Salvia.
I tried Salvia Divinorum last night. I've tried it before, half a dozen times or so. I've smoked it, chewed the leaves, taken a tincture sublingually, and combinations thereof. Never before have I felt anything more than a mild floatiness. Until last night. Last night I had the most existentially terrifying fifteen seconds of my life.
I was in my basement with M and S. S has discovered a liking for Salvia and M wanted to try; I provided the safe-house. M went first. He wanted to watch someone else first, but in retrospect it's probably better he didn't. He had a very powerful but pleasant experience, the details of which are not mine to relate. We traded spots and S. loaded the water-pipe with my dosage. As mentioned, I am was a salvia hardhead, and my body has always seemed to have an aberrantly strong resistance to chemicals; so we upped the dosage. I still didn't think it was going to work. I lit the salvia and pulled long and deep, until the bowl was empty. I passed the pipe to S to reload, as the planned dosage involved a second inhale. He passed it back. I tried to apply the flame again, but my ability to distinguish between the bong and the lighter, my own hands and the background was slipping away from me like mercury. The last thing I could intentionally do was pass the torch and pipe from my hands before I fell back towards the couch.
I never landed, that's when the record skipped.
That split second of time, between losing my ability to support myself and actually landing on the couch began to repeat itself, looping back over and over. The jolted backwards motion, the synchronized words of my spotters telling me to lay down, three notes of an Aphex Twin track...skipping back on itself apparently not towards infinity, but already there. My visual perception fractalized, falling in on itself at an alarming rate. It was a true fractal in that the whole could be extracted from any of the parts. I know this because although I could not break free from the looping moment, I could zoom in and out, look around...Everything I could see was assembled from little snapshots of the room from diferent angles. (Like the poster where Yoda is assembled from hundreds of stills in the movie).
"Fred lay down", three paino notes, the sensation of a salvia ember hitting my open eye that i could not shut...I experienced that moment a hundred-thousand times last night. I tried to "throw" my consciousness out of the loop. What I really did was look up, point, and then dive-roll across the room. Salvia metabolizes very quickly, and so the passage of ten actual seconds or so, and the jolt of hitting the floor and rolling, and then a slightly different perspective of the scene, combined to pull me from the loop. I remember seeing it spin to a stop, lurch back and then I knew I was out. I saw M's and S's faces untwist from themselves, and heard spoken words other than "Fred lay down". The sentence I had been trying to convey that whole eternity escaped from my lips then...."this is Hell." Immediately though, it changed, peacefulness began to wash over me. I was still mistrustful, but the other, whispered voices and impressions I had been feeling the whole time changed, became soothing and benign as opposed to purely cruel, and I actually entered a very euphoric stage. I was still right here, but it had become paradisical. At least, no matter where I was, it was better than where I had been.
Before I came back, I was able to spend a little time with the benevolent presence I had to go through Hell to get to. As the salvia wore off and the veil between realities healed, my interaction with whomever dulled from telepathic to subvocal to audible. M says the last words from my mouth before regaining a personable consciousness was...
"So this is Heaven, huh?.....
Nice."
I will smoke Salvia again. I wish to meet with her on her terms next time. I will go in without doubt, with more reverence, and with no fear. And I make sure my damned eyes are closed and you had best believe I will be laying my sorry butt down.
Strangely enough, I feel great today, clear...like my experience scared some of my demons away. Immediately after last night's experience, I did feel like I had been turned completely inside out starting with my right eyeball, but otherwise ok, saying "wow" a lot.
There are no words to describe what I actually experienced, but I felt it important to try. Suffice to say that any concept I may have had of damnation before last night, pales in comparison to what I winessed. And if that is what damnation truly is, I have nothing to fear on earth.
I was in my basement with M and S. S has discovered a liking for Salvia and M wanted to try; I provided the safe-house. M went first. He wanted to watch someone else first, but in retrospect it's probably better he didn't. He had a very powerful but pleasant experience, the details of which are not mine to relate. We traded spots and S. loaded the water-pipe with my dosage. As mentioned, I am was a salvia hardhead, and my body has always seemed to have an aberrantly strong resistance to chemicals; so we upped the dosage. I still didn't think it was going to work. I lit the salvia and pulled long and deep, until the bowl was empty. I passed the pipe to S to reload, as the planned dosage involved a second inhale. He passed it back. I tried to apply the flame again, but my ability to distinguish between the bong and the lighter, my own hands and the background was slipping away from me like mercury. The last thing I could intentionally do was pass the torch and pipe from my hands before I fell back towards the couch.
I never landed, that's when the record skipped.
That split second of time, between losing my ability to support myself and actually landing on the couch began to repeat itself, looping back over and over. The jolted backwards motion, the synchronized words of my spotters telling me to lay down, three notes of an Aphex Twin track...skipping back on itself apparently not towards infinity, but already there. My visual perception fractalized, falling in on itself at an alarming rate. It was a true fractal in that the whole could be extracted from any of the parts. I know this because although I could not break free from the looping moment, I could zoom in and out, look around...Everything I could see was assembled from little snapshots of the room from diferent angles. (Like the poster where Yoda is assembled from hundreds of stills in the movie).
"Fred lay down", three paino notes, the sensation of a salvia ember hitting my open eye that i could not shut...I experienced that moment a hundred-thousand times last night. I tried to "throw" my consciousness out of the loop. What I really did was look up, point, and then dive-roll across the room. Salvia metabolizes very quickly, and so the passage of ten actual seconds or so, and the jolt of hitting the floor and rolling, and then a slightly different perspective of the scene, combined to pull me from the loop. I remember seeing it spin to a stop, lurch back and then I knew I was out. I saw M's and S's faces untwist from themselves, and heard spoken words other than "Fred lay down". The sentence I had been trying to convey that whole eternity escaped from my lips then...."this is Hell." Immediately though, it changed, peacefulness began to wash over me. I was still mistrustful, but the other, whispered voices and impressions I had been feeling the whole time changed, became soothing and benign as opposed to purely cruel, and I actually entered a very euphoric stage. I was still right here, but it had become paradisical. At least, no matter where I was, it was better than where I had been.
Before I came back, I was able to spend a little time with the benevolent presence I had to go through Hell to get to. As the salvia wore off and the veil between realities healed, my interaction with whomever dulled from telepathic to subvocal to audible. M says the last words from my mouth before regaining a personable consciousness was...
"So this is Heaven, huh?.....
Nice."
I will smoke Salvia again. I wish to meet with her on her terms next time. I will go in without doubt, with more reverence, and with no fear. And I make sure my damned eyes are closed and you had best believe I will be laying my sorry butt down.
Strangely enough, I feel great today, clear...like my experience scared some of my demons away. Immediately after last night's experience, I did feel like I had been turned completely inside out starting with my right eyeball, but otherwise ok, saying "wow" a lot.
There are no words to describe what I actually experienced, but I felt it important to try. Suffice to say that any concept I may have had of damnation before last night, pales in comparison to what I winessed. And if that is what damnation truly is, I have nothing to fear on earth.