Event Name: TalkShowHost
At this point, many people have heard of salvia. They've either given it a passing glance at a smoke shop or watched hilarious YouTube videos of people drooling and making awkward moaning noises on all limbs. I think even Miley Cyrus has tried it, though, I don't really give a shit about her. And yes, I know that the title of the post has an error "saliva". When I drafted all these writings long ago it was a typo and I thought it was funny.
What do we know about it?
- Scientific Name: Salvia Divinorum
- Native Area: Oaxaca, Mexico
- Original Purpose: to get fucked up and have visions, usually in the spirit of healing or divination for shamans local to Oaxaca
- Plant Facts: Grows 3ft in height, blooms white, square stem, violet calyx
- How do you get high?: smoke it
- High type: disassociation, hallucination to the point of transporting somewhere else completely, visual and touch
- Legal Status in California: Must be over 18 years old to purchase (as of March 2017), not fit for human consumption - see more info here
When I was younger (YOLO), I tried salvia quite a few times because it was a "fun" thing to do with my friends for the time period. Possibly a resurgence of an old trend, salvia at the time (2008ish?) was all the talk among high schoolers and early college. The basic description you got from everyone that tried it my age was that "you got really fucked up and it was soooo sick". After trying it, I don't think this is the best way to describe it.
The first story I want to talk about took place at my parents house one of the summers back home in San Diego. My GF, dog, and I were hanging around at the house while my parents were on vacation for a couple of days. I had picked up some salvia earlier that day from a tobacco shop and we were getting those nerves you get right before you do something new. Not that it was my first time or anything, but it was my first time with her so I wasn't sure how she would be included in my trip or how I would be in hers. As mentioned from the "What do we know about it?" section, salvia really fucks you up. In the past I've had some heavily symbolic trips if you will, meaning that people or objects that I was familiar with would show up in my hallucination and I'd have to kind of deal with whatever way this person or object was presented to me. Meaning, you really don't have that much control with Salvia but generally an element (sound, people, objects) present around you can make an appearance in your hallucination. Back to my gf, could this cause some bad images to flow in our heads, sabotage our relationship? Probably not, but when I was YOLO and nervous trying a new thing with a girl I liked, those type of thoughts where totally valid questions in my mind. My dog was also there, he's always a champ and was providing a very nonchalant classic cool to the situation, per usual.
Anyway... We all sat down in the living room and pulled out the glass bong and set it on the table. Right next to it, we placed the small dime bag of Salvia Divinorum x5 or x10 - I can't remember. Apparently the times 5 or times 10 mean't how many times it was soaked and therefore more potent. I had known from experience that the best way to really go elsewhere was to take a fattymcfatfat rip from a bong, definitely surefire, every time. And I was a young daredevil still, so I was up for it and my gf wanted to experience it for her first time in a safe place the right way. I volunteered to go first to show her how to do it and see what it was like to observe a person under the influence. So I packed the bowl and got my lighter in hand. Thoughts began to rush to previous memories of the experience, the time for laughing was over, as I knew that things were about to get real. I pinched in a bit of salvia and lit it, watching the embers glow and eat away at the fresh herb. My girlfriend was staring at me as if something magical was going to happen right before her eyes. There's one classic saying I would use when doing this with friends and I repeated it as I said goodbye, "Whelp, here I go..." in a very nervous but playful voice as I inhaled the thick white smoke. As I sat there holding my breathe, I counted down the seconds until I would arrive in my unfamiliar land.
Brief intermission about salvia smoke. It's a very harsh smell and taste, where you have this feeling that you shouldn't have really put that in your lungs. Right before you are launched into a different dimension.
As I awake to my new drug induced reality, I can feel my head is a little heavy and things are blurry and unclear. My head feels like it's slowly coming out of a hole in the ground, where I can feel waves of energy pass through me, almost deforming me, as a slip in to the present space. What I'm presented with first is very confusing. For the first time ever on salvia the situation seems completely the same! I'm in my house, there's my dog, and that's my girlfriend. What the fuck is going on? I'm normally in space or a void lacking it with weird shit going on. But then, the bass dropped. Not literally, but these days that's how people might describe it.
I noticed that the room I was in may have been my house, but it certainly wasn't the state I left it in. It was oddly dark and nearly mute, the shadow of my girlfriend and dog loomed in the darkness. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, my gf gets up from the couch and we have the best sex ever...
NOT!
Bright stage lights now visible from my peripheral switch on and illuminate the scene in a surreal glow. I realize now that I'm on a stage. Wires running everywhere like a rats nest and large cameras setup around us. In a moment of chaos, I begin to hear voices of stage hands and directors in the background rustling around and making commentary. Then, with a loud bang I hear the words "CUT!". A silence falls over the scene but the lights remain on with all their brightness.
I look to my girlfriend to make sense of this situation. She's completely frozen staring directly at me and my dog is too. She goes into motion a moment later and she says to me, "the show's over". She then gets up, grabs her purse, and leaves through the front door. Now I fall into deep thought about why the hell she just did that. It was as if we were just coworkers and our shift had ended. My thoughts were confirmed when my dog did the same thing. Yes - my dog fucking looked at me and SAID, "it's over" and walked out the front door.
Now here's that part where salvia really takes a shitty twist. The whole trip is about 10 minutes and then you get plopped back into reality with this fucking bombshell experience that you just had.
Although, the trip is 10 minutes. Where you go is timeless. With salvia, you still have memories of your previous reality but just like in real life you don't have control, you can't just escape reality whenever you feel like it. Fears filled my mind... Who are these people that resembled ones I've loved, kissed, cried with, spent years with? Had they really forgotten all the time we had spent together? Was it all a waste? Do I have to start over? And finally, did my dog just fucking talk to me? They were just actors on a set, paid to play a part, but when the director yelled cut it was all over. They would go home, I'd go to wherever I now belonged, and we'd be separate. Alone.
As this sunk in I began to paralyze in fear. I had a brief lapse of pure panic and the world began to change around me. The world hardened, became thicker, it felt like I became part of a claymation. What was different, however, was that there seemed to be no empty space. As if the 3rd dimension had been cut into little 2D slices and stuck together like a sticky note flipbook. I tried to move my arms but they were incredibly stiff. As I struggled you could hear this friction with the other 2D slices sliding together like tectonic plates. With each movement all connected planes also had to move as my world shifted in frames. The moment slow and silent like a person that has just drowned, the current carrying them as a weightless sediment.
I arrived back in the same way I came, a complete haze. As if blossoming back to reality. My gf looked concerned. I had drooled a little bit, one of the nice things about salvia. I wiped my mouth and smiled, extremely relieved that it was over. I was a little lost for words because my reality had been shattered. I knew that salvia was a dis-associative but the topic had never hit me in such a powerful way involving two things I loved, my dog and girlfriend. I asked her how stupid I looked while I was under. In a unsure voice she said, "you stood there moving your arms randomly, drooling and you moaned for a while". I couldn't help but laugh at this, salvia always makes the person doing it look like a total jackass to everyone present, meanwhile, they're being hurtled through a new twisted reality.
I'm sure some people have a great time with salvia. Hell, I continued to do it when I was YOLO because it brought me to such odd places, leaving me with so many questions. I've got one more story about salvia I'll share in a later post.
The Beast: raptor attack, rain, lights, nighttime dark, blue and purple, the last stick in chicka bang river,/fear - Sam Pancho Villa: the hill, poncho, cloud forest/dry land, grasslands, the log - Justin Goodbye friend: Lack of memory, the log of reason - Tim Fucking Saliva 2: Oh Brother: the tv screens, the drool, Clawing back, Come one Come All to the Merry-Go-Round of Life Choices The Comic, echolocation, and algae waves One Regret Mastah of Paranoia and Mountain Goats
