on salvia, the legal hallucinogenic.

[suzzer99]

[ QUOTE ]
I've smoked a LOT of salvia.

Let me start off by saying that if you're looking for a fun party drug, salvia IS NOT IT. If you go to a club or a house party with salvia, you will probably not enjoy it. You will feel dissociated (there's an out-of-body feeling), but it isn't actually fun.

In my experience, salvia is best experienced by yourself, in your room, with dim or no lighting, gentle ambient music (or no music)...basically complete sensory deprivation. Smoke it, lie down, and close your eyes. You'll find out that when you're alone with no distractions, salvia stops being a drug, and becomes a gateway into the spirit world. You will meet ethereal beings. You will see without seeing and hear without hearing. It is an oracular drug used for meditative introspection and mystical insights. It is not a high, and no one uses it as an escape mechanism. It's very difficult to describe the experiences; you'll just have to go through them yourself [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

It is NOTHING like LSD. AT ALL. Not even comparable. A salvia trip is about as similar to an LSD trip as getting drunk is to an LSD trip. It's not like psilocybin, or DiPT or DMT which are related to LSD. Totally different neurotransmittors are involved. Can't compare it to anything. The idea that salvia is "as potent" as LSD is not very useful, because the potency of any drug depends on the dosage. Salvinorin A (the active ingredient) is strong at very low levels (like less than half a milligram), which in effect makes it comparably potent to LSD, but that's completely meaningless. (I've heard that THC is actually similarly potent, but I'm not sure). If you snort that amount of heroin, you won't feel a god damn thing. Does that mean that heroin is "weaker" than LSD? No, because you take much more of it for a recreational dose. It is NOT the new ecstacy, and it never will be. Most people don't even like it.

It also has NO addictive potential. NONE. Even though it hits fast, it won't make you feel like "damn, I need to do that again" the next day. There are drunks, junkies, coke fiends, stoners, and even acid freaks, but you'll never find a "salvia head."

Here's my recommendation. Go to salvia supply. If you're unsure about it, get the starter package. If you're feeling a little more spendy, get the extract mix (and buy an ounce of leaves on top). You're going to need a big bong filled with ice and a jet lighter (Salvinorin A vaporizes at a much higher temperature than THC, so you need to hit it with a blue-hot flame, and have it pass through cool water so it doesn't burn your lungs) You need to smoke it QUICKLY. Pack a bowl with some leaves and spike some extract on top, and wail it all in one go. (The reason is because after about one minute, you're going to be too [censored] up to even handle the bong again...it hits FAST)

Experiment with different extracts and such; back the bowl with leaves, then pour some extract on top. You'll eventually have a salvia freak-out (maybe the first time you smoke a bunch of 10x) where the world seems to skip like a disc and you run around your house like a deer in headlights. The trick is to LIE DOWN AND CLOSE YOUR EYES. (Besides, the salvia freak-out isn't much fun anyway) Some people like to smoke it after smoking weed, which isn't a bad idea, although it kind of dilutes the effects a little imho. If you smoke too much, you will have an amnesic dissolution of consciousness that feels very dissociative. It's like the K-hole; powerful, but not actually fun or interesting.

THe highest and best use that I've found for it is (and this will sound hokey, but anyone who's done it a lot will know what I'm talking about) is spiritual guidance. You will develop a relationship with Mother Salvia, and She will take you on vision quests to give you insights on spiritual matters. The visions are very creatively inspiring. Chanting mantras while under the influence is a REALLY good experience, imho [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Happy trails [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

It's amazing how much this sounds like a k-hole to me. I was definitely in another world. It felt like I could create and destroy universes in a millisecond in my mind. I distincly remember feeling like my mental concoctions were being judged by some spirit-world panel of experts, and that I had won for this world, which meant the whole human race got to ascend to the next level. Because of me. Seriously. I also remember distinctly the moment while coming down, when I realized that there was no panel of gods, and it was just me alone with my thoughts. Awwwwwwww.

Not something I really want to do again, but I'm glad I had the experience. I've done tons of LSD, shrooms, even 8 oz. of Robitussin DM, which was by far the most trippy thing I'd ever been through, and not fun. But the k-hole blows all that away by a ton.

[Blarg]

[ QUOTE ]
Castaneda is awesome. Do you know about the authenticity of his writings/experiences? My grandfather told me that there was a lot of research done to show that a lot of his writings never happened, or something to that effect, but I never did my own research about it

[/ QUOTE ]

I think I read about 7 of them before I gave up. If you read them in order, you see strong changes in style which don't bode well for credibility. The narrative becomes more outlandish, the women get bigger breasted and more sensationalized, the character interactions become more and more absurd until they finally become untenable to all the but most gullible.

Castaneda had a terrific imagination, though, and some interesting insight. The man could really write when he was at his best. But whether or not he started out that way, it seems clear to me from his books alone that he wound up as a charlatan.

[hmkpoker]

[ QUOTE ]
I found LSD merely recapitulated the experiences I had in meditation, and drugs in general were far less surprising than I had anticipated. They've always felt like an unfocussed shortcut to me, but substantially of the same stuff as paying attention.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, if you do enough salvia the effects are going to blow you out of the water whether you meditate on it or not.

[Blarg]

I've never meditated on drugs; seems redundant. But salvia does sound fun.

[iSTRONG]

[ QUOTE ]
But salvia does sound fun.

[/ QUOTE ]

No.

[hmkpoker]

[ QUOTE ]
man I want to try this badly but all my buds are so straight edge they would never babysit me, and my gf would freak. these trip reports are intriguing the hell out of me at the same time they are convincing me it would be crazy to do by myself.

[/ QUOTE ]

Get new buds [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Or, do it incrementally. Start with a bowl of leaves. I've never heard of anyone freaking out on leaves, in fact most people barely notice the effects. Unlike LSD, salvia is very easy to dose.

[TStoneMBD]

does a vaporizer work?

[hmkpoker]

[ QUOTE ]
I've never meditated on drugs; seems redundant. But salvia does sound fun.

[/ QUOTE ]

If you like meditation, and you're not straight-edge, you'll probably like salvia. Most drug users don't like it, as it's not fun in the way other drugs are fun.

[ChipWrecked]

I did a lot of LSD in younger days. To be nothing like LSD, these trip reports sound awfully familiar, except they don't last for 12 hours [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

I had good and bad experiences with the 'spirit world'. The bad one was pretty damn bad oh yes my precious. To this day I still wonder, "Are you from my brain?"

[Blarg]

I've never had a bad LSD trip. I always kinda wondered what it might be like, but I'm glad I never found out.

I think this might be related to why I never had nightmares as a kid at all, and almost never as an adult, and on the extremely rare occasions I have, they're almost always conscious and I can change them if they start to bug me.