One of my Salvia Trips

My parents, who I live with, were going out for the night to an acquaintance's graduation party.  It didn't really seem like something I wanted to do, so I decided to stay home.  I sent a text to a girl I know, casually asking her out on a date.  She said no.  I wasn't very broken up about it, but I walked around the house a bit depressed, playing piano and then guitar for a few minutes, neither of which were satisfying.  Then I thought "I wish a had some drugs," which was immediately followed by its logical successor "oh yeah, I have salvia."

Salvia didn't really seem like a drug I was in the mood for.  I felt like I would have rather gotten drunk or stoned (unfortunately, I didn't have any alcohol or weed).  But I had to go to work in about two hours, so salvia became more and more attractive as a possibility.

I went into my room and dug out my stash, then went out onto my deck to avoid stinking up my parent's house.  I took a look around to ensure that none of my neighbors were watching me engage in this dubious act, then proceeded to pack some salvia into my bowl.  I used a regular lighter, not a torch.  I took one hit, held it for about 10 - 15 seconds, then took another one, and was slightly detached from the familiar four dimensions of space and time before I evicted the foul smelling smoke from my lungs.

I've had salvia about ten times prior to this, and this is the first time I've done it without a sitter.  Obviously, this is "unsafe," but it shouldn't really affect the trip in any significant manner.  At the time though, I thought that the absence of a sitter would profoundly impact the trip, like I wouldn't have anyone to meld my mind with or something.  The absurdity of such a thought indicates that now I'm really starting to trip.

I feel like I am being split apart.  Not in a painful way, although it is just slightly terrifying.  I feel as if my mind and body are being divided into multiple persons, who are at the same time one person yet different persons.  This is a recurring aspect of many of my salvia trips.

As a sober aside, my theory of why I think this is that as my eyes drift out of focus, I get double vision.  Being too intoxicated to count to two, my brain then decides "it looks like there are two people here, or three, or four, or eight."  So somehow, my brain distorts two images of my own body into a picture of many people.

Back to the trip, I am having a fractal-like vision of myself, split into multiple beings.  As is common with a salvia trip, I am convinced that all of this is really happening, not that it is some effect within my mind of a hallucinogenic substance.  It is a comparable effect to how even the most absurd dreams are indistinguishable from reality, until one awakes with a realization that it was but a dream.

If you go back to your 5th grade english class, you may remember that there are two types of narration in literature.  There is first person (I, me, mine), and third person (you, your), which is subdivided into third person limited and third person omniscient.  In limited narration, only one character's inner thoughts are revealed.  In omniscient narration, the story is free to jump from one person's inner thoughts to any other's.

In this trip, my consciousness has been divided.  I am now observing multiple consciousnesses.  But I am doing more than observing.  I am the omniscient narrator in the story of all these entities.

Somehow, I am simultaneously aware that these other entities are manifestations of myself, and also thinking that they are something seperate from myself.  It is like the wave-particle duality of nature.  An electron can behave like a particle, yet also like a wave.  Yet in "reality," an electron is neither a particle nor a wave, it is something entirely different which cannot be fathomed by mere human beings.  Similarly, any salvia trip is unfathomable to a sober human being.  There is always some aspect of it which cannot be verbalized.

The entire trip lasts perhaps only one minute.  At some point, I re-familiarize myself with four dimensional spacetime.  Like an awakening dreamer, I remember that I smoked salvia, and that the vivid and terrifying experiences I just underwent were not real.  I am still feeling some effects, notably dizziness (I'm not sure which way the gravitational force of the earth is pulling me) and a reduction of my normal reasoning and critical thinking skills.  I should probably have stayed seated for a few more minutes, but I am seized with the fear that my parents could suddenly return home unannounced any minute.

I return inside from my deck, clean my bowl out in the bathroom sink, hide my stash, and start to cook myself dinner.  I get a packet of hot dogs out of the freezer, and a pair of scissors out of a drawer to open the hot dogs.  After placing the hot dogs in the microwave, I place the remainder of the pack back in the drawer.  As I am about to place the scissors in the freezer, I realize my mistake.  I laugh at the possibility of my parents returning home later and finding hot dogs in an unrefridgerated drawer, and scissors in the freezer.

I eat my dinner, watch an episode of Scrubs (which seemed particularly funny), and by the time I have to drive to work, I am completely sober.  I spend the next few hours at my mindless fast food job contemplating and recollecting my trip.  Rather than sulking around for the rest of the day, being miserable about my misfortunes with the fairer sex, I had a pleasant vacation from reality.