Ethnobotanicals Salvia Nostalgia or "Here we are again"

[Cabbanis Lifestyle]

Hello!

Two years ago I had my first experience smoking salvia properly.

After that first time, I tried a few more times and I'm still trying to figure it out.

I find Salvia fascinating and I believe that it has a lot of truth about the universe contained in it.

Without fail the day after I smoke Salvia, I have the weird sensation that I can still experience the Salvia trip in the background of normal every-day life.

It feels like I am constantly immersed in the Salvia "world" but now that I grew up, my cognition is distracted by the meaning and utility of things instead of what they truly are.

I am under the impression that when I was a kid I experienced the world a bit like a Salvia trip. I don't remember the visuals, though.

Anyway, I want to talk a little about one particular aspect of the Salvia trip that feels very personal but I am discovering that it's more common than I thought, as I keep hearing about it from other psychonauts, so I'm curious if you guise had an experience with this:

Salvia Nostalgia​

Salviastagia (coined by a redditor: ) is the acute sensation that surfaces as the Salvia experience starts.

As the effects surface, many people feel a slight pressure on the back of the head and the entire body passes through a physical body sensation of walking through a portal, like changing dimensions somehow. As this happens, people report an acute sense of nostalgia. Some report feeling like they are in the 80's in an old-style McDonald's.

In one of my experiences, as the trip started, I was surprised to have this strong sensation that I was going home.

Like I was about to experience something super familiar. I remember saying mentally:

"Here we are again, that familiar place!"​

I really don't know what part of the experience is familiar to me. Consciously, it all feels alien and extremely weird, but I still feel super comfortable.

At a certain point, my back came together with the chair and I lost complete sense of anything.

It felt like I had been reset together with all my memories and I was living for the first time discovering reality in this weird dance of strings that seemed to form a tunnel from the center of my sight all the way to the periphery of my vision.

The background noise all sounded muffled like people speaking very far away. This might have given me the impression of being in a public place, like a dinner place.

Then as my consciousness reassembled, I started to notice the aesthetics of reality and it looked like a 70's or 80's movie, Stranger Things vibes.

After the trip was gone I could still feel this nostalgic old American dinner in movies and I thought that it was just influenced by my subconscious that I fed with North American movies and cartoons.

To me, it feels like Salvia presents us with the true nature of reality but our sober brain creates a "game" to navigate this weird reality in a way that increases the survival rate.

Popular Reference​

What motivated me to start thinking about this again was the Netflix series The Good Place.

In this series (I'll try to avoid spoilers) there's a scene where all the characters are in a place between dimensions.

One of the characters says:

Guys, relax, I know what this is! This is a Salvia trip!



Then, one of the characters, that represents conscious thought tries to make a point but gets dragged out of the dimension and goes through a fractal experience of the folding of reality:

I worked in a smart shop for the last two years and many of my customers would describe a place that most call the "Grinder" where it feels like... well, it feels like we are physically going through a gigantic grinder.


At this point during the journey, people have laughing fits, other people freak out.

I think that this is what they were referencing with the "Time Knife"

Btw, I think that this happens because of the Doppler Effect. When you focus on some particular vibration during the salvia trip, all the other waves are going to be distorted and salvia makes it extremely hard to ignore.

If you watched the clip, then you will notice that in order for the characters to understand the environment they turned into an IHOP.

At this point, I was alarmed at how similar this scene came to my salvia experience.

They started in this place between dimensions that look like a Salvia experience then, in order to make sense of it it turned into a classic American dinner place and one of the characters entered the Grinder.

It makes me think that this is not just a coincidence, maybe it's just the general Salvia experience that has this particular spirit.

I'm very curious to know what you think about this, because my experiences are a bit clouded, like a dream making it so hard to analyze and understand.

 

[pupnik]

I have to try that tv show.

the clip above does look salvia land in a few ways except the continuity is too normal.

 

[matador2r]

Hello!

Two years ago I had my first experience smoking salvia properly.

After that first time, I tried a few more times and I'm still trying to figure it out.

I find Salvia fascinating and I believe that it has a lot of truth about the universe contained in it.

Without fail the day after I smoke Salvia, I have the weird sensation that I can still experience the Salvia trip in the background of normal every-day life.

It feels like I am constantly immersed in the Salvia "world" but now that I grew up, my cognition is distracted by the meaning and utility of things instead of what they truly are.

I am under the impression that when I was a kid I experienced the world a bit like a Salvia trip. I don't remember the visuals, though.

Anyway, I want to talk a little about one particular aspect of the Salvia trip that feels very personal but I am discovering that it's more common than I thought, as I keep hearing about it from other psychonauts, so I'm curious if you guise had an experience with this:

Salvia Nostalgia​

Salviastagia (coined by a redditor: ) is the acute sensation that surfaces as the Salvia experience starts.

As the effects surface, many people feel a slight pressure on the back of the head and the entire body passes through a physical body sensation of walking through a portal, like changing dimensions somehow. As this happens, people report an acute sense of nostalgia. Some report feeling like they are in the 80's in an old-style McDonald's.

In one of my experiences, as the trip started, I was surprised to have this strong sensation that I was going home.

Like I was about to experience something super familiar. I remember saying mentally:



I really don't know what part of the experience is familiar to me. Consciously, it all feels alien and extremely weird, but I still feel super comfortable.

At a certain point, my back came together with the chair and I lost complete sense of anything.

It felt like I had been reset together with all my memories and I was living for the first time discovering reality in this weird dance of strings that seemed to form a tunnel from the center of my sight all the way to the periphery of my vision.

The background noise all sounded muffled like people speaking very far away. This might have given me the impression of being in a public place, like a dinner place.

Then as my consciousness reassembled, I started to notice the aesthetics of reality and it looked like a 70's or 80's movie, Stranger Things vibes.

After the trip was gone I could still feel this nostalgic old American dinner in movies and I thought that it was just influenced by my subconscious that I fed with North American movies and cartoons.

Popular Reference​

What motivated me to start thinking about this again was the Netflix series The Good Place.

In this series (I'll try to avoid spoilers) there's a scene where all the characters are in a place between dimensions.

One of the characters says:

Guys, relax, I know what this is! This is a Salvia trip!



Then, one of the characters, that represents conscious thought tries to make a point but gets dragged out of the dimension and goes through a fractal experience of the folding of reality:

I worked in a smart shop for the last two years and many of my customers would describe a place that most call the "Grinder" where it feels like... well, it feels like we are physically going through a gigantic grinder.


At this point during the journey, people have laughing fits, other people freak out.

I think that this is what they were referencing with the "Time Knife"



If you watched the clip, then you will notice that in order for the characters to understand the environment they turned into an IHOP.

At this point, I was alarmed at how similar this scene came to my salvia experience.

They started in this place between dimensions that look like a Salvia experience then, in order to make sense of it it turned into a classic American dinner place and one of the characters entered the Grinder.

It makes me think that this is not just a coincidence, maybe it's just the general Salvia experience that has this particular spirit.

I'm very curious to know what you think about this, because my experiences are a bit clouded, like a dream making it so hard to analyze and understand.

I know exactly what you mean! Oh man I've never heard anyone talk about this before. I've smoked salvia a few times and each time I do I have that exact thought - "Ah yes, I remember this. This familiar place. How could I have forgotten?" It's like when you have a dream and inside the dream you get the sensation that you've had that exact same dream before. The thing is, this salvia dimension that I go to and seem to remember so well when I'm on it, fades away much like a dream...

 

[Dr Mamba]

may be this familiar place is called reptilian brain ?
I love this post, am on the same boat, glad to see am not alone.

 

[Ismene2]

Before I could get shrooms and acid I used to take the salvia tincture "an extraordinary potion of enchantment" - it does take you back to some half remembered place.

 

[Cabbanis Lifestyle]

I know exactly what you mean! Oh man I've never heard anyone talk about this before. I've smoked salvia a few times and each time I do I have that exact thought - "Ah yes, I remember this. This familiar place. How could I have forgotten?" It's like when you have a dream and inside the dream you get the sensation that you've had that exact same dream before. The thing is, this salvia dimension that I go to and seem to remember so well when I'm on it, fades away much like a dream...

Yes!

It fades like a dream but still feels like there are some visual aspects of it that are burned into my mind's eyes' retina.

"How could I have forgotten?"

This is exactly it. Crazy how universal this feeling has turned out to be. At first, I thought that this only happened to me.

 

[Cabbanis Lifestyle]

may be this familiar place is called reptilian brain ?
I love this post, am on the same boat, glad to see am not alone.

I believe so.

The reptilian brain is one of the most important pillars of mammal brain formation. It's responsible for basic motor skills and it was developed by trial and error calibrated to optimize survival.

Salvia at a certain degree of potency can reset your consciousness with what seems like a mental big-bang which progresses along with the duration of the trip as our mind spontaneously reorganizes itself.

I had a meaningful Salvia experience in which I got that "What is this familiar place?" and then: darkness.
Just like when I become aware in a sleep-dream I became aware in the middle of the narrative.
My body was busy mapping the environment and itself when I became kinda aware of myself.

My senses worked fine, feeding my brain with information.
Ears vibrating telling the story of the vibration in the air;
Skin feeling the air and the blood flowing in the veins and arteries;
My retinas still capturing photons with my retina;

You know, game as usual.
The issue was that all these vibrations had to be interpreted by the reptilian brain.
All the fancy computations the mind automatically does to create a human-degree of understanding were just in the middle of being disintegrated and put back on. Leaving the interpretation of my surroundings and of my own self to be made by this trial-and-error Jurassic mind.

And even after I became able to articulate mental words I really couldn't remember anything at all. Like even my water in my mouth, I had no idea what it was. I could feel the sensation of wetness by I had no idea what wet was. I didn't even know what a mouth was.
The trip had the rhythm of my heartbeat.

After some time I could remember that I was tripping on Salvia, sitting down and I got my memories back completely and ordinary consciousness was established.

It does feel like Salvia connects us with the depths of our mind. It reveals something that it's always happening but high-level consciousness has trouble being aware of this. Or maybe we just got bored with it when we grew up and forgot about it.

 

[EntheoDjinn]

I also wonder about the 'reminiscence' feature, which is a huge part of the journey (short though it is, and infinite which it really seems) for me. At a time when I was experimenting with Salvia and K, I did notice a tendency for me to experience Deja Vu, or feel spontaneous familiarity with inanimate objects in between Salvia and K journeys. Neither of these substances were used to excess, so I didn't, and still don't, see myself as stumbling over a threshold into madness (though I am aware of the Catch-22 paradox).

I again wonder if this is something due to the dissociative property both have, as well as sharing a 'visionary' quality. Salvia especially seems to leave me feeling that I'm aware of a trace of gnosis. It is invariably positive for me. But so f***ing weird

 

[PriestTheyCalledHim]

Salvia intrigued me but then I saw a friend have a rough experience on it. This friend smoked 5X Salvia and said how he almost broke through but how it reminded him of the confusion from lots of benzodiazepines and nitrous-oxide, and that it was disassociative as well but in a different way than PCP/Angel dust, Ketamine, and DXM are. He was glad the experience lasted maybe 15-20 minutes at most and then he was perfectly fine.

This friend has tripped on shrooms more than I have and he would take very large doses of them, so I stayed away from Salvia.

 

[Ismene2]

The place for me is a street from my childhood. Gets a bit boring after a while but i enjoyed it at the time it was pre shrooms.

 

[Rob Wiz]

Yeah but this is by no means exclusive to Salvia. Maybe the specific character of it, yeah, but the principle of feeling like coming home, the "here we go again" and strong feeling of nostalgia / entering the sphere of your dreams is something most (if not all) psychedelic substances (including dissos etc.) share, IMO.

 

[JackARoe]

Yeah but this is by no means exclusive to Salvia. Maybe the specific character of it, yeah, but the principle of feeling like coming home, the "here we go again" and strong feeling of nostalgia / entering the sphere of your dreams is something most (if not all) psychedelic substances (including dissos etc.) share, IMO.

I know DMT does that sometimes too. The Salvia nostagia is a strange one though. An experience so bizarre but can feel familiar. The 1950s nostalgia I attributed to the first reports by Daneil Siebert when he said all of a sudden he was in an older house from years ago. Yet Salvia has that strange familar feeling that still seems to unfold and I have a hard time reconciling.

One thing about Salvia that fascinates me is when people say they became the side of a house, or a chair. Granted I always use Salvia in darkness and silence, I suppose one day I will do it in daylight and I may experience what becoming an object is like. Or that is just not something Salvia is going to do for me. The afterglow is like nothing else. I always feel very practical and what little OCD I have (which I believe everyone has to some degree) gets washed away by practical, logical thinking.

Salvia itself became my sitter from my first trip. It makes me stay put as I am glued to the couch or bed. To that I am very grateful after reading of stories where people wander and get hurt. I get this gravity to where I can not get up. My first trip I almost got up and I heard a woman's voice gently tell me to lay down and stay put and it has always been that. I do need a scientific explanation of that though.

 

[pupnik]

a few times I have wandered and found myself at a staircase or on steps - also I remember going upstairs trying to get a cold drink from the kitchen and I was sure my feet were on backwards.
I never intended to move.

 

[Cabbanis Lifestyle]

I know DMT does that sometimes too. The Salvia nostagia is a strange one though. An experience so bizarre but can feel familiar. The 1950s nostalgia I attributed to the first reports by Daneil Siebert when he said all of a sudden he was in an older house from years ago. Yet Salvia has that strange familar feeling that still seems to unfold and I have a hard time reconciling.

One thing about Salvia that fascinates me is when people say they became the side of a house, or a chair. Granted I always use Salvia in darkness and silence, I suppose one day I will do it in daylight and I may experience what becoming an object is like. Or that is just not something Salvia is going to do for me. The afterglow is like nothing else. I always feel very practical and what little OCD I have (which I believe everyone has to some degree) gets washed away by practical, logical thinking.

Salvia itself became my sitter from my first trip. It makes me stay put as I am glued to the couch or bed. To that I am very grateful after reading of stories where people wander and get hurt. I get this gravity to where I can not get up. My first trip I almost got up and I heard a woman's voice gently tell me to lay down and stay put and it has always been that. I do need a scientific explanation of that though.

Cool comment.
I have a theory for the becoming the chair.

Fist, the psychonaut after a breakthrough dose of salvia has no preconception of anything. No information will be old.
In fact, it feels like we are feeling our senses for the first time.

In this context, the trip flows in the rhythm of the heartbeat. We are specially sensitive to the sensation of blood flowing and arteries pumping.

At each heartbeat we feel our muscles gently stretch and contract. This gives us the sensation of planification.
Meaning that our senses are indicating a lateralization of our body.
Another important fact is the natural pressure our bodies must exercise to counter que atmosphere pressure, which is also relevant and contributes to the sensation that we are exercising a force in 2D plane.
Yet another point worth of noting is that when we achieve a certain point during the trip we start to map our own bodies and suddenly realize this weird kinetic sensation of the chair touching our skin and the continuous pressure of the weight of our bodies over the chair.

All of this together contributes to the sensation that we are being stretched laterally and it's easy to say that "I became the sofa".

 

[youarethebest]

love that line I never intended to move I will remind myself of that
like not jumping I am fine right here it's ok

 

[Ismene2]

Daniel siebert was the guy i got the "most extraordinary potion of enchantment" from

 

[pupnik]

Cool comment.
I have a theory for the becoming the chair.

Fist, the psychonaut after a breakthrough dose of salvia has no preconception of anything. No information will be old.
In fact, it feels like we are feeling our senses for the first time.

In this context, the trip flows in the rhythm of the heartbeat. We are specially sensitive to the sensation of blood flowing and arteries pumping.

At each heartbeat we feel our muscles gently stretch and contract. This gives us the sensation of planification.
Meaning that our senses are indicating a lateralization of our body.
Another important fact is the natural pressure our bodies must exercise to counter que atmosphere pressure, which is also relevant and contributes to the sensation that we are exercising a force in 2D plane.
Yet another point worth of noting is that when we achieve a certain point during the trip we start to map our own bodies and suddenly realize this weird kinetic sensation of the chair touching our skin and the continuous pressure of the weight of our bodies over the chair.

All of this together contributes to the sensation that we are being stretched laterally and it's easy to say that "I became the sofa".

love that planification
during which sometimes the effort to breathe is concerning

 

[Ismene2]

When you become the entire 3 peice suite you know you have some dank goddess sally d

 

[Cabbanis Lifestyle]

When you become the entire 3 peice suite you know you have some dank goddess sally d

Well put.

 

[PriestTheyCalledHim]

I know DMT does that sometimes too. The Salvia nostagia is a strange one though. An experience so bizarre but can feel familiar. The 1950s nostalgia I attributed to the first reports by Daneil Siebert when he said all of a sudden he was in an older house from years ago. Yet Salvia has that strange familar feeling that still seems to unfold and I have a hard time reconciling.

One thing about Salvia that fascinates me is when people say they became the side of a house, or a chair. Granted I always use Salvia in darkness and silence, I suppose one day I will do it in daylight and I may experience what becoming an object is like. Or that is just not something Salvia is going to do for me. The afterglow is like nothing else. I always feel very practical and what little OCD I have (which I believe everyone has to some degree) gets washed away by practical, logical thinking.

Salvia itself became my sitter from my first trip. It makes me stay put as I am glued to the couch or bed. To that I am very grateful after reading of stories where people wander and get hurt. I get this gravity to where I can not get up. My first trip I almost got up and I heard a woman's voice gently tell me to lay down and stay put and it has always been that. I do need a scientific explanation of that though.

I read a trip report on erowid where someone smoked Salvia and then hallucinate that they became a banana, or a bunch of bananas in a supermarket during the trip.