He said it was powerful

My First Time with Salvia Divinorum: A Perceptual Extravaganza

Last week, I got hold of some salvia extract from a friend who wanted to share some of his big stash. When he handed it to me, he said it was powerful, so I decided to smoke just a little, as I had heard of impressive experiences with the plant…I grabbed my glass pipe and loaded it.
I went to my balcony, looked at the beautiful setting sun of Miami, and took a small hit, followed by a much deeper one. I didn’t like the taste of the smoke at all - I’m used to a very smooth marihuana scent in my lungs. For the first ten seconds, it felt like an N, N-DMT style come-up, like my surroundings were about to explode and I would be transported to that beautiful cosmic space filled with glowing life. But, instead of taking me there, it quickly shifted into the most unexplainable, wild, and overtaking experience in my life. I could barely walk, my vision got blurred and the perception of time was absolutely distorted. Somehow, I made it to the bathroom, and I just stood there looking at the sink. The thought patterns that followed were disconcerting: I looked at my toothbrush, and it became the only object that existed in the Universe! As weird as that sounds, that was exactly what it was: I wasn’t an observer anymore… The concept of “I” was gone. All that was left from reality was a black background and a toothbrush in the foreground. But it wasn’t the “reality” we are used to…it was another completely different type of reality, more conscious of itself, not scattered like ours is.

After this locked-in odd state of minds, I finally could focus on something else in the bathroom: my extended arm, and at the end of it my hand holding the pipe. I wanted to wash it so the awkward smell would go away, but I simply couldn’t. I was stuck, paralyzed. I was in a hole again. Time was still non-existent, so trying to do anything was out of the question. I’m not sure how long I was in this state; it could’ve been ten seconds or could’ve been an hour. Miraculously, I was now out of the bathroom and in the middle of the living room, and I began recognizing things again. But it was all odd… I didn’t recognize my own reality! My animal instincts activated, adrenaline was released. “We gotta get out of this one”, “this has to be reality, this has to be my life”, “this has to be me in this body!” I thought…but the hallucinations were not helping: for example, I looked at a chair and there seemed to be many chairs, all within one, each slightly linearly side to side. My whole apartment looked unfamiliar to me. So unfamiliar that I had to constantly tell myself that it was, in fact, the place where I live. I managed to go to the kitchen to drink some water from the sink, open the fridge, and eat some cheese. I suddenly realized that if I didn’t “wake” myself up I could be lost in the other reality forever. So I jumped up and down, I slapped my face, I stretched my legs, and I took a deep breath. Even air was unfamiliar to my lungs. I could not remember what I was doing before, and I could not remember if my parents were home or not (thankfully, they weren’t). The episodes of clarity were intermittent, clouded by the darkness of the alternate reality.
Eventually, it all started stabilizing. I began to recognize the world I know and love. The whole experience was overwhelming from its rocket-launch beginning to the long and confusing comedown, and on so many different levels. I will never smoke salvia again, but I’m glad I did as it shed some powerful insights of everything that surrounds us at any time.
I visited that day the bottom of the ocean. I reached the very limits of perception.