In another thread, I was requested to detail a lifechanging salvia trip I had a few months back, so here it is. First, some background.
Salvia was my introduction to "higher" psychedelics. I'd tasted it once before, about a decade ago, in my hippy days. Nothing much to write home about. Some rotational spatial hallucinations.
Since then, I'd experienced LSD a couple dozen times or so, mushrooms a little less, and had developed a heavy cannabis habit. Since the age of about 17, I never really missed a day except for supply issues. I was able to function and maintain my life, so I felt like I was okay, but I knew it was a detrimental habit. I would smoke from first wake and all day long. Many days I didn't eat breakfast, but I'd be sure to get high at least once or twice before leaving for work. It numbed me to my lack of progress in personal areas of my life, even though academically and professionally I was able to keep plugging along.
It also suppressed my dreams, and I'd long had an interest in lucid dreaming, and during periods of involuntary abstention, I became pretty good at it. I even went to Marijuana Anonymous meetings, and once managed to go 24 hours sober before I fell right back into the habit. I had basically maxed out my tolerance, only smoking dabs of the highest purity hash oil, routinely taking 2 or 3 for a mild buzz, and eating the strongest edibles. It was unequivocally a pathological habit.
About a year ago I had picked up a gram of 10x salvia on a lark. I never felt an urge to give it a try, until one day for reasons unknown, it felt right. I started with a few tiny flakes, felt nothing, and tried with a few more. A mild trip was achieved, Jacob's Ladder-style conveyor belts filling the air around me, and the feeling of "Of course! This again!" swept over me.
I was hesitant to hit the 10x much harder, and preferred to nurture the rumored reverse tolerance, so I picked up a pouch of plain leaf and a bong, since the hash pipe I'd used previously was quite harsh. On my next attempt, I consumed a half-bowl of plain leaf and reached about the same level as before. Mild and pleasant, though very eery, in that particular salvia way.
For my next go, I predosed with another half-bowl, found myself in the familiar space, and then packed a full bowl of the plain leaf. I torched and consumed it in a single hit. Each time my plan for the trip was the same, hold the hit as long as possible, blow it out the window (I don't like a smoky room), and nestle into bed.
When I hit the full bowl, I barely remember the exhale, and I can't fully account for my physical whereabouts during the following events. I experienced massive layers of reality rolling back in a clockwise direction to the right, as if printed like a 3-dimensional surface on giant paper rolls like you might see in a mill. After two or three layers rolled away, I recognized features from my own room expanding and opening up, and this was the layer I was in. The layer was being pulled into some sort of reality-packaging machinery.
I could feel the presence of my family "nearby" (in this dimension -- my family lives on the other side of the country), so I knew this was my correct universe. As my reality layer was pulled into the machinery, I felt that I was misaligned with the adjacent dimensions. It was as if I was rotated 90 degrees in the 4th or 5th dimension, so my body was split between three dimensions, or crammed in the infinitely small space between dimensions. I knew if the packaging machinery repackaged my reality with me misaligned like that, I would be stuck outside of my reality and my universe for all eternity. I panicked and decided I needed to break free of the machine and get myself properly into my own reality before before that happened. Physically, this manifested as me flailing about, probably on the ground.
Gradually, reality started to come back together, leaving me with a stronger version of the salvia "high" I had experienced before. I regained awareness in my bed. The strange thing was that a trash can on the other side of the room was knocked over. To get to that part of the room, I would have had to walk around a rack of hanging clothes, and then walk back around to get back in my bed. I have no recollection of moving around in the room, although my perspective when reality rolled away told me I must have been on the other side of the room at that time.
Coming back, I had an enormous, overwhelming sense of gratitude and amazement. THANK GOD! I MADE IT BACK! I NEVER THOUGHT I'D SEE THIS REALITY AGAIN! It's a cliche to say you don't know what you have until it's gone, that you take your existence and your life for granted, but I really understood this feeling for the first time, when everything I was and everything I knew was abruptly and roughly stripped away from me, and I had no idea if I would ever get it back.
Traumatic as this experience was, it set me on a path toward DMT, which has been amazing in its own way, but still not as profound in its effects on my life as this one salvia experience. A week or so after that I just stopped smoking weed. It didn't seem at all challenging like before, I just stopped. Without even meaning to or thinking about it, I also stopped drinking energy drinks, another bad habit. The severity of my trichotillomania (compulsive hair-plucking) also radically diminished. None of these things were remotely as difficult as they had been in past attempts to break the habits. It felt effortless. For me, it truly felt magical. I also feel that it has helped with my issues with anger and frustration, although there is still work to be done.
I haven't been back to salvia since, although I still have a lot of leaf and grams of 10x and 20x sitting around. Maybe one day it will call out to me again, but for now I am deeply grateful for Lady Salvia's intervention in my life.