EgoTripper
Greenlighter
Bought a sick water pipe and, on a whim, some of this salvia stuff I'd heard so much about. After watching videos of people freaking out on YouTube for an afternoon, and researching appropriate dosing, I thought I was ready. I'm pretty experienced with psychedelics (shrooms, acid, ayahuasca), so I thought I could handle what I understood to be a moderate dose.
I recorded the audio (no video, alas), so I know generally the timeline that followed. Also, as I was coming down, I recorded myself talking through what I'd experienced, so I'm proud to be able to provide a detailed recollection of what was easily a Level 4 "Vivid"/Level 5 "Immaterial" trip (to use the standard Salvia trip rating scale).
The last thing I remember was lying back in my bed, with headphones playing some chill instrumental trance music. I expected a typical head-trip, like shrooms or ayahuasca. The Intertubes had led me to believe I might have some choice as to whether or not I would remain in bed. The Intertubes were wrong.
WITHIN TEN SECONDS, I was out of bed, stumbling around my room and knocking the magnetic dry-erase markers off my whiteboard. I had promised myself I wouldn't do this. But I was no longer entirely there. In fact, I was no longer in my room at all. I vividly recall where I was, and what I saw there will haunt me forever.
I had been "peeled up and off of" Existence. What does this mean? Think of those cartoon characters who get flattened by a steam-roller and have their two-dimensional asses peeled up and off of the asphalt. That was me, except the asphalt was Existence. I had been "snorkeling" through it all my life, and someone had just grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and pulled my head up above water so that I could look "Up" for the first time.
Looking "Up," I saw that Time was a giant, crushing wheel, with horizontal tire treads like those on a tank (or like the teeth on a gear). Existence was the ground the Time-wheel was rolling upon, the ground I'd just been peeled up and off of, where I'd spent my whole life snorkeling through without looking "Up" at the giant crushing Time-wheel above me. I saw that the Past was the sequence of tire tracks stamped onto Existence by Time as it rolled inexorably forward. And, most critical to my freak-out, I saw that the Present was a prison: the temporary space between whichever two tire treads happened to be touching Existence at this moment, and that I was like an ant trapped between those two treads.
And when I say "trapped," I mean, I was there. There was no bedroom. There was just this nightmarish new Present-prison between tire treads. I could hear other people screaming, too: either Future Me's waiting to be stamped into being as the next two treads touched Existence, or Past Me's being crushed and ground up to make room for Present Me, or maybe other people also trapped in the Present but in a neighboring Time-wheel. I'm not sure which. But they were all very unhappy. And I haven't even gotten to the aliens yet:
I could feel these cold, calculating, extra-dimensional entities out there, beyond the walls of my Present-prison, and I could feel that they were a little agitated about me, because I was supposed to be ignorantly snorkeling through Existence like everybody else. It was like I was a patient on an operating table who'd woken up too soon, vaguely aware of panicky doctors trying to put me back under. But I didn't like this idea, because I had associated my identity with Present Me: Future Me was a threat, someone who would replace me as soon as the next two treads of the Time-wheel touched ground, leaving me to be crushed and broken and run over in the Past by the Time-wheel as it moved on without me. I didn't want to go to sleep only to be ground up into the Past by the Time-wheel just to make room for Future Me. I was all "Hells no!", and I did what any reasonable person would do upon being trapped like an ant in an alien trash compactor Time-wheel: I freaked. The fuck. Out.
At this point on the recording, we are two minutes in (and this includes the time it took me to narrate through taking the salvia). My resulting freak-out lasted another four minutes. It includes sounds of me banging against walls in my attempts to escape my between-two-tire-treads Present-prison (I distinctly recall thinking: "I need to get out the sides..."); yelling things like "WHY NOT?!" and "GIVE ME REASON OR I'MA FREAK OUT!!" to these aliens; and breaking a lamp. This last bit was especially unhelpful because, in addition to plunging my room into total darkness (great, now I'm trapped in a dark alien trash-compactor), it also covered my floor and dresser with shards of glass that I proceeded to walk through barefoot (the floor) and beat my fists against (the dresser), all without suffering a scratch (you can hear glass crunching on the recording though, it's creepy, as I could have slit my wrists and died). When I thought it was over, I was convinced I'd driven myself hopelessly insane ("How can I go back to life knowing that we're all trapped between tire treads in a wheel, and now I'm back asleep, face down and snorkeling just like the alien-doctors wanted me to?!"). That lasted about twenty minutes. Then I was ok, either because the salvia wore off, or because the alien-doctors upped my anaesthesia. I am still not sure which, and I have decided that any further rumination on this issue would be . . . counterproductive
So that is my nightmarish tale of six minutes of salvia. If I ever do salvia again, it will be somewhere bright, outside, and free of lamps.
Edited to add: Just because you regularly shroom / trip on acid without a sitter does NOT mean you can do the same with salvia. This shit will completely obliterate every part of you that you have come to rely on to keep you safe during trips on less powerful stuff. The sound of me walking barefoot over shards of glass will be with me forever. (It was a big lamp. They were big shards of glass. Things could have gone SO very wrong.)
I recorded the audio (no video, alas), so I know generally the timeline that followed. Also, as I was coming down, I recorded myself talking through what I'd experienced, so I'm proud to be able to provide a detailed recollection of what was easily a Level 4 "Vivid"/Level 5 "Immaterial" trip (to use the standard Salvia trip rating scale).
The last thing I remember was lying back in my bed, with headphones playing some chill instrumental trance music. I expected a typical head-trip, like shrooms or ayahuasca. The Intertubes had led me to believe I might have some choice as to whether or not I would remain in bed. The Intertubes were wrong.
WITHIN TEN SECONDS, I was out of bed, stumbling around my room and knocking the magnetic dry-erase markers off my whiteboard. I had promised myself I wouldn't do this. But I was no longer entirely there. In fact, I was no longer in my room at all. I vividly recall where I was, and what I saw there will haunt me forever.
I had been "peeled up and off of" Existence. What does this mean? Think of those cartoon characters who get flattened by a steam-roller and have their two-dimensional asses peeled up and off of the asphalt. That was me, except the asphalt was Existence. I had been "snorkeling" through it all my life, and someone had just grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and pulled my head up above water so that I could look "Up" for the first time.
Looking "Up," I saw that Time was a giant, crushing wheel, with horizontal tire treads like those on a tank (or like the teeth on a gear). Existence was the ground the Time-wheel was rolling upon, the ground I'd just been peeled up and off of, where I'd spent my whole life snorkeling through without looking "Up" at the giant crushing Time-wheel above me. I saw that the Past was the sequence of tire tracks stamped onto Existence by Time as it rolled inexorably forward. And, most critical to my freak-out, I saw that the Present was a prison: the temporary space between whichever two tire treads happened to be touching Existence at this moment, and that I was like an ant trapped between those two treads.
And when I say "trapped," I mean, I was there. There was no bedroom. There was just this nightmarish new Present-prison between tire treads. I could hear other people screaming, too: either Future Me's waiting to be stamped into being as the next two treads touched Existence, or Past Me's being crushed and ground up to make room for Present Me, or maybe other people also trapped in the Present but in a neighboring Time-wheel. I'm not sure which. But they were all very unhappy. And I haven't even gotten to the aliens yet:
I could feel these cold, calculating, extra-dimensional entities out there, beyond the walls of my Present-prison, and I could feel that they were a little agitated about me, because I was supposed to be ignorantly snorkeling through Existence like everybody else. It was like I was a patient on an operating table who'd woken up too soon, vaguely aware of panicky doctors trying to put me back under. But I didn't like this idea, because I had associated my identity with Present Me: Future Me was a threat, someone who would replace me as soon as the next two treads of the Time-wheel touched ground, leaving me to be crushed and broken and run over in the Past by the Time-wheel as it moved on without me. I didn't want to go to sleep only to be ground up into the Past by the Time-wheel just to make room for Future Me. I was all "Hells no!", and I did what any reasonable person would do upon being trapped like an ant in an alien trash compactor Time-wheel: I freaked. The fuck. Out.
At this point on the recording, we are two minutes in (and this includes the time it took me to narrate through taking the salvia). My resulting freak-out lasted another four minutes. It includes sounds of me banging against walls in my attempts to escape my between-two-tire-treads Present-prison (I distinctly recall thinking: "I need to get out the sides..."); yelling things like "WHY NOT?!" and "GIVE ME REASON OR I'MA FREAK OUT!!" to these aliens; and breaking a lamp. This last bit was especially unhelpful because, in addition to plunging my room into total darkness (great, now I'm trapped in a dark alien trash-compactor), it also covered my floor and dresser with shards of glass that I proceeded to walk through barefoot (the floor) and beat my fists against (the dresser), all without suffering a scratch (you can hear glass crunching on the recording though, it's creepy, as I could have slit my wrists and died). When I thought it was over, I was convinced I'd driven myself hopelessly insane ("How can I go back to life knowing that we're all trapped between tire treads in a wheel, and now I'm back asleep, face down and snorkeling just like the alien-doctors wanted me to?!"). That lasted about twenty minutes. Then I was ok, either because the salvia wore off, or because the alien-doctors upped my anaesthesia. I am still not sure which, and I have decided that any further rumination on this issue would be . . . counterproductive
So that is my nightmarish tale of six minutes of salvia. If I ever do salvia again, it will be somewhere bright, outside, and free of lamps.
Edited to add: Just because you regularly shroom / trip on acid without a sitter does NOT mean you can do the same with salvia. This shit will completely obliterate every part of you that you have come to rely on to keep you safe during trips on less powerful stuff. The sound of me walking barefoot over shards of glass will be with me forever. (It was a big lamp. They were big shards of glass. Things could have gone SO very wrong.)
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