Green Stems

Grew out of my body!

Substances: Salvia divinorum

I had smoked the dried leaves of Salvia Divinorum six or seven times. Generally, I followed the recommended procedure: darkened room, eyes closed, no music or other distractions. All I experienced was a slightly floaty/spacey meditative feeling. It seemed to quiet the mind, but it went no further.

At the urging of a friend I once smoked a truly heroic dose of the harsh acrid smoke. I took in perhaps two or three leaves in a total of two or three inhalations. With my eyes closed I experienced a strange fleeting effect: I felt that my consciousness was submerged in a fluid flowing two different directions, and I was being s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d out into a long line. In a second it was gone. Was that all there was?

I vowed to never attempt the raw leaves again. For my next attempt I powdered approximately half gram of leaves, (measurement uncertain) submerged the powder in ethanol (Everclear) and left it like that for a few days. I then poured the ethanol through a coffee filter and rinsed the merc with more Everclear. I left the emerald green solution in an uncovered flat-bottom dish overnight. The following day the bottom was covered with a dark green oily residue. Since it had dried all night in a warm area I believed that all the water had evaporated. I decided not to add any leaves as carrier and just scraped up the residue and torched it in a pipe. As it heated and I inhaled, I noted that it was beginning to boil and the gas coming off was mostly steam rather than vaporized essence of Salvia. It took many (more than five) inhalations before it really heated up. The effects was a mild floaty feeling, coupled with a strong recall of the last time I smoked it. Rats, foiled again!

Next try: I extracted about half a gram (measurement uncertain) with ethanol as before, but this time I left a quarter of the leaves in the extract as carrier and I dried it in a oven preheated to 200 and then turned off. Also, this time I only soaked the leaves in ethanol for a few hours. In my early attempts with Salvia I always had a sitter standing by in case I should spring up and stumble around the room as has been reported when vaporized pure Salvorin A has been inhaled. By this time I was rather - skeptical - of Salvia. I had decided that I was immune. I did not even bother turning off the lights anymore, I just closed my eyes, and took about 4 deep tokes, and started thinking about Texans. Texans, in thir big cowboy hats, sitting down by a river, disolving into the den of my childhood home. "Why am I having such strange thoughts, am I going crazy? I must fight to maintain reality... Hey wait! This MIGHT be the Salvia. This is what you have been trying for, just relax." My skin seemed to swell, boil, and crack open. Green stems grew out of my of my body, encircled and cocooned me. I was not terified at all, only very slightly elated but primarily neutral. It was like a dream. My plant covered body grew in size, I pushed my head out through the wall. Finally, I turned my body inside out in an attempt to free my consciousness. Suddenly I was back in my body, back in the room. I was not sure how much time had elapsed... a few minutes? There were no residual visuals.

The next attempts with the extract were just as spectacular. I would take 4-5 hits, start to see a few mild visuals, and suddenly find myself to be a disembodied consciousness. Sometimes I would find myself in a house that I have not been in since my childhood. Once I became a cube as I expanded to fill the room that I sat in. Once I began to fly, but it turned into a sub-orbital launch and I fell back into my body. Spacial and temporal dimensions become strangely equivalent. The experience is always overwhelming; I never get the subtle closed-eye visuals which are said to disappear when the lights go on. I can not open my eyes during the experience because I can not remember that I have eyes. The body is totally irrelevant.

A sitter timed the experience for me: 90 seconds! That's all!