MasonJarBong
Rising Star
PRE-CONDITIONS
(mind)Set: good mood, relaxed, with friends
(physical condition) Set: springtime, indoors, daytime
Setting (location): my home (bedroom)
time of day: (12 or 24 hour system, daylight? starlight? overcast?) noonish, daytime
recent drug use: (list also any kind of medication) cannabis the night before but nothing the day of
last meal: (Time and type) unsure
PARTICIPANT
Gender: (m / f) M
body weight: (in kg pls) 160 lb
known sensitivities:
history of use: (experienced, novice, first timer - in general and for this specific substance/form) first time trying salvia
BIOASSAY
Substance(s): (list all taken substances) salvia divinorum (I believe 10x)
Dose(s): (in the same order as Substances pls, use metric system i.e. g/ mg/ �g) unsure (one bowl)
Method of administration: (dissolved in water, capsuls, insufflated, vaporized...) combustion/water bong
EFFECTS
Administration time: T=noonish
Duration: less than one hour
First effects: audio attenuation
Peak: no clue, my concept of time went out the window
Intensity (overall): 4
Evaluation / notes: see full report below
OPTIONAL
Pleasantness: 3
Implesantness: 3
Visual Intensity: 4
.
.
.
AFTER-EFFECTS
Hangover: 0
Afterglow:
REPORT
Disclaimer:
I have fairly extensive experience with hallucinogens (LSD, psilocybin, MDMA, dextromethorphan) from the 1980s and 90s. However, during all of those trips I never had an OBE breakthrough. Trippy visual effects and lots of fun and laughs, sure, but that was about it.
My first and so far only salvia trip occurred in 2009. I knew salvia was a hallucinogen, but I assumed it just caused weird, trippy visuals and made some people more or less pass out or act silly. I assumed its effects were much like my previous LSD and psilocybin trips of the past, just shorter in duration. I had not read any sort of trip reports for Salvia, or for that matter any other psychedelic. I did not expect an OBE.
The Trip:
Out of the blue one day, a couple of friends came over to my home and asked me if I'd like to try some salvia. As I recall, they had some 10x or possibly 20x. I can't recall for certain which it was, but I do recall that there were stronger grades than what we had. I thought I might have a little fun and catch a few neat visuals at best, but I was down for that. However, salvia had MUCH bigger plans for me.
It was a bit past noon on a beautiful Spring day. We went upstairs to my bedroom and all sat together on the floor. One of my friends packed a small bowl and passed the bong to me, with the advice to torch it all and hold onto the hit for awhile before exhaling. Being a regular cannabis user, this sounded like sage advice to me and I took it to heart. I cleared my lungs, taking a few deep breaths, then put flame to bowl, consuming its contents and holding onto the hit awhile before exhaling. Can't say it tasted very good. Tasted kinda bad actually, but whatever. I can recall one of my friends asking me if I felt anything and replying to her that I hadn't. Then within a few seconds, I felt something - a slight pressure between my eyes, but as if further back into my brain. The sounds in the room became more distant and attentuated, with a slight echo. I had just enough time to attempt to tell my friends something like, "Here it comes", and then it was bye-bye universe.
To my immediate right it was as if a swirling, circular portal opened, several feet high. My brain processed it at that moment as being very much like one of those funhouse tunnels you see at carnivals, oddly enough. You know, the ones you walk through as they rotate slowly? It even had those swirling, barber pole stripes within it. However, I instinctively knew it was very much like a wormhole and within moments that is exactly how it appeared. At the same time there was a sense of immense and irresistible gravity, pulling me towards the portal, sideways and headfirst. This was also my first moment of panic. In my state, I feared that this portal would rip me apart, down to my very atoms, and that I would be destroyed. I resisted, but I might as well have been a baby sparrow lashed to a top fuel dragster barreling down the quarter mile. I was at its mercy entirely. As I said goodbye to the world around me, I vaguely recall pitching forward and rightward, and into the portal I went, headfirst. Accepting my fate with great reluctance, the "real" world plunged away with tremendous speed, receding to a bright pinpoint which lingered for a brief moment as I tumbled into the darkness.
As I despaired for my own destruction, plunging into pitch-black nothing, I seemed to shed much of my worldly identity and all awareness of the fact that I had consumed salvia. I am faily certain in that moment that I couldn't have told you my name had you asked me. I was still somehow me however, as odd as that may sound. Just not the me I had previously known. It was then that the sense of falling ceased, not abruptly nor slowly. It was simply gone, almost as if it had never happened at all. And I was at peace in the darkness, which was now filled with distant stars.
I may have sat there (I was seemingly seated) for a second or a year. I do not know. Time no longer had meaning at all. That's the best I can do in terms of explaining it. I was also no longer alone. A beautiful, young woman appeared before me. However, "appeared" isn't really the proper term. It felt as if she'd always been there with me. Straight blonde hair, flawless pale skin, and delicate, almost elven features. Her bright, white robe seemingly composed itself of very soft, diffuse light. Her smile was so warm and genuine that I hesitate to try and depict it further.
We spoke without words. We spoke a language of pure emotion, but we spoke it with our hearts and felt it with our souls. I cannot express much of what we both "said", but what I can recall best is the most deep and profound sense of love I have ever felt. There was no judgement at all. None. There was only complete acceptance as I was and would be. It did not matter what I did, what I had done, or what I would do. Nothing would diminish that love, ever. It was there for me as it always had been and always would be. It was given to me without condition and I gave it back willingly and completely. No reservation at all. I have been fortunate enough in my life to have felt great love, but to compare that to this would be like holding a firefly up to the Sun. I could have remained there forever with her amongst the darkness and the stars, completely fulfilled and content, and with absolutely no regret.
After awhile we were standing together, the darkness banished as if it had never been. We were surrounded by a sort of gauzzy mist, thickening and seemingly lit from everywhere at once. It was as if each tiny mist particle emanated its own milky light, soft and iridescent. The mist enveloped us both in a reassuring embrace and she took my hand in her own, leading me forward. The mist grew thicker as we walked and before long at all I could see only her hand holding mine, and then she was gone. Her hand had somehow slipped from mine and I panicked again. Then everything changed.
The Sun was poised above me hanging at its apex in the sky, searing and bright and I was being tossed about like a cork on an angry ocean. The mist was gone and with it her and her unconditional, all-encompassing love. I wailed in mournful despair like a child. I also became aware of a few things at once. The first was where I was. I was somehow in the front yard of my childhood home, my first home where my first memories occurred. The next realization was that I was "emerging" from some sort of machine which contained the world I'd formerly considered to be real, and that machine was sitting in my childhood front yard, like some sort of carnival ride. It had all been some sort of virtualized experience - the Earth and the entire universe along with it, including everyone I had ever loved or hated, and the life I had thought to be my own. All of it reduced to a dream. Reality had been no reality at all. I cried out again in despair, mourning the loss of her, mourning the loss of everything I had ever touched or dreamt or loved. I also realized I was not alone. Arrayed around the perimeter of this angry "ocean" were giant beings, shoulder to shoulder. I was struck for a moment by how much they reminded me of the figures on the face cards in a stack of playing cards. They were causing the "ocean" to toss about the way it was and I was struck by how much it felt as if I was being bounced on a tarp or parachute, held taught by people around the perimeter as they forced it to undulate, tossing me again and again. I appealed to them in my mourning, beseeching them for help. Their reply rose from each mouth as one, like a stoic chorus, "This is just how it is" then "You must accept". Over and over they chanted neutrally, neither evil nor good, simply factual, insistent, unyielding. Again, I had no choice but to accept it, and as soon as I did, everything changed again.
I stood near the crest of a hill, dotted with a few bushes and some grass. Just a few feet in front of me sat a small metal machine, spinning like a tiny carousel, but without any horses or riders. Its top consisted of overlapping, slightly curved flaps of colorful metal which seemed to slide against and over one another. The colors of the metal flaps reminded me of the top of a circus tent. I immediately understood that this machine held within it the entire universe I had known and that's where I had been for all of my "life". Although it did not look like any computer I had ever seen, that is effectively what it was - a computer running a virtual universe. Its top was segmented into slices like a pie and each segment slid against and over other segments. It was where at least three segments would overlap, creating a vertex as they slid, that our reality was generated, like some kind of electrical charge. Apologies if that makes little sense, but that was what I saw and "felt" about it. Those were my insights at the time. I stared at the machine again for a moment, watching it spin, still feeling sad for the loss of, well, everything, when I realized again that I was not alone.
I looked to my left and noticed two things - a man and a tree. I cannot tell you much about the tree but that it reminded me of an live oak, with dark, small leaves. It was perhaps twenty feet tall, its canopy full and broad. However, my attention was drawn more to the man. He stood perhaps eight or so feet to my left and slightly ahead of me, facing the tree. I could not see his face. His hair lay just past his shoulders, somewhat wavy and a darker brown like my own. He was roughly my own height. He wore a crimson tunic, cinched at the waist with a wide, brown leather belt. His arms were well-muscled from work, his skin slightly sooty and tan, with the slightest sheen of sweat. He immediately reminded me of a blacksmith and I knew he was somehow responsible for this machine before me. Without words, I asked him to show me his face and without words he refused. Although words were not used, the emotion of his reply was something along the lines of, "Not yet" or "Not now", rather than a simple "No". I tried to move so that I could see his face and felt his same reply again. I tried once more and then I felt him forcing my gaze to the top of the machine. He compelled me, my resistance making no difference, and I began watching the sharp-edged segments of metal sliding atop the machine as it spun, the carnival colors gone now, each segment bare metal. I felt myself being drawn forward and down into it. My monkey-brain wailed in fear that I would be sliced to bits by the sharp edges as I pitched forward, drawn back into the machine, my resistance not mattering at all.
It was at this point that my senses turned back on and I began to process the room around me, my bedroom on planet Earth. I was me again, I guess. However, the trip was not completely over. I was now several feet from where my trip had begun, leaning against my bed. One of my friends had her arm about me, asking if I was alright, laughing softly and telling me that I had obviously had a pretty wild trip. I told her I was ok or I tried to at least. Words weren't my strong suit at that moment and I don't think my mouth was entirely ready to produce them, but as I looked about the room one word came readily to my lips and I said it as best I could, over and over, "Bullshit!". I chanted it repeatedly and with force. My trip experiences had been so real as to make it very difficult for me to accept that it had been a trip at all. "Bullshit!", I said to the "real" world. I called it all "Bullshit!", over and over. I just couldn't believe it. Then I noticed something odd was happening with my vision. I could see lines overlaying everything, like some sort of a grid pattern, originating from me, extending outward, shifting with my gaze. Monkey-brain whispered, "field lines". They didn't have a color, instead seeming to consist of slightly bent light, spiderweb-thin. As I began to focus my gaze, I noticed that if I rested it upon an object its light would bend towards me and a line would appear, like these "field lines", connecting me to the object, the line vibrating and elastic. If you could turn clear glass into a ferrofluid that would have been the consistency of this thread connecting me to the object of my gaze. The thread of bent light would extend from the center spot of my focus, connecting me to the object, extending straight into me, right through the center of my vision. It was a bit disconcerting and weird at first, and I tried to shake the thread loose from me, but my fear quickly abated and I began to enjoy looking about. I rested my gaze on object after object and after a moment, the thread would appear and I would be connected to it, the object's light bending towards and into me. I probably spent several minutes doing this, but time still wasn't quite working the way I was accustomed. After awhile I could no longer see the field lines and the last vestiges of the salvia relented, releasing me back to be the me of planet Earth again.
Aftermath:
The entire trip was remarkably vivid and clear, and in many ways coherent. Its effects upon me were profound to put it mildly. I've always been open-minded about the nature of consciousness and reality, even entertaining the possibility that we live in a virtualized universe. However, after my salvia trip, I believe our reality here to be in some sense virtualized. Yes, I understand that I took a drug. I have no problem distinguishing our reality here from my trip. I've spent a great deal of time in the years since analyzing the trip. Its memory never seems to fade and I can see every bit of it just as clearly as the day I experienced it. In the weeks after the trip, I did have a bit of an internal crisis about living in a virtualized universe, fearing that all of my experiences here were fake or false. It took some time to process. I eventually realized that what is true is experience and meaning, regardless of context. Experience is what matters. Over time I also realized that just because this world may be virtual does not mean that others in it are also virtual. They could be here experiencing this reality just as I am. Even you. We could even be one and the same.
My career has led me to some jobs which proved soul-crushing, destroying my spirit, leaving me depressed and robbing me of so much of my time as to ruin and prevent meaningful relationships. You can't phone in love and friendships. They take time and you get out what you put in, as they say. You must be present. The experience of my trip has left me less willing to waste my time consumed by some soul-crushing job that steals my life and pleasure away, isolating me from those I love and a world I should be out experiencing. Its something I struggle with to this day. Our economy certainly doesn't make it any easier, but I am working on my plan.
I have had other profound experiences since then, unrelated to any drugs or hallucinations. Some of them have even reinforced the insights I gained from my trip. Call it blessing or curse, but I have witnessed some things that I suspect very few people ever get to witness or know. I feel fortunate and grateful for the most part. I want to know more and I intend to work toward that goal. I'd go into those experiences but they wouldn't really fit here since they weren't related to a drug.
I haven't taken salvia (or any other psychedelic) since the one trip in 2009. I moved to another state not long afterwards and transitioned into a series of time-robbing, spirit-crushing jobs. Since I was always too busy to make friends or get out much, I never had a trip sitter or access. Over the last year I've had some time to reflect and ponder my navel, and I've come to the conclusion that I should reincorporate select hallucinogens into my experience. I need to make a few things happen in my life in order to get into the right mindset again. I look forward to that day.
(mind)Set: good mood, relaxed, with friends
(physical condition) Set: springtime, indoors, daytime
Setting (location): my home (bedroom)
time of day: (12 or 24 hour system, daylight? starlight? overcast?) noonish, daytime
recent drug use: (list also any kind of medication) cannabis the night before but nothing the day of
last meal: (Time and type) unsure
PARTICIPANT
Gender: (m / f) M
body weight: (in kg pls) 160 lb
known sensitivities:
history of use: (experienced, novice, first timer - in general and for this specific substance/form) first time trying salvia
BIOASSAY
Substance(s): (list all taken substances) salvia divinorum (I believe 10x)
Dose(s): (in the same order as Substances pls, use metric system i.e. g/ mg/ �g) unsure (one bowl)
Method of administration: (dissolved in water, capsuls, insufflated, vaporized...) combustion/water bong
EFFECTS
Administration time: T=noonish
Duration: less than one hour
First effects: audio attenuation
Peak: no clue, my concept of time went out the window
Intensity (overall): 4
Evaluation / notes: see full report below
OPTIONAL
Pleasantness: 3
Implesantness: 3
Visual Intensity: 4
.
.
.
AFTER-EFFECTS
Hangover: 0
Afterglow:
REPORT
Disclaimer:
I have fairly extensive experience with hallucinogens (LSD, psilocybin, MDMA, dextromethorphan) from the 1980s and 90s. However, during all of those trips I never had an OBE breakthrough. Trippy visual effects and lots of fun and laughs, sure, but that was about it.
My first and so far only salvia trip occurred in 2009. I knew salvia was a hallucinogen, but I assumed it just caused weird, trippy visuals and made some people more or less pass out or act silly. I assumed its effects were much like my previous LSD and psilocybin trips of the past, just shorter in duration. I had not read any sort of trip reports for Salvia, or for that matter any other psychedelic. I did not expect an OBE.
The Trip:
Out of the blue one day, a couple of friends came over to my home and asked me if I'd like to try some salvia. As I recall, they had some 10x or possibly 20x. I can't recall for certain which it was, but I do recall that there were stronger grades than what we had. I thought I might have a little fun and catch a few neat visuals at best, but I was down for that. However, salvia had MUCH bigger plans for me.
It was a bit past noon on a beautiful Spring day. We went upstairs to my bedroom and all sat together on the floor. One of my friends packed a small bowl and passed the bong to me, with the advice to torch it all and hold onto the hit for awhile before exhaling. Being a regular cannabis user, this sounded like sage advice to me and I took it to heart. I cleared my lungs, taking a few deep breaths, then put flame to bowl, consuming its contents and holding onto the hit awhile before exhaling. Can't say it tasted very good. Tasted kinda bad actually, but whatever. I can recall one of my friends asking me if I felt anything and replying to her that I hadn't. Then within a few seconds, I felt something - a slight pressure between my eyes, but as if further back into my brain. The sounds in the room became more distant and attentuated, with a slight echo. I had just enough time to attempt to tell my friends something like, "Here it comes", and then it was bye-bye universe.
To my immediate right it was as if a swirling, circular portal opened, several feet high. My brain processed it at that moment as being very much like one of those funhouse tunnels you see at carnivals, oddly enough. You know, the ones you walk through as they rotate slowly? It even had those swirling, barber pole stripes within it. However, I instinctively knew it was very much like a wormhole and within moments that is exactly how it appeared. At the same time there was a sense of immense and irresistible gravity, pulling me towards the portal, sideways and headfirst. This was also my first moment of panic. In my state, I feared that this portal would rip me apart, down to my very atoms, and that I would be destroyed. I resisted, but I might as well have been a baby sparrow lashed to a top fuel dragster barreling down the quarter mile. I was at its mercy entirely. As I said goodbye to the world around me, I vaguely recall pitching forward and rightward, and into the portal I went, headfirst. Accepting my fate with great reluctance, the "real" world plunged away with tremendous speed, receding to a bright pinpoint which lingered for a brief moment as I tumbled into the darkness.
As I despaired for my own destruction, plunging into pitch-black nothing, I seemed to shed much of my worldly identity and all awareness of the fact that I had consumed salvia. I am faily certain in that moment that I couldn't have told you my name had you asked me. I was still somehow me however, as odd as that may sound. Just not the me I had previously known. It was then that the sense of falling ceased, not abruptly nor slowly. It was simply gone, almost as if it had never happened at all. And I was at peace in the darkness, which was now filled with distant stars.
I may have sat there (I was seemingly seated) for a second or a year. I do not know. Time no longer had meaning at all. That's the best I can do in terms of explaining it. I was also no longer alone. A beautiful, young woman appeared before me. However, "appeared" isn't really the proper term. It felt as if she'd always been there with me. Straight blonde hair, flawless pale skin, and delicate, almost elven features. Her bright, white robe seemingly composed itself of very soft, diffuse light. Her smile was so warm and genuine that I hesitate to try and depict it further.
We spoke without words. We spoke a language of pure emotion, but we spoke it with our hearts and felt it with our souls. I cannot express much of what we both "said", but what I can recall best is the most deep and profound sense of love I have ever felt. There was no judgement at all. None. There was only complete acceptance as I was and would be. It did not matter what I did, what I had done, or what I would do. Nothing would diminish that love, ever. It was there for me as it always had been and always would be. It was given to me without condition and I gave it back willingly and completely. No reservation at all. I have been fortunate enough in my life to have felt great love, but to compare that to this would be like holding a firefly up to the Sun. I could have remained there forever with her amongst the darkness and the stars, completely fulfilled and content, and with absolutely no regret.
After awhile we were standing together, the darkness banished as if it had never been. We were surrounded by a sort of gauzzy mist, thickening and seemingly lit from everywhere at once. It was as if each tiny mist particle emanated its own milky light, soft and iridescent. The mist enveloped us both in a reassuring embrace and she took my hand in her own, leading me forward. The mist grew thicker as we walked and before long at all I could see only her hand holding mine, and then she was gone. Her hand had somehow slipped from mine and I panicked again. Then everything changed.
The Sun was poised above me hanging at its apex in the sky, searing and bright and I was being tossed about like a cork on an angry ocean. The mist was gone and with it her and her unconditional, all-encompassing love. I wailed in mournful despair like a child. I also became aware of a few things at once. The first was where I was. I was somehow in the front yard of my childhood home, my first home where my first memories occurred. The next realization was that I was "emerging" from some sort of machine which contained the world I'd formerly considered to be real, and that machine was sitting in my childhood front yard, like some sort of carnival ride. It had all been some sort of virtualized experience - the Earth and the entire universe along with it, including everyone I had ever loved or hated, and the life I had thought to be my own. All of it reduced to a dream. Reality had been no reality at all. I cried out again in despair, mourning the loss of her, mourning the loss of everything I had ever touched or dreamt or loved. I also realized I was not alone. Arrayed around the perimeter of this angry "ocean" were giant beings, shoulder to shoulder. I was struck for a moment by how much they reminded me of the figures on the face cards in a stack of playing cards. They were causing the "ocean" to toss about the way it was and I was struck by how much it felt as if I was being bounced on a tarp or parachute, held taught by people around the perimeter as they forced it to undulate, tossing me again and again. I appealed to them in my mourning, beseeching them for help. Their reply rose from each mouth as one, like a stoic chorus, "This is just how it is" then "You must accept". Over and over they chanted neutrally, neither evil nor good, simply factual, insistent, unyielding. Again, I had no choice but to accept it, and as soon as I did, everything changed again.
I stood near the crest of a hill, dotted with a few bushes and some grass. Just a few feet in front of me sat a small metal machine, spinning like a tiny carousel, but without any horses or riders. Its top consisted of overlapping, slightly curved flaps of colorful metal which seemed to slide against and over one another. The colors of the metal flaps reminded me of the top of a circus tent. I immediately understood that this machine held within it the entire universe I had known and that's where I had been for all of my "life". Although it did not look like any computer I had ever seen, that is effectively what it was - a computer running a virtual universe. Its top was segmented into slices like a pie and each segment slid against and over other segments. It was where at least three segments would overlap, creating a vertex as they slid, that our reality was generated, like some kind of electrical charge. Apologies if that makes little sense, but that was what I saw and "felt" about it. Those were my insights at the time. I stared at the machine again for a moment, watching it spin, still feeling sad for the loss of, well, everything, when I realized again that I was not alone.
I looked to my left and noticed two things - a man and a tree. I cannot tell you much about the tree but that it reminded me of an live oak, with dark, small leaves. It was perhaps twenty feet tall, its canopy full and broad. However, my attention was drawn more to the man. He stood perhaps eight or so feet to my left and slightly ahead of me, facing the tree. I could not see his face. His hair lay just past his shoulders, somewhat wavy and a darker brown like my own. He was roughly my own height. He wore a crimson tunic, cinched at the waist with a wide, brown leather belt. His arms were well-muscled from work, his skin slightly sooty and tan, with the slightest sheen of sweat. He immediately reminded me of a blacksmith and I knew he was somehow responsible for this machine before me. Without words, I asked him to show me his face and without words he refused. Although words were not used, the emotion of his reply was something along the lines of, "Not yet" or "Not now", rather than a simple "No". I tried to move so that I could see his face and felt his same reply again. I tried once more and then I felt him forcing my gaze to the top of the machine. He compelled me, my resistance making no difference, and I began watching the sharp-edged segments of metal sliding atop the machine as it spun, the carnival colors gone now, each segment bare metal. I felt myself being drawn forward and down into it. My monkey-brain wailed in fear that I would be sliced to bits by the sharp edges as I pitched forward, drawn back into the machine, my resistance not mattering at all.
It was at this point that my senses turned back on and I began to process the room around me, my bedroom on planet Earth. I was me again, I guess. However, the trip was not completely over. I was now several feet from where my trip had begun, leaning against my bed. One of my friends had her arm about me, asking if I was alright, laughing softly and telling me that I had obviously had a pretty wild trip. I told her I was ok or I tried to at least. Words weren't my strong suit at that moment and I don't think my mouth was entirely ready to produce them, but as I looked about the room one word came readily to my lips and I said it as best I could, over and over, "Bullshit!". I chanted it repeatedly and with force. My trip experiences had been so real as to make it very difficult for me to accept that it had been a trip at all. "Bullshit!", I said to the "real" world. I called it all "Bullshit!", over and over. I just couldn't believe it. Then I noticed something odd was happening with my vision. I could see lines overlaying everything, like some sort of a grid pattern, originating from me, extending outward, shifting with my gaze. Monkey-brain whispered, "field lines". They didn't have a color, instead seeming to consist of slightly bent light, spiderweb-thin. As I began to focus my gaze, I noticed that if I rested it upon an object its light would bend towards me and a line would appear, like these "field lines", connecting me to the object, the line vibrating and elastic. If you could turn clear glass into a ferrofluid that would have been the consistency of this thread connecting me to the object of my gaze. The thread of bent light would extend from the center spot of my focus, connecting me to the object, extending straight into me, right through the center of my vision. It was a bit disconcerting and weird at first, and I tried to shake the thread loose from me, but my fear quickly abated and I began to enjoy looking about. I rested my gaze on object after object and after a moment, the thread would appear and I would be connected to it, the object's light bending towards and into me. I probably spent several minutes doing this, but time still wasn't quite working the way I was accustomed. After awhile I could no longer see the field lines and the last vestiges of the salvia relented, releasing me back to be the me of planet Earth again.
Aftermath:
The entire trip was remarkably vivid and clear, and in many ways coherent. Its effects upon me were profound to put it mildly. I've always been open-minded about the nature of consciousness and reality, even entertaining the possibility that we live in a virtualized universe. However, after my salvia trip, I believe our reality here to be in some sense virtualized. Yes, I understand that I took a drug. I have no problem distinguishing our reality here from my trip. I've spent a great deal of time in the years since analyzing the trip. Its memory never seems to fade and I can see every bit of it just as clearly as the day I experienced it. In the weeks after the trip, I did have a bit of an internal crisis about living in a virtualized universe, fearing that all of my experiences here were fake or false. It took some time to process. I eventually realized that what is true is experience and meaning, regardless of context. Experience is what matters. Over time I also realized that just because this world may be virtual does not mean that others in it are also virtual. They could be here experiencing this reality just as I am. Even you. We could even be one and the same.
My career has led me to some jobs which proved soul-crushing, destroying my spirit, leaving me depressed and robbing me of so much of my time as to ruin and prevent meaningful relationships. You can't phone in love and friendships. They take time and you get out what you put in, as they say. You must be present. The experience of my trip has left me less willing to waste my time consumed by some soul-crushing job that steals my life and pleasure away, isolating me from those I love and a world I should be out experiencing. Its something I struggle with to this day. Our economy certainly doesn't make it any easier, but I am working on my plan.
I have had other profound experiences since then, unrelated to any drugs or hallucinations. Some of them have even reinforced the insights I gained from my trip. Call it blessing or curse, but I have witnessed some things that I suspect very few people ever get to witness or know. I feel fortunate and grateful for the most part. I want to know more and I intend to work toward that goal. I'd go into those experiences but they wouldn't really fit here since they weren't related to a drug.
I haven't taken salvia (or any other psychedelic) since the one trip in 2009. I moved to another state not long afterwards and transitioned into a series of time-robbing, spirit-crushing jobs. Since I was always too busy to make friends or get out much, I never had a trip sitter or access. Over the last year I've had some time to reflect and ponder my navel, and I've come to the conclusion that I should reincorporate select hallucinogens into my experience. I need to make a few things happen in my life in order to get into the right mindset again. I look forward to that day.
