I hear similar stories about DMT and Salvia so what's the difference in the two if both take you into a different dimension? I will say I have seen clips of salvia users...some really scary, others seem pleasant. Never seen the effects of DMT but from what I have been reading it seems about the same experience. I have heard some say DMT is milder...just wondering.

they are nothing alike. You will find this out when you try both of them. Both are great.

There are a few threads on here already comparing the two, you might want to search those up as well.

As for a short comparison...

DMT tends to be a little more forgiving in my experience. More pleasant. Salvia can feel very uncomfortable and bizarre, even at mild to moderate doses. Both have some serious power to show you things you can't even imagine.

They are both experiences that I find hard to describe in words.

Very dissimilar, but also similar in a way. They feel very different, granted. But I've been to some of the same places with each.

I agree both are great tools

Salvia by itself gets a little freaky for me because I usually forget I did it, and tend to wander. I had the best luck mixing the 2. It doesn't make either of them more intense, just a unique experience, always good... For me anyway.

salvia is often smoked in excess yielding unexpected jarring psychological experiences for the unprepared user

more commonly when a person smokes dmt they do not smoke enough to achieve a "breakthrough" vs salvia where one can easily ingest many times over what it would take a person to "break through"

saliva and dmt are not the same, however they can offer perspective that a person could learn the same things from experiencing, as is the case with all entheogens.

it seems people are more comfortable with dmt than salvia

Salvia is an INCREDIBLE entheogen, it's bloomin' amazing. Reports from others also indicate that dmt is also.

Salvia and DMT are similar in terms of the speed and intensity of onset, and short duration of effects. For me, that's where the similarities end. Most people find Salvia so bizarre and not particularly enjoyable, it is not a substance that compels you to go back out of more than simple curiosity. DMT tends to be more enjoyable for most people - I've had degrees of ecstatic bliss with DMT that nothing else has ever rivaled.

One difference I find is that Salvia to me seems like a powerful "earth" energy, I often felt like I was being pushed sideways, stuck, or I would become inanimate objects. DMT for me was more "cosmic" energy - a feeling of moving up and out of my body into a bigger universe.

Salvia often destroys all your recollection of your life in this reality, or even that you have ingested a drug. It takes you somewhere else, and when you get there it's like waking up from a dream, and I often remembered nothing of where I came from, or who I was before the experience I was having. DMT is interesting because (for me anyway) the "ego" remained intact. By ego, I mean my sense of self, of who I am and where I came from. That was the curious thing about it, I still felt like "me" but my surroundings had completely changed. It's remarkably clear headed, in a way.

Chemically and pharmacologically speaking, they are completely different. DMT is an indole alkaloid effecting subtypes of serotonin receptors, whereas Salvinorin A is a diterpenoid effecting kappa opioid receptors.

I think I concur with just about all of that.

I think Ilex summed it up perfectly.

In my experience, salvia usually has me turn into objects or other people. Salvia is accompanied by very physical sensations of being pushed or twisted (I often can't move when I'm on salvia, which can be very uncomfortable if you're not in a good position). Salvia is extremely disorienting and yeah, you usually forget everything about everything until you come down. I personally don't think salvia is a pleasant experience (though many do), but I am drawn to it out of curiosity more than anything. (And on another note, I'm pretty interested in salvia brews--I believe that's the traditional method of ingestion; it produces much milder effects over a longer period of time...similar to aya I guess...anyone here have experience with this?)

If anything it feels like salvia brings your consciousness to lower dimensions of existence, and DMT raises your consciousness to higher dimensions. DMT is definitely more 'cosmic', as Ilex said. It's easier to integrate and when you come down from the experience you feel as though you've learned something important. (Although I guess there's plenty of people out there who learn a lot in their trips to salvia land, within a spiritual context)

I think both are valid tools for the exploration of consciousness, and they both have a lot to offer as they are both unique and different. This said, I personally think DMT is a more rewarding experience that can potentially offer clarity (or a plethora of new questions) whilst salvia is typically unpleasant in nature and harder to integrate.

Actually, for me there are some very strong similarities!

The first time I smoked enough DMT for a break through, I kept thinking in my head OMG this is sooo much like Salvia!

That being said there are also some very distinct differences, and one can easily tell the two experiences apart.

Similarities: The mental space I entered. I experienced the same loss of control and disconnect with reality with DMT as I did with high doses of Salvia. It felt exactly the same. The emotional and mental state felt identical. I knew the mental space that DMT was blasting me into, because I had been there before on Salvia.

Differences: A big difference is in the visual effects. DMT for me is far more `fractaly'. The visuals are already extremely pronounced even when you are not yet in the `break-through space'. With Salvia on the other hand I didn't really have any visuals until I was in the `break-through space'. Another difference is the carrier wave sound on DMT which seems to be absent of Salvia. Salvia also produces this enormous (and rather unpleasant) gravitational body pull for me, which DMT does not.

For me the most important effects of a psychedelic are its mental/spiritual/emotional aspects, and those are quite similar with Salvia and DMT.

But bear in mind that this is just my experience, you may experience something completely different.

It's been years since I've done Salvia.

For me very similar and very different as well.

Salvia is earthy. Leaf covered rooms, with strands of DNA zipping through. I made a connection with a Salvia entity over the course of three trips. She felt more like a teacher than DMT. I have seen her teaching children on a floating island in space, on one trip. She has always seemed benign. The onset is so fast, I normally can't recognize what object I'm holding in my hand (pipe). WIth DMT, I have time to set the pipe down, before breakthrough.
I have also been different people on Salvia, which was quite interesting.

DMT is certainly more cosmic, and more ethereal. I have very solid memories of Salvia trips (none unpleasant so far), but few from DMT.
There is also a female entity present in my DMT trips. However she normally hides and shows me things. When she shows herself she is made of an infinite number of beings. She is benign most of the time, but she has flashed her teeth once, and appeared as a very dark flowing, transforming mass another time. It was not scary, but it was dark.