My powdered salvia trip sequence

In a previous post, I demonstrated how I made a sublingual salvia powder.

Here I describe how the trip unfolds.

There is some variation in sequence events, like tingling, warmth, and speckles. The times vary as well, depending on the amount and activity of my powder.

Preparation:

I weigh out my leaf, grind it to fine powder, and put it onto a large tablespoon.

I use a toothbrush and a small amount of toothpaste to brush over and under my tongue, the inside and outside of my gums, inside my cheeks, and the roof of my mouth. I rinse my mouth with a capful of Listerine Cool Mint. The alcohol and thymol in the mouthwash increase the permeability of the mucous membranes in my mouth.

I collect my eye mask and a pair of foam ear plugs. I insert the ear plugs.

0' I put the salvia powder into my mouth, start my stop watch, and sit on the couch. I sit hunched forward, and stare at the patterns on my ceramic floor tiles.

6' Skin sensations, like tingling, itching and crawling.

7' Pale pink and green speckles appear on the floor tiles. These speckles are similar to the white noise you see on TV screens when the tuner is between stations. At this point, I close my eyes and pull down the eye mask.

9' Waves of warmth start flowing over my body.

13' I start tripping. I experience mild hallucinations.

17' My mouth is numb. I can no longer feel my tongue, or the liquid inside my mouth. If I don't swallow, I am in danger of dribbling liquid salvia onto my shirt, my couch, my floor. So I swallow.

18' The trip becomes quite intense, with vivid hallucinations.

My hallucinations are usually fleeting images, that flow from one image to the next. I often become inanimate objects, like giant tractor tyres, or Art Deco sculptures, or buildings on street corners. This lasts for about 20 minutes into the trip. Then I become aware of myself sitting or lying on the couch, but disembodied. I feel like I am floating above my body. Towards the end of the trip, I surface occasionally, become aware of things like lawn mowers, dogs barking and cars hooting. But after a few seconds, I can immerse myself into the trip again. The trip ends when I surface, but cannot immerse again.

1H10' The trip ends abruptly. I usually have a full bladder (salvia acts as a diuretic for me). I am also very cold for the next two hours.

I have attached photos of my attempts to record these events. The first record is for quidding a defrosted salvia quid. The other three are for powder. You can see that some of the more active powders result in loss of motor control as the trip intensifies!

Good job with the salvia work, I ordered some glycerin myself to try out the powder method and see how it goes.

Salvia is indeed one strong entheogen.

Thanks for sharing.

My first time with Salivia I had her in a mermaid bong. I remember smoking her and then the bong floated up and out of my hands. Yet, I could still feel the bong in my hands.

That is when I said to myself. Just put the bong down and lay back. Don't move, just enjoy. Wise words to myself in retrospect to say the least.

Thanks for sharing your experience, I don't recall ever reading one quite like it with the powdered quid, but it definitely makes sense.

@Arcane: There are some interesting things you can do to enhance the activity of salvia powders.

1. Grind the salvia with a small amount of lecithin. Lecithin is a food grade emulsifier. It is used routinely as a component of sublingual drug delivery systems.

2. Grind the salvia with a small amount of grinding aid. I have had good results with food grade diatomaceous earth. The sharp angular particles rip open the trichomes, and the extra surface area helps to spread out the salvinorin-rich resin.

3. Grind the salvia with a small amount of aspirin. Saliva contains esterases that de-acetylate salvinorin A to salvinorin B. Aspirin is the acetic ester of salicylic acid. The aspirin becomes a sacrificial ester, and protects the Salvinorin A. I use 1/8 of a 300mg tablet to make 0.8g powder. Any more than this is counterproductive, because it leads to excess salivation, and therefore dilution of the salvia paste.

Thank you for the extra information Zebbie, any information of making salvia administration more efficient orally the better!

I have a shoe box sized container of dried leaves and some live plants producing more, I am intrigued by your methods to get the most out of this plant.

Thank you for posting this alternate method, Zebbie. I am hoping to give this a try this week. I'm always looking for ways to make 'quidding' easier for those who need a lot of material or just have trouble getting it to work in general.

I usually use an 800mg quid and that gets me where I want to go (out of body, so to speak) in about 8-12 minutes consistently, with extra quid just extending the trip but not making it deeper. I'm curious whether this method will take me deeper if I use the same amount.

I'd like to ask about the numbness though. Do you mean actually numb...or more like detached? I always feel a bit detached from my mouth when it comes on, but never felt numbness just from leaf alone. If you actually mean numb, do you think it's from the vinegar/glycerin combo?

Like you - my trips pretty much end after a little over an hour and I always have to pee...

You are right - detached is a very good way to describe it. But there is an element of numbness as well, that I don't experience when chewing whole leaf. I think this is due to the difference in texture between leaf and powder, and not due to the vinegar/glycerin combo.

When I chew leaf, I am constantly aware of something brushing against my tongue. It is easy to feel the quid, because it is relatively big.

When I swoosh powder, it starts off as a thick paste that coats the inside of my mouth. As the saliva builds up, the paste becomes thinner and thinner. I can feel this liquid in my mouth for about 10 - 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, it feels as though my tongue is moving around in an empty mouth. I can no longer feel the liquid against my tongue. But I am still aware of little gritty leaf particles between my upper and lower front teeth. I can feel them if I clamp my jaws or make a nibbling movement.

Thanks for the clarification on the numbness. I'll watch for it when I test.

Do you use a chewing or nibbling movement at all? In my leaf quids, it seems that making that movement helps induce the trance to some degree...or helps to dive back in if I surface for a moment.

How much deeper do you get with the powder method than with a leaf quid?

In reviewing your handwritten notes above, are you saying that you use approximately 6g of plain leaf for quidding normally?

Since using the powder method, have you tried quidding with less leaf than before to compare results and see if you can get farther with smaller leaf quantity?

Being able to reduce from 6g down to .8g is quite significant! If I could reduce my leaf to powder in a similar amount, I would only need 100mg of plain leaf powder. That would be an amazingly small amount! But that doesn't even compare to Rhythm Spring's comment in another thread:

"After using Salvia hundreds of times, also while having a severe chronic illness, I'd say that my Salvia sensitivity (aka reverse tolerance) has gotten to an absurd level. If I smell the bag of leaves, I enter a subtle SD space. Putting a tiny fleck of a plain leaf in my mouth for about 5 seconds will induce an uncomfortably strong experience for the next 6 hours. Yes, it's that absurd."

Quidding whole leaf or swooshing powder is always a race against time. You have to get the salvinorin A into your bloodstream faster than the esterases and lactases in the blood can break it down. There are a number of factors all contriving to sabotage a successful trip.

The concentration of salvinorin A particles in bulk saliva is reasonably constant, because of turbulent flow conditions when you swoosh the saliva. But immediately adjacent to the mucous membranes, there is a thin boundary layer of fluid, which is more or less stationary.

A concentration gradient of salvinorin A particles exists in the boundary layer. Salvinorin A is removed at the interface between the mucous membrane and the boundary layer, and replenished at the interface between the boundary layer and the bulk saliva. The salvinorin particles have to diffuse through the boundary layer to reach the mucous membrane. Diffusion is a slow process.

Moving a quid of leaf around the inside of your mouth is very beneficial. The rough texture of the leaf scrubs away the stale boundary layer, and replaces spent saliva with salvinorin rich saliva.

My powders are not as abrasive as quidded leaf. I compensate for this by scraping my tongue against my top and bottom front teeth, and moving the tip of my tongue against the surfaces inside my mouth. This has a noticeable effect on the onset and strength of the trip.

I think this is an important factor in the variation observed between individuals who attempt quidding. You have to move that leaf around your mouth all the time, for maximum effect.

Sorry for the misunderstanding. I use 6g fresh leaf for quidding and .8g dried leaf in powder form.

my salvia vendor very kindly gave me 200g fresh leaf. I wanted to see whether freezing leaf would rupture the trichomes, and increase the onset and intensity of the trip. I divided the leaf into roughly 6g packages, and froze them. I reserved one lot as the fresh control.

6g of fresh leaf resulted in a wonderful trip. When I defrosted and quidded 6g of frozen leaf, the results were underwhelming. I confirmed the disappointing results by quidding frozen leaf two more times. Unfortunately I had no more fresh leaf to confirm the fresh leaf results.

I defrosted 6.10g of frozen leaf, and dried it. I obtained 0.91g dry leaf. I weighed out 0.8g of this leaf, and converted it to powder. The powder was better than quidding the thawed frozen leaf, but not as good as powder made from crushed dry leaf.

Here is a picture of the defrosted leaf before and after drying. The defrosted leaf is on a saucer, and the dried leaf is on a dinner plate.

Ah - 6g FRESH leaf makes more sense. So that dried to .9g.

** When you do a standard (rehydrated) dried leaf quid (not powder), do you also use 0.8-0.9g to get to a similar depth as the 6g Fresh?

** When using the paste, do you also rub it on the outside of your gums, or just the inner gums the whole time?

When using leaf, I'm rather lazy in that I just use a single .8g wad stuck in the back of one cheek. I chew consistently without moving it or swishing for about 8-10 minutes. By that point, the quid is pretty well converted to juice, and my mouth usually automatically starts swishing it around for a minute or so (this is usually 'forced'...I don't do it consciously).

As the first wave kicks in, the swishing/chewing is usually abruptly stopped. I am frequently compelled to swallow the juice (though not always). I still have rather dried out leaf packed at the top and bottom of my cheeks and gums that I can later 'retrieve' and continue chewing on to dive back in after surfacing.

This lazy method always gets me 'over the line' and to a usable/therapeutic space. After testing your paste method, I'll also test being more active with the same size leaf quid and see if I can get it to take me into a deeper experience. I'm hoping tonight will work out for the paste test...

@physics envy I am keeping an eye on your experiences with the powder method too, any results are of definite interest to me too

Had a chance to give it a try tonight. It worked

I used the same amount of starting powder tonight as I usually use in my quids (800mg), and the experience was pretty identical to my normal trips. Same onset times, maximum depth reached and overall length.

I didn't really expect to get deeper than normal because I feel I've pretty much found my plateau with frequent quidding over the last several years. But I did tonight's trial the way I do my normal quids (lazily), so perhaps there is a chance I can get deeper with some more tweaks.

For example, I didn't chew at all until the effects were well under way. Next time I could chew the entire time.

Also, I frequently forgot to continue swishing and rubbing my inner gums with my tongue since those were both new steps to me. The powder liquefies much quicker than a regular quid, so there is an opportunity for more liquid swishing from the start.

I'll also test using less powder to see if I can still reach my plateau. I did similar trials with leaf a year or two ago and found that I needed about 750mg to make sure I get there. Perhaps this method will allow me to significantly reduce the amount needed...

So glad it worked. Now we need some toothless volunteers to replicate the experiment! Any old age homes in your area?

I find the freshly prepared powder to be more active than quidding the same amount of whole dry leaf. One week old powder is about as active as whole dried leaf.

As I grind the leaf, I can smell the salvia. Maybe some salvinorin A becomes airborne and enters my lungs and conditions and prepares my k opioid receptors! On a previous occasion, when I ground a lot of leaf without glycerin, breathing the dust made me high.

Heh...maybe I can just huff my bag of leaves and break through

It's great that this method seems a reliable way of using a relatively small amount of leaf to get a very efficient dose.

I hope you also keep experimenting with this guys, great work.