, visionary experience rather than using it in a more ritualistic manor with a high safety margin.
I only tried 50x extract once and it's a different experience compared to plain leaf or even 10-15x extract.
Fuck the smoke shops for trying to commercialize on it. They're slowly ruining kratom the same way. Thankfully kratom isn't on the same level when abused.
Salvia was never meant for the masses, but commercialisation killed it for everybody.
I'm always so afraid about kratom becoming illegal. It's the only opioid I ever care to use anymore.
High dosage salvia can be a worthwhile experience, but it often isn't for those who aren't prepared to make something out of it, which I think is probably most people who are first getting into it ever since it became more popularly known. It can also be useful for helping people who aren't getting worthwhile effects out of plain leaf, but might once they've become a bit more sensitized to the experience. I do wish people hadn't focused so much on just the craziness of the strong extracts though, or else it might still be something I could easily go to the store and buy to my heart's content.