So, I posted about this recenty after the first time I used salvia again after many years off (the only trip not described in my post a few back) but I ended up taking the post down in part due to doubt about my own ideas, and in part because I thought I was maybe being a little too sexually explicit for this thread at the point the discussion was at, but after a bit more experimentation, I think it's worth sharing again.
I've recently also been working with oral Δ9-THC with precise dosages mostly for the first time ever. Both this and the salvia use are because I recently moved to a new state where both cannabis and salvia are legal, so that's why I'm going wild with getting to use salvia again and getting to explore cannabis in this way. I'd been to recreational cannabis states on vacation before so it's not like I've never used precisely dosed Δ9-THC edibles ever, but this is the first time I've actually had the freedom to use them for extended periods and while going about my regular life rather than treating it like a big party while on vacation for a short while, and I'd been wanting to start dosing Δ9-THC precisely for a long time to treat it like psychedelics and such that I like to know precise dosages for and document the effects it gives me to compare to other things in a way I could never do with cannabis before.
It should be noted for this that what I'm going to describe for this is something I've very specifically noted with oral Δ9-THC, not smoked. I've been smoking heavily since moving too, but as many others have said before, smoking and edibles are very clearly different for me personally, to the point that I can easily tell if I've been doing one but not the other at any given time, because they practically feel like different drugs a lot of the time even though they're both clearly cannabinoid highs. I'm not saying some of this couldn't apply to smoked Δ9-THC too, but that's not where I made these obversations, despite using it a lot in this same period and long before then too. This is definitely an oral Δ9-THC thing for me specifically, at least in the way that allowed me to really pick up on and experience this so far.
So basically, what I've realized is that for me, salvinorin A and oral Δ9-THC (smoked salvinorin A at least) seem to be sort of like exact opposites, in at least one very significant way, and in that way they also seem sort of like opposite parallels. It was clear to me the very first time I used salvia recently (which was my very first time using it at all in about nine years) and when I used some edibles a couple days later, and it's only remained clear to me in my experiences since then, strengthening my feeling that I'm actually on to something and not just high and crazy.
It seems to particularly center around a feeling that my breathing pattern is represented internally in my mind visually by a sinusoidal wave, with breathing in representing going up toward one of the crests of the wave, and breathing out representing going down toward the trough of one of the waves, so obviously doing one then the other on the same wave with a single breathing cycle too, traveling infinitely from one wave to the next. With either smoked salvinorin A or oral Δ9-THC, there is a very clear moment for me when the high can first be considered to be peaking where I am approaching one of these two points on the sinuisoidal wave, either a crest or a trough, and seemingly to go all the way with the experience, I have to accept that there's going to be what I perceive to be like a breakage in the overall wave and thus in my breathing pattern, sort of like for a moment I have to accept that my breathing function is going to stop. With salvinorin A, this specifically appears to happen on myself breathing in, approaching a sinusoidal crest, while with oral Δ9-THC, this specifically appears to happen on myself breathing out, approaching a sinusoidal trough. Frankly, I'm not sure what would happen if I didn't go through with them, because I always do now, and I didn't notice this aspect of these experiences before this. I'll save my thoughts on that for the moment.
When I approach this peak point on salvinorin A, as elaborated on in my trips above, there is a fear which I can liken to a roller coaster - specifically, approaching the crest of the ride before a drop, just like in the wave. I feel like I realize but also don't fully appreciate what I've gotten myself into it, and there is a panic as I approach that point, although since I've also learned to just accept the panic and ride it out anyway, it hasn't been taking me long to move beyond that point. The feeling of fear is one that I would compare to a feeling that I'm going to be going to "Hell" in a literal sense: I've explicitly described it as feeling as though I was about to be taken to another world for an infinite amount of time, and the feeling is that that world may lack logic or comfort and be inescapable, or other "Hellish" things along those lines, although I don't usually try to put into words because it's just a feeling, but that does feel like it roughly approximates it. Dissociation (proportional to the dosage at least) does of course occur at that peak point on salvinorin A and it can seem hellish, but importantly, once that moment has passed for me and I emerge on the other side of the wave, I suddenly feel like I'm in heaven, totally blissful and satisfied, even though the body feeling of salvia that accompanies often oddly feels like something that should be uncomfortable if taken on its own, but it isn't at that time where I'm so blissful that it actually almost feels "Heavenly" in comparison to the "Hellish" fear from just a moment before.
With oral Δ9-THC, as I approach the peak point, I instead feel a feeling which in my earlier post that I deleted I likened to feeling "swept off my feet." I also compared it to the roller coaster, except that instead of being the part where you come up to new heights for a big drop, it's the part when you're rushing back down and you take a big curve that starts turning you back upward again to start working you up to what will eventually be the next big rise and drop. Unlike on salvinorin A, where it is interpreted in a fearful way, when this feeling arises on Δ9-THC there is a quick but relieving excitement, stimulated but relaxed is one way I might try to put it but again, it's a feeling that I don't usually try to describe, I just feel. It tends to feel like it came out of nowhere like I didn't see it coming even though it has a predictable time course, and that makes it feel like an exciting surprise, which I completely grasp the moment it starts and I'm like "Yes, it's this again!" (Another notabe opposite parallel to smoking salvia, which often makes me think "OH SHIT, IT'S THIS AGAIN!") It feels very much like I am descending into a beautiful "Heavenly" state, where everything is surprising but familiar, exciting but relaxing, perfectly ordered, and genuinely blissful, and as it happens, I also tend to see a faint but clear vision of something resembling a Julia set fractal, perfectly clicking into place around the entirety of its structure, which then causes me to have an orgasm when it does, which I'll actually vocalize for and everything.
Fractal said:
By the way, I forgot to mention this in my previous posts here or here until now, but smoking salvinorin A also does the same kind of thing at the peak, except that instead of making me orgasm from the complete harmony and order of everything, it makes me laugh about the complete chaos and absurdity of everything (or nothing?).
Again, this is "Heavenly" when it occurs, but notably, as soon as I get beyond that moment of breakage in my breathing wave, it suddenly starts to feel "Hellish" almost like I'm suddeny becoming psychotic, although that fades, and weirdly, even though it feels like I'm psychologically anxious, my body feels quite nice and relaxed, just like a very strong and relaxing cannabinoid buzz, although it suddenly feels like I'm not satisfied anymore, because it feels more like I just was completely but now I've popped out on the other side returning to my need for satisfaction again, which may be part of what makes it feel hellish to me?
So, let's do a quick review.
Quality | Salvinorin A | Oral Δ9-THC |
Sinusoidal Wave | Up Toward Crest | Down Toward Trough |
Breathing Pause | On Breathe In | On Breathe Out |
Anticipation Feeling | Fear, Predictable-Feeling Disorientation | Excitement, Spontaneous-Feeling Understanding |
Peak Feeling | Chaos, Disorder | Harmony, Order |
Release Behavior | Laughter | Orgasm |
Comedown Feeling | Bliss, Weird Body Feeling | Anxiety, Nice Body Feeling |
Trip Trajectory Feeling | "Hell" → "Heaven" | "Heaven" → "Hell" |
As the adage says, you've got to go through Hell before you get to Heaven (or was that Paul Pena?) and in my experience, the opposite seems to be true as well. Once you reach Heaven you're going to end up in Hell instead, but that's okay because you can just go to Hell again if you want to get back to Heaven.
This is something that I learned while dealing with my psychotic issues after my smoked tryptamine binge. At the time I was obsessed with figuring out how to get into Hell because of the
Dante's Inferno-like trip I had had from smoking 15 mg of 5-MeO-EiPT at the end of the binge. After months of pushing my mind in various ways trying to find the way in and documenting my findings, I finally got tired of trying and gave up completely, feeling like I didn't care about anything anymore and was ready to just stop trying, and then, spontaneously, I got in. At the moment I "gave up" I dissociated into a brief state very much like the fractal orgasm of oral Δ9-THC is for me now where I felt like I went backward around the entire loop of time in this universe until I reached my starting point again coming backward from the future and then popped out immediately on the other side of the orgasmic feeling which in retrospect had been rather Heavenly although I was dissociated for it and also kind of freaking out in at least some way that still remained within me to do, but when I did come to on the other side I not only felt that I was in Hell, but also had voices literally telling me so. I ended up spending the next several months working with the voices in my head to understand the infinity of time that had occurred backward and how I had trapped myself in the eternal hellscape, and eventually, probably because I'm insane, I decided to seek Hell again, although this time in a different way from before. I specifically stimulated myself internally through fantasy (which was super intense at the time, easier than just with my normal imagination I think) into believing that my Hellish fantasy that I was purposefully pushing myself into was going to be so aversive that it was going to cause me to completely dissociate into it and that it would be what felt like basically the worst thing I could possibly imagine and that it was going to last literally forever in realistic-feeling time with obviously no possible escape from that and that it was going to be so unbelievably horrible that it would twist my emotions into impossible directions and cause them to blend together in the most beautiful-horrifying symphony of displeasure imaginable that would continuously peak over and over at the most extreme point of infinite suffering that that moment would ring throughout the entire infinite loop at once every time and every time would be experienced simultaneously like the most Hellish, mocking, soul-crushingly incarcerating form of synchronicity possible, and I once again decided that I had given up on struggling in this life enough to let go into it. As soon as I did, I spontaneously hallucinated myself vividly experiencing giving birth to a hallucinated baby, along with an internal scream that was so intense that it seemed to carry me all the way up into a moment of being completely taken into the black void, where I could see nothing but a completely visible and opaque white infinity symbol (like

) floating in front of me in the center of the void. After this moment of nothingness including no thought, I popped out on the other side suddenly feeling as though I was in Heaven so to speak, with all of my stress from before completely released and feeling as though I had finally managed to go all the way in this direction as well, and come out safely on the other side just like I always do, with nothing but bliss and satisfaction to show for it.
It seems to me now like oral Δ9-THC is really stimulating the same pathway in my mind as my original experience, and (smoked) salvinorin A is stimulating the same pathway as the experience that came months later. Essentially, I felt like the former trapped me in "Hell" and the latter brought me back to "Heaven" afterward, and now I feel like oral Δ9-THC and smoked salvinorin A are simple tools I can use to induce the same changes in myself again, which is probably especially easy for me to do now specifically because of what I went through in the aforementioned experiences.
Seemingly notably, in both of my aforementioned experiences there was indeed a specific moment of "giving up" where I was ready to abandon my attachment to my desire to continue this life I'm living, which seems to me as though it could perfectly correspond to my brain reaching a point where it was ready to "allow a breakage in my breath-locked sinusoidal wave" as I was getting at before, like I had to learn how to allow such a breakage to stop by naturally experiencing a state where I genuinely no longer cared, at least on some level, whether I was breathing or not, and by doing so I realized that even when you do experience that you still just keep on breathing a moment later anyway, which now allows me to do the same thing again either way without really worrying about it because of that experience (although it's still vaguely scary every time, at least that I've experienced so far, but maybe it will continue to get lesser over time?).
Anyway, I wonder now, was I experiencing these same things before but simply unable to ride the feelings all the way to the breathing breakage point, causing the states to just end without release eventually? It seems relatively likely to me, although I don't want to jump to conclusions. I always enjoyed oral cannabis plenty before, although I don't recall being able to actually reach the orgasm point with it before. Simultaneously, years ago when I still had access to salvia in my old state, I was always interested in but it could never get past the anxious coming up part seemingly, even when I did manage to trip a bit from it, and tended to feel like there was some lack of closure associated with it as well. Interesting considering that now, oral Δ9-THC is blissful on the ride up but anxious on the ride down for me, while salvinorin A is anxious on the ride up but blissful on the ride down.
Very much looking forward to continuing my experiments with both oral Δ9-THC and smoked salvinorin A to see how (if) they continue to reflect off of one another, and also just in general.
I think that's about all I wanted to say about it for now....
Here's another song.
And another for good measure....
That's all I've got for now.
