Experiences - Trapped In A Not So Divine World (Trip Report): Paranoia & Salvia Divinorum

[Bajeda]

Swim has smoked salvia on a number of occaisions. He started with lower level extracts and worked his way up. He finds he enjoyed the 15x the most. Yet he hasn't smoked salvia in some time now because of a series of experiences that have left him partially afraid of the substance and partially doubtful that he could have a good experience on it again.

Swim will begin with a short description of himself. He has tried numerous drugs, and doesn't shy down from trying something at least once unless he knows there is an extreme danger of using it. He is fairly experienced with psychedelics, and never really had a problem handling salvia in the past.


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Trip #1


Swim visited the dorm room of a friend of his. He had with him a pipe and a gram of 15x extract from an online source. His friend had never tried salvia before so he thought he would break him in that night.

The room was 12 feet by 12 feet, and fairly cluttered. Swim and his friend went to the window in the corner opposite the door and set up for smoking. They put a fan up to help filter air out the window and posistioned the chair in the cramped space so they could easily blow smoke out the window.

Time came to smoke. Swim packed a medium size bowl and lit it up. He sucked greedily on the pipe taking in as much smoke as possible, but he went too far. He choked and started hacking and wretching. He passed off the pipe to his friend and went to lay on the couch. His friend started hitting the pipe as he lay there, a bit confused. He felt a bit stoned almost, but it wasn't a full salvia experience. He had messed up when he coughed.

Swim's friend finished killing his bowl and handed the pipe back to swim. Swim told his friend to lay on the couch (swim's friend was pretty out of it by this point) while he packed a fat bowl to help him break through, he wasn't going to call this night a waste.

Swim lit the bowl up with his butane, being sure to get every corner of the bowl red hot. He alternated taking hits of smoke and air until he couldn't hold anything more in his lungs, then he held it all in for as long as possible. Time went by, swim isn't sure how much, and he exhaled sharply. Thats when all memory of the experience becomes very fuzzy and swim leaves the world.




Swim turns the chair to look at his friend, then at the door. He feels an ominous presence, strange for a salvia trip he thinks. The door is almost glowing, and the whole room seems to brighten as it is enveloped by a blindingly pure white light.

Swim grows increasingly confused. The whole room is gone from his consciousness. All he can see is white, though he still can sense the confines of the room itself. Its as if the walls are completely white yet he can still tell where one wall starts and another one ends. All other sensory perception is shut off.

Swim doesn't know where he is. He keeps seeing visions of strange things. He finds his mind in a garden talking to odd creatures, though he is able to distinguish between his mind and his body (which is in the white room), and he keeps finding his thoughts getting cut off and his consciousness sucked back to the white space.

Swim grows anxious, especially as he hears voices in his head (maybe it was the plants, swim isn't sure) telling him not to go back to the white space, as it is controlled by a malevolent force.

Swim is trapped in the white space for good now. He pushes with his mind trying to escape its featureless confines but a voice in his head tells him (without speaking mind you, swim just knows what it is saying somehow) he is a prisoner and in a prison camp, he cannot leave and they will keep him there. Swim struggles with all his might to get out but he can't. His mind starts to tire as the force of the white space takes over his mind bit by bit, instilling paranoia and fear into his spirit.




Time goes by, swim isn't sure. His mind has processed a vast jumble of confused thoughts, perceptions, emotions, and ideas in whatever time has passed since he was first confined to the white space. The white light begins to fade and he can see the shape of the room take form again. Slowly but surely everything falls into recognizable order. The salvia is slowly loosening its grip.

By now swim can see the whole room as it was before with little perception alteration but he still can't move. The salvia is still trying to keep him prisoner, and he can't move from his seat.


More time passes (swim had no sense of time the entire experience) and swim slowly rises, his friend already sitting up trying to contemplate his own experience. Swim is very disoriented and has trouble walking. The two agree to go out for a cigarette.

They get outside only to find a police officer sitting in the smoking area having a cigarette of his own. This freaks swim out a bit, though he is under control enough to keep cool. He feels like shit puffing on the cigarette, and feels as though even though he can't seem them the entities in the salvia world are still watching him in the real world.



Swim struggles up the stairs and falls into bed. He passes out immediately.







That night swim had the most insane dreams he can recollect. They were the type of dreams you have where you see every person you have known your entire life.

Swim was at a party in Northern Italy with everyone from his life. Many of the people were still the same age as when he knew them years ago (including little kids) but swim didn't know he was dreaming so he didn't notice.

The party took place at a cabin on a Mountain surrounded by snow. There were Nazi SS men with machine guns standing all around making sure no one left.

Swim doesn't recall anything else from the dream in particular, but thought it funny that the whole being kept prisoner theme stuck in his dream a bit. Also interesting was how much of the dream he was able to recall after waking up, even later in the day though he hadn't written any of it down.


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The whole experience left swim very shaken, though he still trusted his ability to keep under control while smoking salvia, and looked forward to trying it again when he had some more.




A month later swim ended up smoking some more salvia. This trip report is below.








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Trip #2


Swim was studying for a political science test. He knew the material well and was just going over it for the hell of it. He broke out his chillum and decided a bit of salvia would help him out, as he had used it as a study aid before and it worked pretty well, keeping him calm and focused.

Swim set up a fan near his window and packed the chillum (a little glass pinchy color changer) with a little bit of salvia 15x extract and a bit of AK-47.

Swim killed the bowl in a few hits, and moved to sit down at his computer.


He felt the effects fairly soon afterwards. He felt the nice calm and relaxed feeling of weed and salvia mixed, but after a few minutes paranoia started creeping in. He sensed the same malevolent forces that imprisoned him the last time, and could feel their joy that he was going into their realm again.

Swim was very disturbed by this, as not only was he having the same experience as the last time (to a T almost, though much less), but he barely smoked any salvia at all. He worried what would happen if he did the same dose as the last time again.

The paranoia settled a bit after a while, but the rest didn't fade until the high from the weed wore off.

Swim felt very bad, and was a bit jittery for the rest of the day.

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Basically swim hasn't tried salvia again since these incidents. He feels as though the same trip is waiting to occur again, and is a bit afraid to face the evil forces again.

He had a very wide range of experiences on salvia before and doesn't really understand how he got the same paranoid feelings during the last two experiences.


He may try smoking salvia again in the next few months, but will think long and hard about the dose and setting before doing so. He just felt like sharing this very odd experience with drugs-forum, especially as he can't think of any other drug where he felt like he was continuing the same trip with two difference experiences a month apart!











Anyone have thoughts or comments on this? Experiences similar to this? Swim knows there are people on this forum afraid to smoke salvia, though he isn't exactly sure on the reasons for these people not to.


Also, any tips on how swim can minimize possible paranoia and anxiety for his next salvia experience? Swim doesn't want to give up on the substance completely because of a bad trend, but he wants to be sure that he doesn't continue the trend of bad trips either that will turn him off to the substance.

Reputation Comments on this post:

Excellent report - but sounds like a horrible experience!

[Alfa]

Never believe voices or entities. If you encounter such messages, mind that your will is powerfull enough to transform any situation. Humor and sarcasme always help SWIM to turn nasty situations around. You are not a prisoner if you will not allow it. SWIY has created a situation where SWIY is the sufferer. A mind frame which may present itself in the next salvia trip.
Has SWIY thought of influencing the trip by external factors, like music, smell and suggestion?
So beside that that the dose was to high, why did this happen? Weed can give paranoia on it's own and may have played a small factor.
It may be worthwhile to try and expand SWIY's description of the experience. If you treat SWIY's experience as a dream report and analyse it in the same way, this may reveal some important issues in SWIY's live. You may find Freud's Interpretation of dreams interesting. That old coke sniffer would have a field day with your experiences.

[Nature Boy]

SWIM can relate to a degree. He never reached the levels of paranoia and the "white light" effect that SWIY describes but his first salvia experience shook him up quite a bit and taught him to respect the power of salvia. Every experience after that was taken with caution, smaller doses, no doses high enough to break through the fear and confusion barrier. In small doses salvia is a fun, short-lasting psychedelic with unique visuals and that bizarre gravitational pull. SWIM doesn't see the attraction in taking a large dose.

[Bajeda]

Originally Posted by Alfa

Never believe voices or entities. If you encounter such messages, mind that your will is powerfull enough to transform any situation. Humor and sarcasme always help SWIM to turn nasty situations around. You are not a prisoner if you will not allow it. SWIY has created a situation where SWIY is the sufferer. A mind frame which may present itself in the next salvia trip.

Swim will keep that in mind next time, and try to maintain control. Its hard with the higher doses as everything felt so real that swim forgot that it was in his head. It was like a dream, though not a lucid one. Swim forgot that he was dreaming so he was trapped in the confines of the dream and didn't have control over himself.

Maybe swim will smoke a smaller dose next time and see how well he can control it, and then move up from there once he gets a bit more control over his paranoia and the effects it produces in him.

Originally Posted by Alfa

Has SWIY thought of influencing the trip by external factors, like music, smell and suggestion?

Swim didn't think of that. He usually does salvia outside so music isn't really an issue, though next year he will be able to smoke inside his residence so maybe he will experiment with that.

He definitely will pick a less claustrophobic place to smoke it in though, and will probably be sure to smoke it in the most comfortable place he can find to reduce his levels of anxiety

Originally Posted by Alfa

So beside that that the dose was to high, why did this happen? Weed can give paranoia on it's own and may have played a small factor.
It may be worthwhile to try and expand SWIY's description of the experience. If you treat SWIY's experience as a dream report and analyse it in the same way, this may reveal some important issues in SWIY's live. You may find Freud's Interpretation of dreams interesting. That old coke sniffer would have a field day with your experiences.

Swim thought about the weed influencing the salvia but he really felt while high/tripping that it was the salvia was the evil influence and that the weed actually helped calm him and lessen the negative effects of the experience.

What do you mean by expand the description of the experience? Swim could probably add more detail to the report but he doesn't know what would be interesting or help people to understand the circumstances of the experience.





Also, swim just wanted to note that while he has been facing academic and emotional pressures on varying levels, while he was going through the tough times with salvia he also used psilocybin shrooms and amanitas on a few occaisions and these trips were fine so he doesn't think it was external pressures in his life that made the salvia trip go bad. It was something in the relationship between him and salvia itself that made it taste sour in his mind.

Originally Posted by Nature Boy

SWIM can relate to a degree. He never reached the levels of paranoia and the "white light" effect that SWIY describes but his first salvia experience shook him up quite a bit and taught him to respect the power of salvia. Every experience after that was taken with caution, smaller doses, no doses high enough to break through the fear and confusion barrier. In small doses salvia is a fun, short-lasting psychedelic with unique visuals and that bizarre gravitational pull. SWIM doesn't see the attraction in taking a large dose.

Swim used to enjoy taking high doses of salvia in order to experience the most extreme hallucinations possible, but obviously doesn't share that viewpoint anymore.

Still, he would like to be able to smoke fairly psychedelic quantities of the substance again.

In swim's opinion, DMT is a much better substance if you want to do extreme exploring of visuals and other worlds. Salvia is nice for a just a quick peek into what lays outside, its too disorienting and confusing a drug to try and push through to other realms.

[Nature Boy]

As far as visuals go, salvia is nothing like mushrooms or acid in SWIM's opinion. Salvia can cause tracer visuals of patterns, such as a decorated rug moving, almost alive, but these visuals seem very different to traditional psychedelic visuals. Mushrooms and acid produce awe-inspiring closed eye visuals on high doses, almost like sending a camera through the universe that is the mind. Salvia is more like someone turning on really bright lights suddenly and there are no closed eye visuals from what SWIM experienced.

[Bajeda]

Originally Posted by Nature Boy

As far as visuals go, salvia is nothing like mushrooms or acid in SWIM's opinion. Salvia can cause tracer visuals of patterns, such as a decorated rug moving, almost alive, but these visuals seem very different to traditional psychedelic visuals. Mushrooms and acid produce awe-inspiring closed eye visuals on high doses, almost like sending a camera through the universe that is the mind. Salvia is more like someone turning on really bright lights suddenly and there are no closed eye visuals from what SWIM experienced.

Swim has experienced interesting visuals on Salvia before and agrees its nothing like Mushrooms or LSD.

However he feels that the high dose effects of salvia are more intense than the closed or open eyed visuals of LSD or shrooms as they are much more real, and can put you in a place LSD or shrooms couldn't.

The trip in the first post is an example of this. Even having extremely intense experiences on LSD and shrooms swim knows he is tripping. With high doses of salvia swim can forget, or at least lose a great deal of ability to distinguish between reality and illusion.

So while low to mid levels of Salvia produce interesting visuals (like you described), higher doses are experiences apart, and can't really be compared to LSD or shrooms as they are very different experiences.

[Alfa]

Originally Posted by Bajeda

Its hard with the higher doses as everything felt so real that swim forgot that it was in his head. Swim forgot that he was dreaming so he was trapped in the confines of the dream and didn't have control over himself.

With Salvia most people do not realise that. One is just in another dimension. I do not know if it's realistic to try be aware that SWIY is tripping. But if SWIY is in that state, that dimension, SWIY can still take controll of the trip, even when SWIY does not realise he is trippping.

What do you mean by expand the description of the experience?

More detail may mean finding a better explanation.

Also, swim just wanted to note that while he has been facing academic and emotional pressures on varying levels, while he was going through the tough times with salvia he also used psilocybin shrooms and amanitas on a few occaisions and these trips were fine so he doesn't think it was external pressures in his life that made the salvia trip go bad. It was something in the relationship between him and salvia itself that made it taste sour in his mind.

I wouldn't exclude the possibility of this trip being a symbolised expression of something which has been bothering SWIY on a deeper level than mushrooms normally touch. Explaining such a thing normally brings a lot of understanding and benefit.

[Nature Boy]

SWIM usually lines up a 5-8 minute long song on his mp3 player when he smokes salvia. No matter how intense the trip is, the worst will be over when the song ends. It's a very effective way of killing the fear element of a salvia trip. Strangely however, and very much unlike other psychedelics, the music doesn't make a profound impact when on salvia. It seems irrelevant and in the "normal world" when tripping, even if it's seemingly very trippy music.

[Angel_Ashes]

Sorry I just have to say this. Does anyone ever see themself get shot to another realm but AS it's happening see all the matter strain stuff going forwards doing their thing.. and at the same time something's doing it to your face and it's kind of ripping it and putting it back there like 0.00001 mm in front of it really fast with no blood or anything, kinda of like, thickish matter stuff. It hurts so much... But I keep doing it.

It seems irrelevant and in the "normal world" when tripping, even if it's seemingly very trippy music.__________________
Sometimes for me, the music changes the "mood" of that geometric stuff going forwards.. it's happened a couple times.

[Female]

SWIM heard that weed prolongs the salvia experience, maybe that played a roll. State of mind mostly seems to influence the salvia trip too. SWIM once played a song from American Mcgee's Alice (a game which depicts alice in wonderland except the wonderland is twisted) while smoking with sally and she was transported to a crazy circus world where they wanted to convince her to be in the circus, and when she acquiesced, the darker part of the circus tried to take over the light..very odd, and all the while SWIM is sure the music was a factor, which is odd because music never effected her salvia trips prior.
Salvia is very sensitive to were SWIY is, what is around SWIY, what SWIY smells, tastes, hears, etc.

[cra$h]

after the first trip, swim could see how that could be frightening, and it sounds like swiy was trying to alter the trip and trying to make difficult desisions, which swim has found to be a big no-no for salvia. Let the drug guide you, and you'll be just fine. As for the 2nd trip, weed is notorious for paranoia. Swim's experienced it quite frequently, and overpowered the trip. most of this is because swim was trespassing at the time, and cops ocassionally check up on the place, which has multiple entrances, so swim was looking constantly. but getting back on topic.... it sounds like the AK subliminally installed fear of the salvia due to past experiences, and since it seems like the bad trip was strikingly similar to the previous bad experience, it was all memory, and a close-minded attitude, and didn't even realize it.

[podge]

Swim can relate Bajeda, swim's first salvia trip was still to this day the most powerful, bizarre , terrifying experience he has ever had. It took him months to get the courage for round 2, during the onset of the second experience ( much smaller dose ) he began slipping into paranoia but luckily some of friends were around and reminded him what he was experiencing so he kept his cool and ended up enjoying it. Round 3 started good, but he kept upping the dose and finally hit paranoia again. He has only tried very small doses since.

Swim fully agree's he visuals are completely unique. Swim thinks at the seriously high doses one is far too dissociated to be effected be any external stimulus. Swim has racked up a lot more experience in psychonautic experience since his last sally trip so is interested in exploring it further at some stage as conventional psychedelics only hold a certain range of answers and he has left sally alone for over a year now. His first trip despite the terror taught him a lot about himself .

For an enjoyable experience stick to the small doses, if swiy wants all out exploration there is little that can be done externally to improve the experience other than a friend with experience and a good place to lie down and relax. Sally is the least forgiving teacher he has encountered, the experiences are difficult to process afterwards as they tend to be so bizarre but swim did manage to decode a lot of what was transmitted to him in his first experience in the following months and it has been of great benefit to him.

[cra$h]

It's weird how the only things that make sense durring the trip take until after the cooldown. But I guess it's all about connecting the dots. For swim, salvia shows the deepest imaginings of the mind. So deep our brain can't even begin to comprehend, and that right there is the beuty of salvia, as well as dmt.

[nicholas_j]

Originally Posted by Angel_Ashes

Sorry I just have to say this. Does anyone ever see themself get shot to another realm but AS it's happening see all the matter strain stuff going forwards doing their thing.. and at the same time something's doing it to your face and it's kind of ripping it and putting it back there like 0.00001 mm in front of it really fast with no blood or anything, kinda of like, thickish matter stuff. It hurts so much... But I keep doing it.

i'm new to salvia, only smoked it a couple of times but each strong experience up to this point has been painful. my past two or three experiences seem somewhat similar to yours. my last trip, i felt like i was on a molecular level, like my consciousness was split into millions of pieces of me and everything around me, like i could travel around in everything, while everything turned round and round on a spindle of blackness. i could feel my consciousness as it passed from one to the other. i remember feeling enlightened like i was being shown reality from a different viewpoint beyond my self centered existence but angry that i now had an understanding of how reality worked but not why it worked. the whole time i felt as though i was torn apart at the molecular level and the energy as each passed through me pricked me like a needle.

[robert whitfield]

Originally Posted by nicholas_j

i'm new to salvia, only smoked it a couple of times but each strong experience up to this point has been painful. my past two or three experiences seem somewhat similar to yours. my last trip, i felt like i was on a molecular level, like my consciousness was split into millions of pieces of me and everything around me, like i could travel around in everything, while everything turned round and round on a spindle of blackness. i could feel my consciousness as it passed from one to the other. i remember feeling enlightened like i was being shown reality from a different viewpoint beyond my self centered existence but angry that i now had an understanding of how reality worked but not why it worked. the whole time i felt as though i was torn apart at the molecular level and the energy as each passed through me pricked me like a needle.

Swim had a similar trip almost exactly what Swiy describes.

He has not done sally since, he will soon though.

[alexmc]

Originally Posted by nicholas_j

i'm new to salvia, only smoked it a couple of times but each strong experience up to this point has been painful. my past two or three experiences seem somewhat similar to yours. my last trip, i felt like i was on a molecular level, like my consciousness was split into millions of pieces of me and everything around me, like i could travel around in everything, while everything turned round and round on a spindle of blackness. i could feel my consciousness as it passed from one to the other. i remember feeling enlightened like i was being shown reality from a different viewpoint beyond my self centered existence but angry that i now had an understanding of how reality worked but not why it worked. the whole time i felt as though i was torn apart at the molecular level and the energy as each passed through me pricked me like a needle.

My pet cat had a very similar experience on his first time with 10x extract just the other day. After feeling that my pet cat had turned 2D and become the page of a book, he experienced the feeling of being torn apart at the molecular level. It was a little scary but resulted in no long term harm to my pet cat!

[DividedReality]

Try some meditation prior to smoking the Salvia. If your meeting any sort of spirit / entity without good intentions, you'll probaly have a frightening trip. As far as intentions go I mean what do you want to gain or achive out of the journey? Be mindfull about it beforehand.

If this senseitivity to the spirit world persists, you may not be able to use Salvia just to get high or relax, you'll need to balance yourself before each journey. For exsample Swim is so senseitive that he can trip off of weed alone. The change in body chemistry seams to allow easier access to this other plane of exsistence.

It's weird how the only things that make sense durring the trip take until after the cooldown. But I guess it's all about connecting the dots. For swim, salvia shows the deepest imaginings of the mind. So deep our brain can't even begin to comprehend, and that right there is the beuty of salvia, as well as dmt.

As Sluegal ( I'm not spelling it right) says from his book T.H.I.K.A.L., Someone who is intoxicated and irrational during a psychedelic experience, is the thinking of a sober and materialistic mind. However one on the infulence, may well deem normal consciousness very limited. The barrier is that of language, we simply do not have the words to describe the experience.