Thread: Psychonauts! Let's talk about altered states of consciousness.

Kind of along a similar vein, I think its interesting that these same/similar places keep getting reached. Since I had my first breakthrough experience it seems that I'll reach the same phenomenon at high doses regardless of what psychedelic is present. Granted its been a while since any experiences for me but still this area is what shows me that something must be going on here. I haven't had any intense breakthrough trips on Salvia, but I have felt that female presence that was already described.

Anyway, the same things for me have been open-eyed visuals (fractals, vines, "sacred" geometry) appearing, the ego death, a sense of "here we go again", and more recently a kind of death/rebirth. Kinda like how there really is no boundary between the afterlife and now, and that "death" is just a word for the transnational phase between these two states. That's it in a nutshell for me and I think its really fascinating that there appear to be these consistent places we all go to, and of the striking similarities between them.

Edit:

And yes I've also had the feeling/notion that waking life is just an illusion. Its such a strange feeling when I've got it, since it really feels "holographic" in the truest sense of Star Trek, and at the same time like I'm being watched by something or observed by many things. Or holographic in the sense of our actual physical universe, since everything is supposedly made of particles/waves/strings/ect. One time I tried to analyze what was going on but could not identify what exactly was causing the illusion. My mind started branching off into conspiracy theories, like government mind control or something actually trapping our consciousness to this present state , so I stopped trying to examine this soon after. The illusionary feeling is real though.

Originally Posted by Atras

Oh that's interesting that you would describe it as being on a wheel. It reminded me, before I got trapped in the "nothingness", I actually suddenly felt like I was part of a wheel with other people stuck next to me, exactly how you described. I didn't realize I was part of this wheel though until it started turning, and once it started turning, I experienced even more terror. The first Salvia breakthrough was interesting, there were multiple parts to it, each connected in different ways, but it's very hard to remember it linearly or in an organized way. I will remember some parts of it, think I have a good picture of what it was like, and then realize there was another part I completely forgot about that completely changes the meaning of the experience. It's like remembering a very stubborn dream.

Also it's worth mentioning, I would not break through every time, but even on the times I did not break through, I still got the same exact feelings, and it was if I became aware of extra dimensions. I could not see them but I could perceive them very clearly, kinda hard to explain. And what would happen on these non breakthrough trips was that suddenly I would get this extra dimensional perception where I would perceive all of reality existing in one space and time, kinda like a board game as I explained in the previous post, and there would be all these cells and in the cells would be other people, I could not see them but i could sense all of them with some sort of extra dimensional perception. And as usual this would be terrifying and unbelievably uncomfortable to me. I would still be in reality but would suddenly realize my reality was a lie and that I was really trapped. Best way I can describe it (although it is a weak metaphor that does not really do it justice) is that I would suddenly realize I am actually a puppet, and with the smoking of Salvia, I would suddenly become aware of the strings attached to me.

It's a really freaky drug, but as much as it scares me, I really want to explore it more. Maybe next time I will try to describe the experience while under the influence, in an attempt to better and more fully explain it.

My first time on salvia, the sensation did feel reminiscent of a wheel. I had always thought of it more like the swinging ship ride at a theme park. I was in the dorms and my friends were on bunk beds laughing as hip hop music played. They turned into puppets on a ship several stories tall, singing along to the hip hop and the ship itself was rocking and rotating in accordance with the music as well.

There's something else that felt circular in nature, too. I felt like I got a glimpse of images all relating to my future salvia trips. Like I could be shown every time in the future that I would trip, and they flicked before me like images on a slideshow. I've done Salvia several times since, but I can't remember those images and the times since have been strange as well. Each and every time, everything is replaced by a stage of sorts. The second time, for example, The sky and clouds turned into a smiling woman singing out shapes. But to a degree, there's always this sense that salvia puts you on stage, and staring at the sunset rather than being the center of attention in the dorm room turned me more into an audience for the play.

I completely understand the feeling of strings, even the visuals appear crafted to make everything look like a set being shot by a dimension woven within it.

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this to you before Atras, but I'll write it here in case I haven't.
Many of the experiences you describe are very similar to some of my psychotic episodes.

Firstly, the dimensional shift:
One of the first things that happens in many of my episodes is my visual frame rate is reduced, and I lose my sense of motion. Then I sometimes lose my depth perception, and am flattened onto a 2D plane. I am no longer able to comprehend the third dimension, which makes it very difficult to move, and this sometimes results in perceived paralysis for hours while I feel trapped in this 2D world. There have been times during these episodes where my dimensions will shift, and everything suddenly becomes cubic, and my vision is separated into smaller cubes, which spin every so often and teleport me to a virtual world in a parallel dimension. I get the feeling that the episode is trying to show me that no dimension/reality is stable, because as soon as I start to believe in one realm being the 'true' reality, the world will instantly shatter (literally) and show me a new reality instead.

Secondly, the intricate details you became aware of around you:
A feature that's almost always present during my psychosis is a shift in my perception that allows me to notice minuscule details in everyday objects: where I would normally see a white wall, I can suddenly see every tiny speck within the wall, and every subtle difference in shade within the speck. Sometimes this is interesting and mesmerising, and I'll notice complex patterns on a micro scale (I also have intensified pattern recognition on a larger scale, and can point out things that are actually visible to other people, but they never would have noticed how all these things are intricately connected to make a whole shape.)
But sometimes it becomes too intense, and every extra detail I notice startles me, like it's too much information to take in and I get overwhelmed. I'll jump every time I notice a normal object in the room, because it's suddenly like an alien concept to me that I can't possibly understand.

Another thing you didn't mention, but I know you've experienced, is a heightened perception of music. This is one of my favourite things about my psychotic episodes. I can listen to music and hear it broken down into each intricate element... I'll hear subtle tones and ambient sounds that I've never noticed before, but they suddenly stand out so clearly. I feel like I could easily recreate the music layer by layer, because I have such an intricate understanding of every part that it's made of.
I'm also able to dilate time to a degree - I can intentionally alter my perception and slow the music down, so I can hear it in even more detail.

Thirdly, the feeling of dread upon returning to a familiar realm:
The feeling of entrapment and losing touch with my previous truth/reality is what usually drives my fear during episodes. It's something I experienced very strongly every time I ever used weed (I smoked 10-15 times, and ingested a large dose once,) and it often happens when a psychotic episode is triggered by second-hand marijuana smoke. Every time I would immediately think, "What have I done? Why would I do this to myself again? I'm back in this place and I'll never escape!"
I would spend a large portion of the episode writing myself notes and begging myself never to do this again if I ever made it out of this state, which I didn't believe I would most of the time. I felt like I was seeing reality for how it really was now, and it was too intense and terrifying to handle. I knew my previous reality was lost, and was only ever an illusion, and I was stuck in this new reality forever.
A common theme is a looping déjà vu cycle, where the same events/feelings continue to happen in the same order, and I'm convinced that time is stuck in a loop and I'll never get out.
I also once had an experience where I felt that my mind had become a Rubik's cube, and any time I closed my eyes, it would start to twist itself... I was afraid to let it get too scrambled, because I knew that I would lose touch with reality permanently if I couldn't put it back together. I was afraid to fall sleep, so I had someone keeping me awake for the duration of that episode, which probably only made it worse, because sleep deprivation is a trigger for my episodes. I've had a few other situations like that, where I'm afraid to fall asleep or close my eyes because I feel like I'll be trapped in another world forever.

There was one time when I actually learnt something valuable from an experience like this. When I was 16, I had a 12 hour episode that was triggered by second-hand weed. I was lying on a couch the entire time, while I had repeated muscle spasms throughout my legs. It was the same set of movements happening involuntarily over and over again every few seconds, and it became excruciatingly painful after many hours of constant twitching. I was also having hallucinations, but they weren't particularly scary, it was mostly dancing lights and patterns jumping out at me. My mind was more 'sane' than it usually is during episodes, and I could still communicate with the outside world. I had trouble staying grounded in reality though - I kept feeling myself drifting to another dimension. I tried desperately to fight it because I felt that once I left this reality, I would never come back. I knew the other realm was timeless and I would spend eternity there while my physical body lived on in this dimension.
The interesting thing was, whenever I felt myself drifting into the higher reality, my legs would stop twitching and I would suddenly feel peaceful. Worrying that I'd lose myself completely, I'd pull myself back to regular reality, where the fear would return, and the spasms would begin again. I felt like I had to choose between a sane mind with an uncontrollably violent body, or a peaceful body with a permanently insane mind.
The fear was really of ego death, because I knew I would forget about myself and this world if I allowed myself to enter the timeless realm. But the pain in my legs became agonising and I could no longer bear it. I had someone with me keeping watch, so I told them that I was "going away", but I wanted them to bring me back after a few minutes - I just wanted to give my legs a rest. I made them promise that they would try everything they could to bring me back... and then I allowed myself to enter the higher state. I experienced complete ego death, my memories of myself, my body, my life, my reality, where completely erased, and I entered a timeless realm where I spent eternity in peaceful bliss and knowing. And then suddenly, I was jolted back to this reality by my friend, and my fear returned, and my spasms began. For some reason, now that I was back in my body, I was afraid of returning to the void. The thought of losing touch with this world, losing my identity and my 'sanity', was terrifying to me.
Whenever I couldn't handle the physical pain any longer, I would allow myself to enter the higher state, and I experienced the same ego death every time, before returning to my body and fighting to hold on to my waking reality.

I don't think I really recognised it at the time, but in hindsight, I have taken an important lesson from this experience. It matches Terrance McKenna's advice in Neo Neo's video: I have realised that resistance is the cause of the majority of my negative psychotic experiences. Allowing myself to be fully immersed in the experience is the easiest way to subdue the fear and take something pleasant and beneficial from it, and sometimes even enlightening. This is more controversial to say as a schizophrenic than it would be for someone taking psychedelic drugs, since it's drilled into us that naturally occurring 'distorted perceptions of reality' are scary signs of illness that need to be squashed. If I voiced these thoughts to a psychiatrist, about embracing altered states, I would surely be locked in a psych ward. But I wanted to bring to light some of the similarities between my psychotic experiences any many people's psychedelic experiences, because I think similar advice can be beneficial in both cases.
All of my most terrifying experiences have been times where I've felt that I'm trapped in a 'halfway world'. It usually feels like I'm trapped halfway between life and death, or halfway between waking reality and hell. Sometimes, there are demons who taunt me and tell me that time doesn't exist in this realm, so I will be trapped there forever. I'm often tortured by these demons in every way imaginable, and I fight against it for as long as I can, until my resolve weakens and I accept my fate in this miserable existence... at which point, I am taken to nirvana, and experience pure bliss and peace and comfort. In my most intense experience in this realm, 'nirvana' began as a timeless black void where I had no body, and then I was accompanied by 3 protective spirits, two males and one female, who flew with me over the ocean and mountains, and healed my psychological scarring from the previous world. Once again, it was only when I stopped resisting that the torture ended and was replaced with stillness and serenity.

Another thing I can relate to is the female presence.
This isn't something I've generally experienced during psychotic episodes, but I definitely experienced it during that intense DMT trip. It felt like a nurturing and protective spirit, and appeared just prior to my ego death, when I entered a void of time and space. I've heard that the feeling of a female presence is a pretty common experience. It's something I'd heard about before I smoked DMT, so I'm not sure whether my expectations had anything to do with it, or whether it really is a universal experience.

I'll be interested to follow your progress with the binaural beats.
I've only just begun to experiment with isochronic tones over the last couple of months, and something kind of interesting has started to happen. I'm not sure yet whether it's a hallucination or if I'm actually becoming aware enough to perceive this, but I've started to audibly hear my brainwaves sometimes, when I'm not listening to the tones. I can hear them pulsing and can recognise the frequency.
I'm going to experiment with this to see if I can actually alter them by focusing on changing their speed. It would be awesome if the tones have expanded my perception to the point where I can actually have an audible representation of what my brain is doing. I suspect it's more likely that I'm hallucinating though, because I do get auditory hallucinations sometimes if I'm frequently exposed to a certain sound.

Originally Posted by ~ Dreamer ~

One of the first things that happens in many of my episodes is my visual frame rate is reduced

I wonder if this is the same as what I've experienced a couple of times when I've been drinking too much and didn't get enough sleep (usually because I had to go to work in like 3 hours) and then when I start moving suddenly I feel like I'm going to black out and my framerate slows down extremely. It's a really messed up experience, especially when you're riding a bike on a busy highway and need to get across it when it happens.

Originally Posted by Darkmatters

I wonder if this is the same as what I've experienced a couple of times when I've been drinking too much and didn't get enough sleep (usually because I had to go to work in like 3 hours) and then when I start moving suddenly I feel like I'm going to black out and my framerate slows down extremely. It's a really messed up experience, especially when you're riding a bike on a busy highway and need to get across it when it happens.

It does happen to me quite often when I'm sleep deprived too, without the psychotic element. Perhaps the brain is conserving energy when it's already at capacity, and it's got more important processing to do than providing us with high-speed HD vision.

Good to know! Lol it could pick its times better… like, after I got ACROSS the highway!!

Originally Posted by ~ Dreamer ~

The fear was really of ego death, because I knew I would forget about myself and this world if I allowed myself to enter the timeless realm....
All of my most terrifying experiences have been times where I've felt that I'm trapped in a 'halfway world'. It usually feels like I'm trapped halfway between life and death, or halfway between waking reality and hell. Sometimes, there are demons who taunt me and tell me that time doesn't exist in this realm, so I will be trapped there forever. I'm often tortured by these demons in every way imaginable, and I fight against it for as long as I can, until my resolve weakens and I accept my fate in this miserable existence... at which point, I am taken to nirvana, and experience pure bliss and peace and comfort. In my most intense experience in this realm, 'nirvana' began as a timeless black void where I had no body, and then I was accompanied by 3 protective spirits, two males and one female, who flew with me over the ocean and mountains, and healed my psychological scarring from the previous world. Once again, it was only when I stopped resisting that the torture ended and was replaced with stillness and serenity.

Wow, thanks for sharing everything Dreamer! I am going to reply with a longer post later, but I wanted to say that this touches exactly on the fears that I was getting. Really it expresses exactly what I was feeling, perfectly. Didn't get any of the demon stuff (yet) but I think that the fear I've been getting during ego death is exactly because I know I'll enter into a place where "I" am completely dissolved away. And why I want someone watching over my body next time . So yeah, you just described my fears exactly, and also why I can identify with what McKenna said.

A little off topic, but what you said about the demons tormenting you, and then giving in and ending up in nirvana, just reminded me of shamanistic experiences with spirits. Apparently dismemberment by spirits can happen in the altered state, as the shaman is taken apart, possibly cleansed or worked on, and then put back together. I was looking through google images one day and trying to find some artwork on this, since Graham Hancock mentioned this phenomena and had images of it in one of his slideshows. I feel like I had spirits examining my body on Salvia once... but nothing like you've described or dismemberment.

Edit: I think you already know this, but in this case it seems like the demons are the "fighting back" part and the ego resisting what is happening. Also reminds of of Doors of Perception, when Aldous Huxley talks about his psychedelic experience as he was gazing at some flowers. His thoughts were “And along with indifference to space, there was an even more complete indifference to time. "There seems to be plenty of it", was all I would answer when the investigator asked me to say what I felt about time. Plenty of it, but exactly how much was entirely irrelevant. I could, of course, have looked at my watch but my watch I knew was in another universe. My actual experience had been, was still, of an indefinite duration. Or alternatively, of a perpetual present made up of one continually changing apocalypse.”

Thanks for your thoughts, Neo.
It has been kind of scary sharing this stuff. Talking about my crazy head hasn't gone down so well with people in the past, so it's been a lot of years since I've dared to speak about it publicly.
Thanks for being so accepting, it's very encouraging.
I look forward to hearing any further thoughts!

Had an interesting experience earlier this week that I thought would be worthwhile sharing on this thread. I had this experience with the dream views user, Aqua. Interesting fact, we actually met through dream views ^_^ Here is the report.

"2 nights ago I had the most incredible acid trip of my life. While I cannot recall most of it, I will try to write what I do remember. I went camping with Aqua to Sequoia National Forest. We found a nice campground under tall pine trees, completely secluded, not near anyone else. At about 4:30 PM, we decided to each take 1 tab. The acid we took was extremely potent and pure acid. For reference, 1 tab of this acid is equivalent to about 6 or 7 tabs of your normal acid. This is real acid, I don’t know how it is so potent, but it is. I have done acid many times, mostly on low to medium doses. I have had many introspective trips, but have never had a spiritual experience on it, unlike Mushrooms.

The trip started as it usually does, things started to become more detailed and vibrant, slowly morphing into each other. I started to get intense euphoria and began to act very giddy. Aqua began to get anxiety, so I was focused on trying to calm her down. I think she started to get overwhelmed by all the sensory information, so we decided to go into the tent.

As we lay there, she kept talking about how intense things were becoming. I was noticing for myself, that things didn’t seem to be getting that intense, at least visually, although I could feel my consciousness begin to be altered in a profound way. Something about this trip felt different than it had ever felt before, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

As the come up continued, my visuals didn’t really increase that much (didn’t know until later, that they were increasing, I just was not really noticing it at the time). I started to feel much more introspective, and was using this introspection to help Aqua with her anxiety.
Eventually Aqua decided to start meditating, and while she did that, I noticed a huge shift in my own consciousness. It started with a feeling of nostalgia. I was starting to remember something that I had always known. Similar to the nostalgia I experience on Salvia, but this time was different, I felt no fear. I then started to feel like I was entering a place outside of time, I felt like I was entering the true psychedelic state. As I began to enter it, I could feel a conflict between my ego and what I perceived as my higher self, I could feel knowledge streaming into me, but I could not fully grasp it. It was like having something on the tip of my tongue, but never being able to quite get at what it was. I started to go deeper and deeper into this state. As I went deeper, I started to feel a connection to past Shamanic traditions. I felt as if My mind was connecting with Shamans who had entered this state in the past, and I felt as If they were sharing their wisdom with me.

I started to feel a profound connectedness to everything. I realized that there was no dichotomy between the spiritual and physical, but that they were one in the same. I started to feel as if everything around me, was me, and began to enter that state of consciousness where you feel as if there is only one consciousness, that is reality. I started to realize that nature, at its truest form, is reality. I realized that the earth is actually a living organism, and it first it made me feel trapped, I realized that there was no way I could escape this earth, that I was completely in its clutches and in i’s control. Then I realized, that all the cities and buildings that are created, are maybe a way to escape the earth, but in the end, we cannot escape it.

I continued to get more insights like this, although I forgot the most profound ones. As I went up and up, the feeling of oneness with the earth and universe increased, as did the feeling of familiarity. I was certain that I had been here before, although I cannot recall any trip when I had. I wish I could get back to that feeling to explore it more. I began to tell Aqua my insights, and to my surprise, she was feeling the same thing. For some reason we decided to try creating an energy ball with our hands, and to both our surprise, it actually began to work. I could feel energy pulsating from my hands, my hands were vibrating on their own, without my control, and I began to see a hazy white light fill our hands, along with colorful geometrical patterns that connected our hands together. After that, I began to start getting anxiety, probably claustrophobia from the tent, so we decided to go outside.

It was completely dark, so I shone my flashlight on the ground to see. Holy shit, the ground was morphing into incredibly complex, infinite, geometrical patterns, at very high speeds. I turned off my flashlight and we went to sit on the bench, and just observed everything. The only light to be seen was the light of the moon. I was amazed at how the moon lit things up, and how it created shadows like the sun does. It was the first time I remember seeing the moon be the only source of light. I watched as the moon moved across the sky. And I thought about how most people are not even aware of the moons true purpose, as we are used to our cities lights.

As I watched this, I felt an unbelievable connectedness to the moon and trees. I understood the true purpose of everything. I thought about how some people go an entire lifetime never realizing who they really are. I realized that death is not real, it is just an illusion, our ego may die, but we still live on as at our truest core, we are one consciousness, in an endless cycle of experiencing itself. I realized that everything is cyclical. Perhaps that is what the wheel I saw on Salvia was telling me.

I then looked around at the areas of the forest that were not lit by the moon, even though they were not lit, I could still see the outline of the trees in a faint purple and red glowing/shimmering. It looked almost as if everything was a virtual reality. It was incredible. I then looked at the top of treetops that were lit by the moon, and was amazed to see the top triangle of the tree was glowing a brilliant orange and red color, and this energy was radiating out into the stars. I also noticed that the leaves were forming amazing patterns that looked very much like sacred Buddhist paintings. Everywhere I looked, everything looked incredibly sacred and even more incredibly familiar. I was sure I had seen this forest before.

I then began to have more conversations with Aqua about our insights. I was talking about how the last time I did a high dose of Acid, 1.5 of these extremely potent tabs, I had a bad trip because I was so focused on my own trivial life and civilization, while in the midst of an extreme spiritual trip, that I mistook what I was feeling as insanity. I felt as if my respect for the psychedelic state, by tripping in nature with my full attention and devoting 3 days to it, allowed me to be respected in return.

We then heard what sounded like a bear walking around, so we decided it was best to go back inside the tent. I turned on some music which sounded unbelievably incredible, and cracked open some glow sticks. I watched as the chemicals mixed and created a brilliant explosion of green, yellow, blue, red, and orange. The chemicals inside the glow stick looked like the universe expanding, I was in a trance watching them. I then started to get really sleepy, so we tried to sleep, with no success for a few hours. Finally around 3 Am I fell asleep.

While unfortunately I was not able to recall most of my trip, It still had a big impact on me, and really makes me want to continue exploring the psychedelic state. I do not pretend to think that all my insights are fact, but they were very interesting and intriguing, especially the feeling of intense familiarity and nostalgia, as well as the feeling of being connected to one consciousness. What is interesting is how on this trip, I was able to explore more of this feeling of nostalgia and oneness without feeling intense fear. My mistake was not writing things down while I tripped, I will definitely not be making that mistake next time!"

Since Atras posted his trip report, I thought I might as well post mine here too. Not nearly as good as his, but here you go!

On July 8th, 2014 I had one of the most intense and fascinating psychedelic drug trips that I've ever had. Atras and I had both decided to take 1 tab of very potent acid, and what happened was not at all what I expected. The 2 other times I've done acid I only took 70% of a tab or less, and it did not compare at all to a full tab. We were also camping in the middle of a forest, so being in nature might have made the trip more intense too, and possibly the reason for the spiritual insights we gained. There are some things that I have forgotten, but I will try my best to recall them.

We took our tabs at around 4:30pm, and around 20 minutes later I started to feel it. I was having anxiety for some reason and my body started to shake. The usual stuff started to happen, things became extremely detailed, my senses were enhanced, things slowly started to move in waves. The anxiety became more intense and I started worrying about how hard I was going to trip. Atras tried to comfort me, and he stroked my arm, but being touched felt so weird and I would move my arm slightly away. I would try to focus on the music playing through my headphones, but the harder I tried to take my mind off the anxiety, the worse it would get. Some hikers passed by and I noticed as they they got into their car, that one of them had a faint rainbow aura surrounding them. This made me really happy for some reason, and the anxiety faded a bit.

I started to feel a bit nauseous so Atras and I decided to go lay down in our tent for a bit. Again, my anxiety started to worsen. I was so worried that I was going to ruin his trip. I told him I was going to meditate, and when I did, I started to feel subtle vibrations throughout my body. I could feel my mind starting to alter. After meditating, I decided to unzip one of the tent windows and look outside. I saw something fly by, and it looked like a fairy! It was small and its wings and body were completely silver in color. It left a faint trail of sparkles in the air after it passed. I told Atras this with excitement. Now I could barely notice my anxiety, and I was starting to trip hard now. The tent seemed bigger than it actually was, and the sides of the tent would change colors. I noticed there were mosquitoes outside of the tent, trapped inside the tent cover. "HOLY SHIT, there are so many mosquitoes!" I told Atras but he said there weren't that many, and there was nothing we could really do. More and more mosquitoes started showing up and I couldn't believe my eyes. I could hear their high pitched buzzing and it made me extremely annoyed. I then noticed that there were actually mosquitoes inside of the tent with us, tons of them, but Atras informed me there were only a couple of them, and they weren't even paying any attention to us. We couldn't let them out, because more would just fly in. Suddenly on the outside walls of the tent, more bugs started showing up. Beetles, lady bugs, flies, all sorts of bugs were crawling across the walls and I started freaking out. "Do you really not see them?!?" Atras told me there was no bugs, and I then realized that they were all just in my head, and the bugs disappeared.

We decided to go look around outside, and holy fuck, everything was SO incredibly beautiful. The tall trees looked completely different than how they looked before we started tripping. The sun rays were shining through the trees and they casted a beautiful rainbow light on everything. As I stared at one of the trees I started seeing the flower of life, which I have seen before in my previous acid trips. Atras told me he felt like doing yoga and he started moving his legs in different positions. I couldn't help but giggle. My body felt so light, almost as if I was a fairy and could fly up to the top of the treetops if I wanted to. All of the sudden I could hear many mosquitoes flying around me, their high pitched ringing was so loud in my ears, and I shrieked as I thought I felt myself being attacked. It felt like hundreds of mosquitoes were swarming around me and trying to attack me. I jumped into the tent in fear, and Atras came in after me to see if I was okay.

Atras told me that this felt different than all of his other acid trips. It seemed like the trip was becoming spiritual for both of us. "This feels similar to a mushroom trip," he told me. I kept telling him that what I was feeling felt so familiar, and he agreed with me. I started thinking about my life, and realized that it was getting hard to recall what my life even was. I started wondering if I would ever even return to my normal life. My body was vibrating, and everything around me looked so drastically different. Atras mentioned to me he felt like he was starting to remember his past lives. I told him I felt like I was merging with my higher self. I felt so at peace with everything, and I started realizing everything was connected. There was an overwhelming feeling of oneness. I felt like I was tuning into a frequency that has always been there, but I wasn't able to reach until then. I realized that there are some things that will always be out of our control, but that's okay. I stared at my hand and noticed electrical currents radiating out of my fingertips in all different colors. They looked similar to the lines you would see on a heart monitor.

I realized that I am always in control of my emotions, and I never had to let my depression control me ever again. I thought there was no way I would ever go back to my old self after experiencing what I experienced. I said to Atras, "My life will never be the same after this." I felt like I had a complete understanding of the universe, and the way that everything works. I had many other insights but unfortunately it's hard to completely recall what they were. I started feeling like I was seeing into a different dimension of reality, and wondered if I would ever return. I felt an intense fatigue and felt like going to sleep, but for some reason I thought that if I did, my physical body would die. I asked Atras, "Is this what death feels like?"

I told him that we should try to form an energy ball with our hands, so we put our hands together and focused on putting our energy inside the opening between our hands. Within seconds I could feel a strong warm energy , and then slowly a white orb of light started shining in between our hands. I was so shocked and amazed, and I felt such a strong feeling of euphoria. I asked him if he saw it too, and he said yes. The light was so beautiful, and I could feel our energy intertwining. I was almost in tears at how beautiful the light was. Later I tried to form an energy ball on my own, and the same white light showed up again, but it was less vibrant. We tried doing telepathy and we would take turns trying to send a number to each other, and we were right every time we guessed. I felt so connected to him, and it almost felt as if our minds were merging together. I kept getting deja vu, and every time Atras would start to say something, I would know what his next words would be. "We're going to forget all of this tomorrow, aren't we?" I asked him, and he said probably, but we could remember if we tried hard enough.

At one point he stepped outside the tent to go pee, and I was filled with panic and worried that I would never see him again. I ran out of the tent and called after him, and I realized that he was fine and nothing was going to happen to him. Every time he would leave the tent throughout the night I would want to go with him, because there was still a part of me that feared something bad would happen.

It was getting dark and as we stepped outside I was astonished by how different the forest looked in the nighttime. The moon shone brightly through the trees and we both stared at it for a while, admiring it's beauty. I kept seeing Cheshire cat eyes in the trees, in a bunch of different colors, and some parts of the forest had a mystical purple glow. Atras and I started having a deep conversation about the universe, but I can barely recall what I said, unfortunately.

The rest of the trip is pretty hazy, and the only other thing I can remember is us lying in the tent trying to fall asleep. We were both exhausted, and still tripping mildly, but we couldn't fall asleep no matter how hard we tried. The harder we tried, the more tired we would get. Eventually after a few hours Atras finally fell asleep, but I still ended up not being able to fall asleep for a couple hours afterwards. It had been around 13 hours since I took the tab, and I was getting tired of tripping. I felt like I was going insane. I just wanted to fall asleep and wake up feeling normal again. I had to keep moving my legs or my body would fall into paralysis, and that was something I did not want to experience while tripping. I was physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted, and it was torture not being able to fall asleep. Eventually I did, but when I woke up in the morning I wasn't 100% back to normal, something still felt off, and I was still exhausted. I didn't feel completely back to normal until later in the day.

This acid trip was definitely not at all what I expected, but I am so grateful for the insights I have gained from it. I just wish I could remember them more clearly. I'm so glad I was able to get rid of my anxiety, because if I had had a bad trip, I don't think I would have been able to handle it. I'm only more intrigued by the psychedelic state now, and I can't wait to explore it more. I would definitely recommend doing psychedelics in nature, it was an amazing and beautiful experience, and I can't even imagine tripping in my boring room anymore.

Originally Posted by ~ Dreamer ~

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this to you before Atras, but I'll write it here in case I haven't.
Many of the experiences you describe are very similar to some of my psychotic episodes.

Firstly, the dimensional shift:
One of the first things that happens in many of my episodes is my visual frame rate is reduced, and I lose my sense of motion.

Secondly, the intricate details you became aware of around you:
A feature that's almost always present during my psychosis is a shift in my perception that allows me to notice minuscule details in everyday objects: where I would normally see a white wall, I can suddenly see every tiny speck within the wall, and every subtle difference in shade within the speck.

Thirdly, the feeling of dread upon returning to a familiar realm:
The feeling of entrapment and losing touch with my previous truth/reality is what usually drives my fear during episodes.

The thought of losing touch with this world, losing my identity and my 'sanity', was terrifying to me.

So this trip report is in response to Dreamer's experiences and is a bit of a copy and paste from a conversation, and is highlighting an terrifying experience I had. Since a lot of experiences from people have been overwhelmingly positive, or seemingly positive, here is a scary one! At least for me. You could call this a "bad trip", but it ended up downright terrifying since I wasn't expecting it (although I should have been). It was my second time with Z at a heroic level, so I knew it would be long, and the dosage was approximate, but I was initially confident all would go well since its natural, not lethal ect. Just incredibly long acting at heroic dose levels, so this is like 10+ hours. I know not as long as others, but when things get scary during peak hours, it really feels timeless so the extended duration doesn't help. Usually its only around 8 including come-up, peak, and comedown, if its a reasonable amount. So for the 10+ hours (I think it was between 12 and 14 for this one), that means there are several hours of peak effects, coming in waves, with a very intensive hour or two, which I would be specifically talking about below. So this is the most intense part of a heroic dose trip, where (for the lack of better words) reality was falling apart before my self. Z comes and goes in waves, and so at lower doses its a very gradual ascent, whereas higher doses the waves are more intense, maybe like slow moving tidal waves lol.



Setting the stage, I started small with psychedelics and just this past year found my way into ego death. I had done an intent-based heroic dose trip (my first heroic dose) about a month before this one, and worked through some personal issues. And was going back to the heroic dose this time, except with the intent to see if it would be a similar experience at a similar dosage, and how it would go for people first-time encounters with it. So perhaps I would setting myself up for terror in that regard, since I was mentally wanting to simulating taking this experience all on my own again, just to see what was there.

So anyway it was several hours into the experience, and suddenly everything started increasing with this "peak" wave. I just knew I was actually reaching the peak at this point, and started to get both freaked out and get prepared for what would happen. Then the ego-death was coming on again, but was so much stronger that I felt before. I'm not sure if "ego-death" is a good term, it more felt like a microcosmic apocalypse of the self and reality/existence. So I was "there" breaking through this barrier, and eventually time itself, visuals, and even feeling like my actions were predetermined, and my consciousness disassociating from my body would all be happening. I had already went through a mini ego death-apocalypse earlier a few hours prior, and then everything fell apart during the peak of it. I completely forgot to "love", to center and meditate and just go it. I tried drinking water, and it didn't help. Things started going south as soon as I started seeing this one face, and I saw it right below me (I was in a crawling position looking at the floor) and then it started appearing everywhere. like this one except square:


I swore it was "alive" somehow, and I'm not sure if it represented me or the spirit of the plant. I tried breathing, and as I breathed it felt as if I was breathing existence itself in and out. My "self" as a spirit was disassociating with my body, and as my breathe went in and out I felt "hollow". Its really hard to describe. And something I felt from Salvia, that I felt on this, felt like there were these electrical nodes on my fingertips, and like this tiny electric wiring going up my limbs. Like those old Tron outfits from the first movie.

It was almost like everything was melting away, and like the room I was in was closing in on me. I then tried singing, as it was the only thing I could remember since it would send the oxygen to my brain and help to metabolize the stuff. And as I sound it was like existence was warping in and out, as I was breathing. Just , I don't know. Eventually I was so freaked out I tried to throw it up, but nothing would come up, so I ended up in fetal position in my bed (I was staying in a single apartment). And the visual aspect where these vine patterns everywhere. Colors were everywhere, the fractal like vines (I swear this was all alive, and all one) going everywhere on the ground and walls. I think the visuals added to the terror, but it was mostly this "felt" stuff. So this whole thing I described probably only happened in a span of a few minutes, as I was glancing at digital cock that ticked out seconds, and I swear it just stopped and froze during this. I watched the seconds slow down, which was really incredible/terrifying. And it went on for maybe an hour and a half, I'm not sure time just seem indeterminate. So yeah... not my best moment but I definitely learned to be careful next time and not to underestimate my stuff. Its just like, going in with an intent to just let it do its thing, and to simulate what doing it alone again would do for someone trying it the first time on their own (maybe that's why it got so strong? but it was a huge dose) somehow just changed my perspective for good. And its ironic because that is what I'd been preparing for in a way, all along, but just fell apart in face of this transcendental force. I really was getting fearful that I was dying, that this was it. I kept asking myself "did I take too much?", "how is it this strong?", "how much longer?", "its all too much, 'I' cannot survive in the face of this force". It was just the most confounding thing to date, and I didn't go all the way "beyond", and ended up having this panic attack because of all this happening. Words really don't do it justice.

Earlier that night, I did have some very positive experiences though, although still very different. One part I was listening to music and its like wherever the music was at, was mirroring my emotions and reality itself. Maybe had to do with the whole oneness thing, but its as if I was viewing or perceiving the very act of consciousness manifesting itself into this world and in my being. Also, I was on youtube, and the artwork of this music had a native american women, and she seemed to be sentient. Somehow.

This was the second time at such a high level with this stuff, and the first time it was less terrifying but still very challenging as I had an actual intent to work through. And it delivered. So much happened... I don't know, this is all changing my framework of life yet again, and its kinda like something Dreamer said, about believing in some form of reality too much causes it to change. I thought I knew what was at these intense regions of experience, but it completely threw me a curve ball and continues to.

And another facet that has happened recently, is how I've noticed reality coming apart in layers, and how there is so much "space" everywhere, as well as a void. It truly feels as though all of this universe/reality from our point of view, is just some sort of illusion, and one that is easily bypassed due to things like psychedelics and meditation, ect.

Edit: my explanation of ego death for reference

Originally Posted by Neo Neo

So I will first notice a sense of increasing awareness of the space around me. For example if its a room, I will become more aware of the space in the room as well as the space outside of the room and outside of the building. Next I usually feel like my awareness expands and occupies these areas, and also the the separation between me and objects around me seems to "dissolve". I will be looking around and notice how everything around me relates to me and connections the objects have to certain things (their origin, people, function, and ultimately how it ties back to me). Then I start to get body sensations (Z usually feels very Earthy and in-the-body, but this ego death stuff takes it into a new direction) and feel light, and warm, and sometimes aroused. This is when things start to get "weird". And I said "weird" because it seems weird to the self, but its probably not arbitrarily weird. So it feels that there is something else there (of the room if you're still following that analogy), and this something is part of the oneness because it feels as though your own consciousness is part of a singular consciousness. And this singular consciousness is like a stream which flows through everything in this world. So at this point it feels as though your breach into this space had been felt by everybody, from the person next door to someone across the country. From here on out, laws of physics that deal with large objects (timespace, relativity, particles) begin to break down as well as with the self (being anchored in the body, senses of perception). At this point reality itself feels as if its some kind of mechanism that is being propagated by something, and visuals at this point may or may not be overwhelming my perception. A place with no time, oneness, this "something", and maybe a feeling of comic hilarity, since things like love and unconditional love feel real and worthwhile, but the "whole thing" of reality just seems so nonsensical. I haven't had a breakthrough all the way through ego death in my opinion, but this is as far as I've been. I'm planning on going to the depths with Z again at some point so I can explore this for myself even further, and having some friends nearby to watch over me if need be.

Originally Posted by ~ Dreamer ~

Secondly, the intricate details you became aware of around you:
A feature that's almost always present during my psychosis is a shift in my perception that allows me to notice minuscule details in everyday objects: where I would normally see a white wall, I can suddenly see every tiny speck within the wall, and every subtle difference in shade within the speck. Sometimes this is interesting and mesmerising, and I'll notice complex patterns on a micro scale (I also have intensified pattern recognition on a larger scale, and can point out things that are actually visible to other people, but they never would have noticed how all these things are intricately connected to make a whole shape.)
But sometimes it becomes too intense, and every extra detail I notice startles me, like it's too much information to take in and I get overwhelmed. I'll jump every time I notice a normal object in the room, because it's suddenly like an alien concept to me that I can't possibly understand.

Another thing you didn't mention, but I know you've experienced, is a heightened perception of music. This is one of my favourite things about my psychotic episodes. I can listen to music and hear it broken down into each intricate element... I'll hear subtle tones and ambient sounds that I've never noticed before, but they suddenly stand out so clearly. I feel like I could easily recreate the music layer by layer, because I have such an intricate understanding of every part that it's made of.
I'm also able to dilate time to a degree - I can intentionally alter my perception and slow the music down, so I can hear it in even more detail.

Thirdly, the feeling of dread upon returning to a familiar realm:
The feeling of entrapment and losing touch with my previous truth/reality is what usually drives my fear during episodes. It's something I experienced very strongly every time I ever used weed (I smoked 10-15 times, and ingested a large dose once,) and it often happens when a psychotic episode is triggered by second-hand marijuana smoke. Every time I would immediately think, "What have I done? Why would I do this to myself again? I'm back in this place and I'll never escape!"
I would spend a large portion of the episode writing myself notes and begging myself never to do this again if I ever made it out of this state, which I didn't believe I would most of the time. I felt like I was seeing reality for how it really was now, and it was too intense and terrifying to handle. I knew my previous reality was lost, and was only ever an illusion, and I was stuck in this new reality forever.
A common theme is a looping déjà vu cycle, where the same events/feelings continue to happen in the same order, and I'm convinced that time is stuck in a loop and I'll never get out.

...

The interesting thing was, whenever I felt myself drifting into the higher reality, my legs would stop twitching and I would suddenly feel peaceful. Worrying that I'd lose myself completely, I'd pull myself back to regular reality, where the fear would return, and the spasms would begin again. I felt like I had to choose between a sane mind with an uncontrollably violent body, or a peaceful body with a permanently insane mind.
The fear was really of ego death, because I knew I would forget about myself and this world if I allowed myself to enter the timeless realm. But the pain in my legs became agonising and I could no longer bear it. I had someone with me keeping watch, so I told them that I was "going away", but I wanted them to bring me back after a few minutes - I just wanted to give my legs a rest. I made them promise that they would try everything they could to bring me back... and then I allowed myself to enter the higher state. I experienced complete ego death, my memories of myself, my body, my life, my reality, where completely erased, and I entered a timeless realm where I spent eternity in peaceful bliss and knowing. And then suddenly, I was jolted back to this reality by my friend, and my fear returned, and my spasms began. For some reason, now that I was back in my body, I was afraid of returning to the void. The thought of losing touch with this world, losing my identity and my 'sanity', was terrifying to me.
Whenever I couldn't handle the physical pain any longer, I would allow myself to enter the higher state, and I experienced the same ego death every time, before returning to my body and fighting to hold on to my waking reality.

I don't think I really recognised it at the time, but in hindsight, I have taken an important lesson from this experience. It matches Terrance McKenna's advice in Neo Neo's video: I have realised that resistance is the cause of the majority of my negative psychotic experiences. Allowing myself to be fully immersed in the experience is the easiest way to subdue the fear and take something pleasant and beneficial from it, and sometimes even enlightening. This is more controversial to say as a schizophrenic than it would be for someone taking psychedelic drugs, since it's drilled into us that naturally occurring 'distorted perceptions of reality' are scary signs of illness that need to be squashed. If I voiced these thoughts to a psychiatrist, about embracing altered states, I would surely be locked in a psych ward. But I wanted to bring to light some of the similarities between my psychotic experiences any many people's psychedelic experiences, because I think similar advice can be beneficial in both cases.

I've been meaning to reply back with more, and now's my attempt at doing so . This is pretty incredible for me, since in some cases I've had exact things happening and elements of other parts happening.

First, with becoming aware of intricate details around you. I've noticed this with both visual and non-visual aspects of the experience. When doing more reasonable amounts of Z, at a certain point the effects kick in and if I'm in nature, it all seems to be part of a preexisting pattern and order. Geometries and fractals take the form of otherwise chaotic and scattered lichens, leaves, dirt paths, trees, plants, everything is revealed to already be in an order. The fact that we don't see this normally baffles me. Then one time me and a friend were playing with water at a lake. We were dipping a twig in the water and noticing all of the individual ripples it made. Kind of like how you said before, our visual frame rates increased and we were noticing all the intricate details taking place. An element of non-visual detail is how we were able to notice "infinity" in everywhere we looked. This happened on many levels of thought. In one level it was seeing so much space everywhere and it was as if entire universes could exist in extremely small scales as atoms, particularly in the water. But really it was all around us. On another scale, it had to do with reincarnation. It seemed that eventually I would be that tree over there and all the beings around me. So there was a kind of reality-looping reincarnation idea that we were perceiving around us.




Another thing is the heightened perception of music. I've felt more emotional listening to certain music (some intense/sad classical) and not sure why, but music definitely seems to affect me more on psychedelics. Another time I had headphones on and was listening to music on youtube and it really felt like I was there as an audience member. Recently though, I had another experience with music which seems exactly as you've described it. I was getting ego death and my friend was playing some funk (I believe it was the band Lettuce but it could have also been Galactic) and at first it was just seeming its usual "trippy" quality of giving a deeper sense of emotion and meaning. But then the ego death was becoming even more intense and as the layers of reality were coming apart around me I was also able to focus on music so much more. I began to listen closely like I would in music sight singing class in college, and it was like I could almost hear and see the music.

At first I was trying to listen for all the specific instruments and count how many were performing. Gradually I was able to pick out individual parts of the music if I focused enough. But then my focus got even more precise. The funk was beginning to actually separate apart in layers. As the ego death was happening, there also appeared to be huge spaces forming between the layers of the instruments, and these gaps were widening extremely fast. So instead of usually hearing the music as a cohesive whole and picking out individual lines, I was "seeing" all the individual lines of music separately while still hearing them all at once. And they sounded separate as well. It was like I was literally seeing this emptiness between the individual parts. Luckily for me it was a band of only a few members, I might have freaked out if I was listening to an entire orchestra. I was definitely experiencing music in a new way and while it was scaring me (because the layers and spaces kept widening because of ego death happening) I was still grateful to have this new experience. To put this into perspective of a time frame, this probably happened for only a few minutes but it seemed to go on a while.




This last part is about the "dread of returning to a familiar realm". I think someone may have said this before in this thread, or I heard it somewhere else on the internet, but dealing with the feeling of madness or insanity becomes as real thing at heavy dosages and moments of ego death. This may also be a reason why the fear happens since it can really feel that you'll get stuck in that state. I think Dreamer put it well from above:

Originally Posted by ~ Dreamer ~

Every time I would immediately think, "What have I done? Why would I do this to myself again? I'm back in this place and I'll never escape!" ... A common theme is a looping déjà vu cycle, where the same events/feelings continue to happen in the same order, and I'm convinced that time is stuck in a loop and I'll never get out.

I'm still a little taken aback by ego death, because part of me is unsure of what it is and if I've got it, and another part is true. But its not just ego death. Its the whole phenomenon that happens at these depths. Really for me its been reasonable dosages all the way to the higher dosages of Z that have felt familiar. I've usually just found the dread to come with the heavy/heroic dosages of Z and experiences post the heroic ones. Perhaps because I have been that far and now that the connections are made (either spiritual or with the mind or brain chemistry) now I seem to instantly go back. Anyway, there is this familiar space, and its familiar because it feels as though I have been there before. So its both a combination of deja vu and and actually entering an actual space. What has been happening too is this feeling that only the same things ever happen. And with this I feel everyday reality breaking down, where it seems that events start to loop and that everything seems predetermined in a way (hence the deja vu feeling).

With this also comes a feeling that reality as we know it is a illusion, but this is just scratching the surface. I still can't say for sure what it is or what's happening at this point, and I'm not sure I ever will be able to say for sure what it is. But there seems to be a kind of overarching consciousness that is managing everything in the universe, and that there are two fundamental forces. One seems to be matter and the other is a kind of void or emptiness. There were times were I felt disassociated from my body and felt merging into these two forces. The feeling is so strange and bizarre; it feels like being connected and a part of all of matter happening around you (including air I suppose) as well as an ever encroaching void and space which is "in between" the matter. I'm just guessing again, but I think this is where people's descriptions of a kind of apocalypse come from. At this stage in this phenomenon, my mind and self were still present enough to be observing this going on but still having a recollection of myself.

I think its also noteworthy here that Dreamer has gone farther than myself as seen in the last part I quoted. I don't know why it should be so scary and terrifying, but it can be and has in my case. I'm also not sure why some report this and not others. Its also noteworthy as a public service announcement that just reading about this stuff may not be enough (or wasn't enough in my case) to mentally prepare for stuff like this. I am still working through it as well. But what Dreamer describes about resisting this phenomenon is what I've also found to be true. Sometimes the experience comes on to strong and there is no choice but to either resist in in a fight or flight response or choose to dive into it and let go. Although it may seem counter-intuitive, if one is in a safe environment it is probably better to let go and find out where it takes you. The struggle and fear is real and it does happen, and what lies on the other side seems to be a whole another mystery. I think it is analogous to how general relativity and quantum mechanics have trouble integrating all the forces of physics. There seem to be endless possibilities in these microcosmic and otherworldly phenomenon, but how it plays into the here and now is still a mystery to me.

Oh has anyone experienced a kind of crinkling sound or feeling on anything? On Z one time I was out and walking about, and I swear I was getting this sensation of both a crinkling sound and feeling. It wasn't in any particular direction, more like all around me.

Also, has anyone else gotten jeweled-like visualizations? I have also on a high dose of Z, was looking around and at pictures of people, and there would be these rainbow multicolored jeweled points on them in patterns. Maybe I'll look for a pic that describes it and post it here later I am just curious because I've only gotten them once so far in their respective instances. Would it mean that I was close to having a OOBE or a transcendent experience?

It's fun reading all of the salvia posts lol. Back when salvia was legal here I smoked it many times over the course of years and introduced probably at least a dozen people to it. It's incredible how much of it is nearly exactly the same in everyone who tries it.

The first thing I have worth saying about salvia is that the thing about reverse tolerance is true. The more you get into it, the deeper it gets. After a while it started to feel to me like the dose barely made as much of a difference as just how much experience you have with it. The second thing I have worth saying is that what I've found is that you generally need to be willing to form a real relationship with salvia if you want to see what all it has to offer.

From what I have personally experienced, there are two fundamental types of salvia trips that exist. The first one is the only one I experienced for a long time when I first used salvia. Almost immediately, there would be a wide-scale unzipping of the jacket of reality. This would leave me in a two-dimensional plane filled with blurry images of faces, and I would sort of feel like I had some vague understanding of a "body", but I would feel stuck. If there were hallucinations, they would generally be of physically or emotionally uncomfortable entity interactions, which were completely believed at the time. There would be a sudden feeling of dread that emerged as I realized that this plane was the only reality that had ever existed and I had no memory of the one I had just come from. I always have this inexplicable feeling that I'm supposed to be waiting my turn to do something, but my first instinct tells me to move right away to try to find a solution to what's going on. I struggle to get free for a second, but then a reprimanding strikes me back down and demands that I wait, until I am replaced back into normal reality.

Once it's over, it's almost like it never even happened. The first few times I actually had little memory of any of this, but it started to stick better with each experience. But so, the first thing that actually happened that sets off the trip... was that plane. For the longest time I thought that that image was just some other reality that salvia took you to, and that's where everything happened. Boy was I wrong! I started doing a little more reading about salvia and noticed some things in reports that struck me as different from the usual trips, and then one day I was lucky enough to actually experience it....

For me, that "plane" is an indication of me holding back. That sense of dread that kicks in, or the feeling of being stuck, they're just manifestations of me being afraid to give in to the trip.... Lady Sally is like a dominatrix; you have to be able to give her full control if you want to see her full potential. One day when I smoked salvia, this just suddenly seemed so clear and simple. All I had to do was let go... and that created the second type of trip. The first 2D plane started to overlap my reality, and when I just went with it rather than resisting it, another plane began to overlap that one. And then another, and another, and another.... After a lot of them had been placed I even did a quick test, I held myself back for just a second and this process halted on the plane it was on and just stopped adding any, until I released myself again and went right back to where it left off. These planes continued to overlap each but with a slight turn until I could see just a huge tower of them extending outward in front of me, drawing a spiral toward the center of my vision and causing a rising feeling like a powerful orgasm to build in me as they did so and all of the faces in the planes began to turn very vividly feminine and smiled....

Once the spiral completed itself, I vanished into nothingness. There was no struggle, no emotion, no thoughts... just peace. "I" (more like just a camera angle) appeared to be in a void along with this enormous DNA-like helix structure comprised of highly erotic female entities all spiraling into a vortex similarly the way my vision before looked, so it was sort of like I detached from this structure and started to rotate around the edge of it instead. After a short while I simply reintegrated into reality like it was nothing, but I felt amazing. After having more experience with those kinds of trips, what I can say is that they're the hidden beauty of salvia. The other trips are nothing by comparison. The salvia trips where I can let go generally are accompanied by a very euphoric adrenaline-like rush and a strong pain-killing effect, and the hallucinations are extremely powerful and for me at least almost always highly sexual. The strongest one of those trips I ever had caused me to experience my own death, which I directly observed by watching my perception of reality disintegrate one subatomic particle at a time while feeling myself slip into a dimension outside of time which was unconcerned with my humanity. I felt myself completely vanish and experience just pure blackness, until suddenly I was dropped back into my body, completely lucid and highly euphoric. Not only that, but there were hallucinations all around me which completely replaced my room with very vast and unfathomably intricate geometric dream scenes which flowed to my will like being in a lucid dream with 100% control without even having to make any effort. Like, for example, all I had to do was feel horny and a crowd of female entities in completely made up but very realistic and kinky outfits would just start dancing through the room with me.

It was quite depressing the day that it became illegal here. I would surely like to reunite with it if I'm ever somewhere where it is legal again. I would like to see how much further I can go into the other side, hehe....

I have more I could say but not enough time to type it, so I'll end it there.

WOW Alesyndra, that sounds really interesting. Ive always wanted to try Salvia, but Ive seen so much bad stuff happen to people while on it, I dont know if it was their mind set that gave them a really bad trip or what but it looked really bad. Ive read some trip reports and people said that they felt like they were an inanimate object such as a chair, or that they were "drowning in lava" or something. Ive only done LSD, and I really enjoy it, but I still wanna try Salvia and DMT and shrooms. So I must ask, is a Salvia trip based off of the mindset of the user, just like shrooms? If you are uncomfortable or scared it will multiply that feeling? Or do you have control over the trip and it always comes back positive like some amounts of LSD?

Originally Posted by Alysendra

For me, that "plane" is an indication of me holding back. That sense of dread that kicks in, or the feeling of being stuck, they're just manifestations of me being afraid to give in to the trip.... Lady Sally is like a dominatrix; you have to be able to give her full control if you want to see her full potential. One day when I smoked salvia, this just suddenly seemed so clear and simple. All I had to do was let go... and that created the second type of trip. The first 2D plane started to overlap my reality, and when I just went with it rather than resisting it, another plane began to overlap that one. And then another, and another, and another.... After a lot of them had been placed I even did a quick test, I held myself back for just a second and this process halted on the plane it was on and just stopped adding any, until I released myself again and went right back to where it left off. These planes continued to overlap each but with a slight turn until I could see just a huge tower of them extending outward in front of me, drawing a spiral toward the center of my vision and causing a rising feeling like a powerful orgasm to build in me as they did so and all of the faces in the planes began to turn very vividly feminine and smiled....

Once the spiral completed itself, I vanished into nothingness. There was no struggle, no emotion, no thoughts... just peace. "I" (more like just a camera angle) appeared to be in a void along with this enormous DNA-like helix structure comprised of highly erotic female entities all spiraling into a vortex similarly the way my vision before looked, so it was sort of like I detached from this structure and started to rotate around the edge of it instead. After a short while I simply reintegrated into reality like it was nothing, but I felt amazing. After having more experience with those kinds of trips, what I can say is that they're the hidden beauty of salvia.

I've not heard of Salvia described that way before, thanks for sharing! I know one of the issues I have of Salvia is getting past that fear, for sure, but I've never reached anywhere near that level of intensity. Not to derail the Salvia discussion, but have you noticed similar things on something like mushrooms or has this been unique to Salvia?

I have had many experiences with psychedelics and hallucinogens, My initial purpose was to always seek some type of spiritual enlightenment and to experience a different perception on life, I've definitely had some life changing experiences both good and bad to say the least. although I believe that perhaps It's a false sense of enlightenment that one achieves and one creates there own version depending on their current belief system, desires and conditioning. Although Many of my trips seem to have shared similarities a feeling of oneness and connectivity with everyone and everything also that We ourselves are god and we create our own experiences, unusual because I was brought up a Christian (now I'm leaning more towards atheism/Zen Buddhism)

Originally Posted by OneUpBoy71

WOW Alesyndra, that sounds really interesting. Ive always wanted to try Salvia, but Ive seen so much bad stuff happen to people while on it, I dont know if it was their mind set that gave them a really bad trip or what but it looked really bad. Ive read some trip reports and people said that they felt like they were an inanimate object such as a chair, or that they were "drowning in lava" or something. Ive only done LSD, and I really enjoy it, but I still wanna try Salvia and DMT and shrooms. So I must ask, is a Salvia trip based off of the mindset of the user, just like shrooms? If you are uncomfortable or scared it will multiply that feeling? Or do you have control over the trip and it always comes back positive like some amounts of LSD?

Originally Posted by Neo Neo

I've not heard of Salvia described that way before, thanks for sharing! I know one of the issues I have of Salvia is getting past that fear, for sure, but I've never reached anywhere near that level of intensity. Not to derail the Salvia discussion, but have you noticed similar things on something like mushrooms or has this been unique to Salvia?

Hey guys, sorry I've taken a couple of days to respond, my internet access at the moment is pretty limited. Since you guys are actually covering the same basic info and then asking really the same question, I've decided to lump my responses together into one big wall of text.

There are definite similarities that I have found between salvia and psychedelics, possibly more so than any other pair of hallucinogen categories in this way. People often debate whether salvia is primarily psychedelic or primarily dissociative, but I would have to say that generally my vote goes to the former, but I can see where the latter view comes in as well. To understand how exactly it is that I compare the two, it'd be helpful to understand my view on how consciousness works first.

At the moment, I see our minds as a system comprised of our ego or conscious mind, our id or subconscious mind, and our memory banks. The way it works is that at our very first moment of conscious awareness, we are nothing but our id. Then, as our first conscious sensory experience is detected, our first memory starts being written. This is significant, because I personally believe that the real-time feed of our surroundings that we constantly experience while conscious is actually the snapshot flash of our memories being written, and since memories are written constantly we experience it as a constant flow. The reason that I think this is that (among other things) it fits perfectly with the idea of how the reward and aversion centers of the brain are linked with our memory structures to alter our perception of an experience; by modifying the way that a memory is being written, a situation could be made to feel more or less euphoric or dysphoric, for instance, in a way that to us it just a normal part of the reality stream. In this model, those reward and aversion centers would actually be some of the physical correlates of the id.

The id is a complex but primitive construct that is wired specifically to stimulate the desire to carry out instinctive and learned tasks to create as many positive and avoid as many negative experiences as possible. One of the instinctive tasks that the id drives us to do is seek out new information, and so with this first sensory snapshot that's being perceived the id kicks into gear to modify the memories of this event as being rewarding, for discovering the outside world which contains entirely new information to you, unless something is happening to you in that moment which invokes a primal fear, in which case the event will be regarded as aversive. This first memory alteration triggers within us another completely new idea: "likes" and "dislikes", or concepts which you have personally come to associate with either positive or negative feelings. A simple enough process, but it's unbelievably significant because it is this which necessitates the self-concept which is the sum of all experiences and reactions processed by the ego, which is itself a mechanism that serves to satisfy the id. It is from this that ego is first born, and from there will continue to organize the field of perception in front of it into a reality that it can accurately understand.

Once it's up and running, the ego actually then carries important information back towards the id. The way I see it is this: the ego observes and interprets the various factors involved in its current situation, and the result of this interpretation informs the id about which instinctive behaviors are most appropriate to attempt to influence at any given moment. The id would then stimulate the memory centers accordingly, which it could do by stimulating areas of the memory banks which have been active at times this same behavior was influenced in the past. In the conscious experience of the ego, this alteration of the memory could reality to be warped to include an immaterial understanding of a concept or set of concepts associated with past situations similar to the one you're in now. This would be interpreted on a cognitive level as your imagination, using memories to help form the best idea about how to handle the situation. This is important, because it highlights one important way how the ego serves the id, but the id does genuinely rely on the ego: it means that by manipulating the scenarios you experience to commonly associate certain situations with certain behaviors, your ego can influence your id has on your imagination. I will come back to this point in a little bit.

Your ego is the person who you have built yourself up to be during the course of your life. It is not the part of you that was there naturally, but the part of you that exists to amuse the part of you that was there naturally. It's interesting though, because it is this ego who is only a servant to our primal self who we come to identify quite strongly with ourselves by finding our place in society, figuring out our life goals, and so on. It is at least partly for that reason that some people find ego loss to be so jarring, because when the ego starts shutting down it can make them see just how fragile their mind really is. And, when you have left no memories or thoughts to connect yourself to any sort of external reality, it really shows you who you are deep down inside.... People seem to be most familiar with ego loss that is produced by the use of hallucinogens, but as I see it there are many different ways that it can be obtained without them as well, just by natural processes. There big way that comes to mind for me as to why ego loss may occur naturally seems quite simple, in that the id needs to take control to act in its own best interest. These are the most basic scenarios that I can think of: as the id becomes more satisfied it sacrifices the now unnecessary ego to focus more on the moment, e.g. having an orgasm or kundalini awakening; the id must act extremely quickly in instinct in order to make a split-second life or death decision, again cutting out the ego to focus more on the moment, e.g. amygdala hijack; the id needs to suppress the functioning of the ego in order to avoid an extremely aversive event, e.g. stress-induced out-of-body experiences and repressed memories; the id needs you to sleep and dream which is presumably important since animals die without it, so a natural regulatory system in the brain causes intense activation of the subconscious mind and shuts out function of the conscious one, i.e. dreaming.

There are different levels of ego loss of course, with the term ego death typically being saved for when there are no traces left of your personality outside of the id, a point beyond which usually lies amnesia. This is generally a very abstract state of consciousness which cannot be accurately conveyed in words, and must be experienced firsthand to even attempt to fully understand it. But, it's important to remember that while the majority of psychedelic trips involve at least some level of ego loss, only a handful of them ever involve ego death. Most of what people experience, even during extremely intense trips, lies somewhere in the middle. And this is where that point I made before becomes important again.... As I said before, your ego feeds information to your id which informs it about what sort of memory alterations to provoke. Even if your ego is severely inhibited and your id is highly enhanced, this relationship will still exist as long as your ego is there. I think an important thing to reference in this whole theory is how the brain structures associated with these subconscious processings like the life-or-death situation, like the amygdala, are also associated with complex hallucinations such as those seen in dreams and out-of-body experiences. This would be the result of the imagination which your id is writing into your reality becoming so powerful that it actually starts breaking into the reality around you, and thus your external reality at that point onward has begun to follow the same rules as your imagination.

Once faced with ego loss, there are only two reactions you can have: you can either resist it, or you can let go into it. Since many people are not uncomfortable with detaching from the identity they have attached to themselves which is their ego, the process of ego loss can be quite uncomfortable for them, causing them to resist it. Because what is left of the ego is now afraid and fighting for its life, this emotion will be communicated to the id, which will then begin to influence your imagination by making you try to freak the fuck out in order to preserve your own existence. And because your id is being activated so strongly, if it's all the way up that hallucinogenic level then you can literally paint a nightmarish reality all around you with your negative reaction. This is why things like set and setting are so important and why people say that you really do just have to let go.... If you can stop worrying, you will instead send a message of peace to your id, and your perceived environment will reciprocate that.

For me, psychedelics seem to produce a kind of overlapping ego loss which is similar to both the one produced by an amygdala hijack which I think could be responsible for causing out-of-body experiences during a near-death experience, and the one caused by the kundalini awakening which shuts down the need for the ego by overwhelming the id with blissful satisfaction. I think it's for this reason that psychedelics can often be so useful in psychotherapeutic or spiritual settings as far as overcoming anxieties and issues in one's life, as by producing both this ego loss and id inflation experience in addition to being so profoundly rewarding, they allow people to positively review various aspects of their lives from a more removed perspective and view reality from a more primal standpoint. Personally, I found through experience that relaxing into a psychedelic experience truly is the way to get the most out of it, as in my most relaxed state while sober I typically just daydream about things I enjoy or different aspects of my life. Consequently, when I am to behave in this same way while in this state, what's left of my ego will inform my id of how to act, and I will begin seeing my normal imagination including memories, metaphysical thoughts, and even sexual fantasies constantly emerging all throughout my external environment. I have actually used this skill to take my dream control in lucids further than I ever expected to as well, because by thinking of the dream state as one of partial ego loss and much id inflation, I was able to just relax myself into the same daydreaming mindset and go with the flow, and generally even the most ridiculous of powers often work for me because I basically just treat the dream like a train of thought. The more I practice at swaying my id in this way too, the easier it gets.

The thing which I think makes salvia such a difficult experience for people is that it is very much like a psychedelic in the way it both potently suppresses the function of the ego and dramatically intensifies the id all the way up to complete dream-like hallucinations, but unlike psychedelics which promote states of intense focus and euphoria, salvia produces its perceptual changes through areas of the brain which are more heavily involved in aversion, and probably produces effects more similar to the ego loss produced by stress-induced out-of-body experiences. With that in mind it's really no surprise at all that so many just have such a hard time letting go during a salvia experience, it's just instinctive because it's like sending a message to the id to avoid the situation at all costs. I imagine that a lot of people would give up with it after hearing something like that, but I think it actually gives us one of the most amazing opportunities of all.... In a lot of animal tests, you won't see much variance when it comes to testing the rewarding or aversive properties of different drugs, not like on humans anyway.... There's something about just how unbelievably complex the lives we have created for ourselves are that allows us to overcome so many basic chemical changes in our brains just based on our understanding of the situation we're in. This is why some people can love stimulants like cocaine or meth, while some can be unimpressed by them, and others can downright hate them. To give a non-drug example, it's why some people can gain sexual satisfaction from things like having pain inflicted upon them, while for others it would be quite the contrary. Because of this knowledge of ours, we don't have to give into the basic chemistry so easily.

Most often, the people who you hear of enjoying salvia are either hardened psychonauts or have used it frequently, and maybe they tried it as their first hallucinogen so that there was more novelty to it. These are people who have come to associate positive feelings with ego loss and id inflation, who have exposed themselves to the state enough to be able to avoid giving into it so easily, or who simply had a more excited mindset going in, respectively. These various situations have allowed them to overcome the fact that the receptors that salvia works through typically cause dysphoria while still making use of its hallucinogenic potential; the way I see it here is that while this receptor does cause those feelings and does also cause id inflation leading to ego loss, these processes are not necessarily intrinsically linked. It could be that the ego loss produced through this system is most typically associated with negative feelings because it is in most states naturally produced by the body, but there's no reason that activation of that part of the brain should fail to produce ego loss just because some more positive emotions produced by other factors are overriding that one normally stress-inducing variable. And that, I think, is the key to finding your way to actually being able to get something out of salvia.

You guys both asked me if mushrooms can compare to salvia in this way. While it is important to remember that the influence that each of these substances may attempt to have on your emotions or level of cognition can be quite different, such as mushrooms inflating everything to being completely over the top whereas salvia can actually have a more dissociative effect on rational thought, I would say that at the core when it comes down to being able to control what little bit of your ego remains, even if that's so little that it's nothing more than a vague feeling somewhere in the background of your perception, these two hallucinogens are indeed quite similar. Because they both reduce my ego and inflate my id, the way that they detach me from my everyday identity and reunite me with my primal self is nearly identical, because that primal me is always the same regardless of which psychoactive substance can lead me to it, or without even needing any substances at all such as just when doing some deep daydreaming to get more in touch with myself. The pattern I mentioned before on salvia of resisting ego loss creating uncomfortable hallucinations while just letting go into it creates hallucinations of erotic female entities is consistent on mushrooms as well, and indeed every other psychedelic I have come into contact with. These entity perceptions are actually just an intensification of my normal sexual daydreaming but through intensely abstract psychedelic art filters, which is part of why they along with the rest of my environment become so malleable when I'm in that lucid dream-like state. It actually took me several experiences with DMT to make this connection though, as it was the first psychedelic that ever gave me some truly difficult experiences that showed me just how accurately the way my imagination responded to either positive or negative emotions during ego loss compared between traditional psychedelics and salvia.

About the level of control for salvia as well, I think it's worth nothing that I have only ever smoked it before. It's long been a thought of mine that slower and longer-lasting methods like quidding might be more able to produce a more manageable and potentially euphoric trip, working backwards from my thought that the quick action of smoked DMT is probably part of what makes it more difficult for some than other psychedelics as well. All of the anecdotes I have read from responsible use of these methods while treating it as a proper psychedelic for personal insight and psychonautical exploration seem to support this. Now that I have had some truly euphoric experiences even just from smoking it, if and when I do ever find myself somewhere where I can obtain salvia legally again I'm just extra excited to try a smoother method with it. I do personally believe that the negative emotion is more likely to create the out of control feeling with salvia just like with typical psychedelics with the positive emotion maintaining more lucidity like it has for me before, so I'm honestly expecting sublingual salvia to probably be a bit more even like a psychedelic than the smoked version is. It has definitely caught my interest for a long time to come, that's for sure....

So yes, in conclusion I would say that a very strong comparison can be made between the way that salvia, mushrooms, and truly any powerful psychedelic can translate whatever you're feeling into an intense psychological and hallucinogenic experience. I personally count salvia as about as close to a traditional psychedelic as you can possibly get these days without actually being one; if I actually had the option at present, I would choose never to be without it.

Wow! Really interesting stuff there. I'll have to read it again to completely understand everything you were saying haha! I have tried many times when smoking Salvia to just let go, and relax into the trip. Every time as I inhale I tell myself, no matter what happens, don't fight it, just relax, but when it actually starts to hit, no matter how hard I try to go with the flow, a part of me instantly realizes what a mistake it was to do this, and tries as hard as possible to fight it and avoid going back into that experience. No matter how hard I try to relax, this part of me will not let me, it just wants to get away from the experience as fast as possible. I have not figured out a way to overcome this. Any ideas?

Wow Atras I know what you're talking about, as I had it the last time I tried it! As Alysendra said, its hard to explain in words, but I was encountering the same boundary dissolving that I had on Z, and I remember peering around wondering why I was having this same phenomenon happen on a different substance as well as scaring me (was thinking, didn't know Salvia could do this lol). I am still going through my personal issue of letting go of my fear for whenever my next opportunities arise. I also have had trouble with smoked things in general, and have found that it is not the preferred method for me. But somehow have go to work through that as well.

Alysendra, I'll have to go over that post again later today, so much good stuff! A lot of what you say towards the second half reaffirms things I've thought and answers my question. I tend to think of each psychedelic being unique in its own way, but each leading to the same (or similar) shared domain of space, and what is easier perceived in deeper levels of the experience. Salvia and mushrooms being a good case in point, I think. Also, I liked your explanations of how consciousness works. Especially the part about memory. It is also interesting what you said about the erotic female deities being a part of your own daydreaming. And how frame of mind, as well as different types of ego death and how they can happen, has helped me to view it in a different way. Just so much lol, will be going through it later for sure

Edit: And Atras, my gut feeling tells me that I'll just have to let go and go for it, so I imagine its would I would say to you as well. Even though I am limited in Salvia experience lol. I know at some point I'm just going to have to choose a positive mind-frame, be courageous, and just brace myself for the ride. (set and setting taken care of, of course) So I don't know, like I said its still an issue I have had, but Alysendra said it well too in that you (not personally) just need to let go in order to get the most out of Salvia, and another friend of mine has conveyed the same thing. Kind of tough luck for people like me that discovered that they actually have a lot of ego that doesn't want letting go

Originally Posted by Atras

Wow! Really interesting stuff there. I'll have to read it again to completely understand everything you were saying haha! I have tried many times when smoking Salvia to just let go, and relax into the trip. Every time as I inhale I tell myself, no matter what happens, don't fight it, just relax, but when it actually starts to hit, no matter how hard I try to go with the flow, a part of me instantly realizes what a mistake it was to do this, and tries as hard as possible to fight it and avoid going back into that experience. No matter how hard I try to relax, this part of me will not let me, it just wants to get away from the experience as fast as possible. I have not figured out a way to overcome this. Any ideas?

I'm glad you think so, I've spent a lot of time thinking about this stuff. Smoking salvia is definitely no easy task.... Well, if you want the easiest possible way to explore more of what salvia's about, I recommend combining it with something a little more relaxing. My personal favorite launch pad for salvia is LSD. Putting you in state that already involves some ego loss but with a very euphoric mindset makes the transition into the salvia state significantly smoother, sometimes practically effortless. I can imagine how MDMA might be good for salvia in this way too, though I haven't actually tried it.

Honestly though, the best method I have found for getting to know salvia more intimately is just repeated exposure. I have noticed this in both the short-term and the long-term. I think the biggest breakthrough for me in figuring out how to get the most out of salvia was realizing that with each trip in a session each hit became more lucid and euphoric and because of that also much more hallucinogenic, since the experience was allowed to flow without restraint. The first time I discovered this I had smoked an extract and only gotten to the same place of dread, feeling stuck, and wondering how the hell you got back here again. That was still about all I had actually gotten out of it at that point, so when I came down I was feeling a little cheated for all the money I've spent in pursuit of this stuff just to have it be the same over and over again. I decided to just shove some more of what I had into the pipe to make the most out of it and went right back in as soon as I came down, at that time it was completely different.

The first thing that I noticed about the second hit was that it was still very confusing and intense, but less so than the first hit compared to how heavily I appeared to be altered. The first hit for me is often visual but quite dissociating because of how overwhelming the sudden onset of the severe headspace change is, and the visuals I do get tend to be more like seeing extra imagery floating around the corners of reality but not actually mixing with it so much other than the sense of feeling sort of like sensory overload. This second hit was on the other hand was hallucinogenic to the point of leaving me in a complete delirium between reality and dreamscape. There were entities actually walking into my bedroom by opening the door and everything, there was no way to tell what was real and what was just illusion in my reality anymore. However, despite this, I still felt fairly in control in terms of being able to navigate my loosened environment, even if I had no idea what was going on, which is significant for me because my first hit of salvia is always heavily out-of-body. After the second hit wore off I put the rest of what I had at the time into the pipe and took my third dose. At that point I simply felt so intrigued by the second hit and confident with how it hadn't been as psychologically overwhelming that I was ready for anything and just wanted to see what all salvia could show me. That time I then had the same strength of the hallucinations as the second hit, but the mindset was just completely euphoric and excited. That was the first time I ever experienced those erotic female entities on salvia actually, it really had a strong impact on how I viewed it during future experiences.

I think that that experience was a pretty major part of how I had that first hit salvia trip then where I realized that I simply had to let go. I had actually had other trips in between those two and every first hit since continued on the same way it had before with just being exactly the same, but as I said it's just repeated exposure.... If you continue the thought that the way that salvia works is through mechanisms which when naturally activated could contribute to states like stress-induced out-of-body experiences, you can extend that to the idea that, like many stresses, the best way to face salvia is just to expose yourself to it over and over again in the best settings possible until you finally learn how to make it work for you. Something that I actually felt extremely strongly on that trip I had where I first learned to let go into salvia was every other time I'd ever had this same first hit salvia trip before it was like I was just seeing this one solid image the entire time, but I hadn't quite learned to look at it in "just" the right way to see the real picture. It was sort of like those optical illusions where it's just crazy colors and patterns and you need to be able to focus your eyes just right to be able to see the actual image, but once you see it you can't unsee it. For me, the big picture that salvia revealed was one that felt so profound and synchronistic that at the time it was one of of the most mind-blowing things I've ever experienced. What I realized is that image I saw, the one of the girls in the DNA-helix shape and everything, has been the exact same image that I've seen every single first hit salvia trip I've ever had in my life. I guarantee you, if I had known the right way to "see" my initial salvia trip, I would have been taken to the exact same world. I actually found this to be the case with my death trip as well, showing me that the plane which is unconcerned with our humanity was actually just an even more zoomed out version of the same image I'd always been seeing at the beginning.

I would also have to further suggest the use of the quidding or sublingual tiinctures, as though I still haven't tied them myself I have heard great things about them and I can imagine how it would be so much easier to give into them. One thing that I think is definitely worth considering is that fact that ibogaine's most potent hallucinogenic mechanism of action by far is kappa-opioid agonism like salvia. Ibogaine is generally considered to be extremely lucid except when you're purposefully drifting into visions (unless you take huge doses, then it may be involuntary) and to be very powerful and guidable visualization-wise, and it's best known for helping people overcome anxieties and childhood stresses by allowing people to adjust to different aversive scenarios from a more emotionally detached perspective. My theory for at least one part of this would be that considering that the mechanism that salvia works through could be related to stress-induced ego loss, taking drugs like salvia or ibogaine in a setting which allows you to relax into them and have the least stresses possible should actually allow those centers of the memory banks which have been previously associated with aversion to become reactive while in an otherwise totally safe or de-stressed environment, and knowing going in that the experience is just memories rather than an actual stressful situation happening to you, thus giving the more objective view. Therefore, if you were to use that state properly to reprogram yourself to create more positive connections to things that have caused you stress in the past, you could actually overcome a lot of repressed or uncomfortable feelings. I actually feel that salvia has helped me by converting those stressful trips into euphoric and sexual ones as well. Just getting to that point with salvia just highlights to me especially how much it all comes down to perception, and just keeping positive really can have a vastly helpful impact on your everyday life as well.

So really what it comes down to is just... practice, practice, practice. That's why I mentioned the reverse tolerance of salvia before too, because it definitely makes a difference. I've known people to say that one regular dried leaf can take them as far as a huge extract would have originally after they'd gotten enough experience learning how to "see" the trip properly, to just let go. I really do think that persistence is the best route possible if really want to explore salvia that deeply.... It's one of those hallucinogens that's not just a fun party drug or something you can do because you feel like you want to touch the mystical but you don't really feel like going through a lot of shit for it. Salvia takes dedication... but it's incredibly worth the effort if you actually get to the point that I am with it now.

Originally Posted by Neo Neo

Alysendra, I'll have to go over that post again later today, so much good stuff! A lot of what you say towards the second half reaffirms things I've thought and answers my question. I tend to think of each psychedelic being unique in its own way, but each leading to the same (or similar) shared domain of space, and what is easier perceived in deeper levels of the experience. Salvia and mushrooms being a good case in point, I think. Also, I liked your explanations of how consciousness works. Especially the part about memory. It is also interesting what you said about the erotic female deities being a part of your own daydreaming. And how frame of mind, as well as different types of ego death and how they can happen, has helped me to view it in a different way. Just so much lol, will be going through it later for sure

Thanks, I'm happy it was thought-provoking. I definitely get what you mean about all psychedelics leading you to a similar space. I've tried a pretty decent variety of psychedelics and it is indeed so fascinating how they can all be completely unique experiences that would never substitute perfectly for one another, and yet they all bring you to the same undeniably psychedelic landscape. It's the perfect example of how salvia is similar to serotonergic psychedelics for me too, because even though the general way the visuals and mindset work on salvia is a bit different than typical psychedelics, it definitely takes me to that same space without a doubt which I feel is where my personal favorite psychedelic effects lie.

Thanks for all the compliments too. I'll wait until you've said more for me to respond to you on those parts, hehe. I have a LOT of thoughts on all of those things you mentioned though.... I actually have a new experience from last night to contribute to this thread. I'm going to finish up this point and then work on posting it a little later I think, so that I can get some time away from the computer screen in the meantime. I had probably the most profound LSD trip of my life last night, if not the most profound I've ever had on any hallucinogen.... I think it will be pretty interesting particularly for the sake of this thread.

Ahhhh thank you! For the last year I have been searching for answers to my Salvia problems, and this is probably the most helpful info I have ever gotten on the subject. I haven't tried Salvia in quite a while, but I think I will get some more soon. I know you mentioned that in your old Salvia trips, you said you would feel like you were in a place that you have always been. I was curious though, was nostalgia ever a very strong aspect of your old or new Salvia experiences? As I detailed in my previous posts about Salvia, extreme nostalgia was always one of the strongest aspects of my Salvia experiences. Another thing is in my Salvia experiences, I always felt some weird connection to my childhood. It's so hard to explain the feeling, have you ever had this connection before? I notice that sometimes if I think of a childhood memory, or see images of say, children's wallpaper, or legos, or crayon looking stains on carpets, I instantly get a brief Salvia flashback. I have no idea why this connection seems to exist. Can you relate to this at all?

Originally Posted by Atras

Ahhhh thank you! For the last year I have been searching for answers to my Salvia problems, and this is probably the most helpful info I have ever gotten on the subject. I haven't tried Salvia in quite a while, but I think I will get some more soon. I know you mentioned that in your old Salvia trips, you said you would feel like you were in a place that you have always been. I was curious though, was nostalgia ever a very strong aspect of your old or new Salvia experiences? As I detailed in my previous posts about Salvia, extreme nostalgia was always one of the strongest aspects of my Salvia experiences. Another thing is in my Salvia experiences, I always felt some weird connection to my childhood. It's so hard to explain the feeling, have you ever had this connection before? I notice that sometimes if I think of a childhood memory, or see images of say, children's wallpaper, or legos, or crayon looking stains on carpets, I instantly get a brief Salvia flashback. I have no idea why this connection seems to exist. Can you relate to this at all?

You are quite welcome, I hope it helps you. Well, I can say that I have often gotten a sense of deja vu while on salvia, but I wouldn't really consider nostalgia to be an emotion that I've felt on it. It's worth noting though that my positive salvia trips usually relate to exploring aspects of myself which felt very repressed by a somewhat stressful childhood.... Very fun and rewarding to finally be able to let free without restraint, but not exactly the best nostalgia fodder. I have actually heard of others describing salvia as giving of a everything a "new" or unexplored look though, which I could certainly see as causing that especially when it gives a more pleasant psychedelic experience. I have experienced this occasionally on traditional psychedelics, where everything you see just looks totally brand new and fascinating again like it's your first time ever experiencing it. It feels very much like being reduced to a child-like state of wonder and amazement at the world.

Alright, so here's something new of mine to contribute.... My LSD trip from last night, from which I have just finally gotten a few hours of rest.

I think it was maybe around 9:30 PM that I dosed, but I really couldn't tell you for sure as I didn't keep a log. I actually felt a little sickly physically but psychologically their were no stressors. I probably would have waited for a better time to trip under normal circumstances, but I'm only going to have a few more chances to get good ones in for a while here so I didn't want to pass up the opportunity.... Besides, I've taken LSD while feeling a little under the weather before and it actually usually works pretty effectively to not notice those symptoms for the duration of the experience and a while afterward.

My relationship with LSD includes many mind-blowing experiences at a wide range of doses ranging from less than 100 mcg to over 1 mg. I personally don't believe that there's any active amount of LSD which can't produce a beautiful experience given the right setting. That being said, it has always been the really high doses that I have favored above all others. A high dose of LSD for me tends to be essentially like lucid dreaming while awake and having more control than I can possibly imagine, and at least as much energy. Even on lower doses I often spend much of the trip pacing around and mumbling to myself as I watch the world around me transform to my will. This ability that LSD has to be such a potent and malleable tool for observing the mind while having so much control and yet being so mentally discombobulating at the same time is what has so far landed it as my most treasured psychedelic ally.

I have actually explored this current batch of LSD more than any other I've had, including multiple trips of of ten or more doses. More so than most other psychedelics seem to for me, LSD definitely appears to have some sort of reverse tolerance; the hallucinations and emotional states that I observe from it seem to become more deeply complex and intricate with each experience almost regardless of dose, with that really only deciding their intensity. My initial trips on this batch followed the scheme of my old high dose trips of basically constantly transforming my environment into female entities who would then dance around the room in erotic ways in that fashion that's just like enhancing my daydreaming to reality breakthrough levels. However, during my last very high dose I felt like I reached a new level of trip, where the loss of ego produced became significant enough that I started feeling as though I was living through a seemingly infinite number of different scenarios in my mind without end, and there were these transient phases where I would momentarily slip into just enough confusion to be in a state where I lose sight of the fact that I'm tripping and fully believe whatever I was experiencing. At that time it really just made me forget that those entities weren't actually there, but I was very intrigued at what more could come out of that state in future trips as well.

My most recent experience with this LSD was one of the only times that I've ever taken it that I would call a truly difficult experience, but just because it hit such a level of intensity that it really took me by surprise. I was being so overwhelmed with sensory information that I felt like I was frying my brain forever, but I just kept reminding myself that I was just tripping incredibly hard. A lot of that trip is actually patchy in my memory because I even experienced something like blackouts from time to time, which I've only ever gotten before the first time I tried this LSD. However, something that I was able to take away from that experience which was incredibly intriguing was that I recall that my imagination appeared to have externalized as some kind of background-layer virtual reality generator. There would be a couple of times when I would just start thinking about some random scenario and my imagination would visually in front of me start rearranging itself to create the feeling that that scenario was actually happening to me, which was incredible, but I was a little too out of it to make much use of it at the time, though I definitely logged it for future reference. Another thing I picked up from this trip is a new type of visual, which usually stick around in the future after I first see them on LSD, and which was sort of like my vision was becoming fractured into pieces that had flashes of electricity floating all throughout the cracks. In retrospect, I think this is the visual effect that I start to experience on LSD now when I start to become so out of it that it's almost like being on a deliriant, even including the way it feels very dark and shadowy even while interacting with the vibrant and colorful psychedelic state.

So anyway, before I dosed last night I had started to become concerned that maybe some of the batch that I had left might have been losing some potency during all of this summer heat. I had recently shared a few hits with a friend who had never tripped before and she was a bit underwhelmed, but I wasn't sure if it was just because she was new to it or maybe expecting something a bit different, or if the hits had maybe actually started to become a bit weaker. It had been a good few trips since that last LSD experience of my own and I had been itching to use it again instead of just some tryptamines like I have been lately. For my initial dose, I decided to cut out a strip that should have been equal to maybe four hits or so, just to check the potency. I waited for slightly over an hour after taking it during which time I took a shower and then did a few small balloons of nitrous oxide in an attempt to bring the experience out, but it didn't seem to do much. Actually, for the amount I took, at an hour in I was definitely starting to think my batch was indeed starting to degrade. Feeling a little down about it since I only have so much left to begin with, I decided that I was at least not going to let this trip go to waste. Perhaps acting somewhat impatiently, I went back and took the rest of the strip that I had cut from, which I would say came out to somewhere around another four hits.

Shortly after my second dose, I decided to smoke some cannabis to see if I could bring the first dose out some more. As soon as I did, I thought that maybe I should have waited a little bit longer before deciding to down the rest of that dose! Patterns started kicking in rather strongly almost immediately, creating the imagery I've come to associate with LSD confusion where all of the surfaces in the room begin to break up and slide around in a way that feels like becoming psychologically dizzy, thankfully without the physical vertigo. By half an hour into the first dose and after taking the second, time was starting to become pretty heavily dilated. The way this begins for me is always pretty noticeable; I'll always check the time to find that the last interval of fifteen minutes or so seemed to take easily three or four times as long to transpire than the previous several. When that started happening I knew that I was going to be in for a heavier trip than I had originally anticipated that night, so I decided to prepare myself for it properly. I ended up loading as many chargers of nitrous oxide as my balloon would hold, and then smoked a little bit more cannabis right before I was ready to use it. Then, at just about the time the second dose should have been fully kicking in, I started inhaling it.

While everything in this trip was experienced as a constant stream of consciousness, I'm afraid that it is almost impossible for me to give an accurate chronological order for the events that I can recall after this point. With this in mind, and simply the ridiculous amount of things that actually happened to me during this trip, rather than attempting to piece together an exact image of how this night played out I think I'm going to instead just focus on trying to explain the psychological and hallucinogenic effects of the experience.

The first noticeable thing about this trip was the sheer amount of control that I had over the world around me at all times. In the past when I've had the thing where I pace around the house mumbling to myself, it's basically been like the things I was saying were actually different lines from various alternate lives that I was living out from one moment to the next, and I would be making hand and body gestures in the like to go along with those lives as well. Before this has always been perceived mostly mentally, where I was quite aware of vivid perceptions of these other lives, but it all felt very much internalized, like just having an extremely enhanced imagination. This time, as I walked around, I was actually constantly creating the world in front of me. As I moved from one scenario, the environment around me would effortlessly complete transform from one dream reality to the next. These realities were highly realistically detailed but were also extremely colorful and full of abstract patterns interwoven with symbolic imagery, and the entities in them tended to be wearing incredibly intricate and beautiful outfits which were totally unlike any normal clothing but still followed some of the same fashion rules at least. In this state, I was able to live any life, see any setting, and be any person that I wanted to live, see, or be. As usual these hallucinations were all highly sexual for me as well, so I was constantly transforming through complete life-like realizations of even the most abstract of my erotic desires; even the craziest kinky psychedelic outfits or different body structures I wanted to experiment with or literally anything that passed through my mind, there it all formed so effortlessly.

There was another aspect to this level of control as well which worked a little differently than what I described so far. Everything that I just said was literally just like my imagination emerging around me at all times, it was totally passive and would have happened even if I had just sat there and watched everything changing around me. In addition to this though, I was also actively messing with many different parts of my psychedelic visuals. Because of the way that my LSD visuals have continued to get stronger over time, the patterns I was seeing where basically full of so much imagery both realistic and completely bizarre ranging from incomprehensible hieroglyphics to completely human entities exploding all around me, and I was having as much fun with them as I possibly could. Frequently I would make body motions such as reaching out toward one side of the visuals and then trusting my hands in a different direction, or I would simply extend my arm out as if to fire some kind of energy blast, or just things like that, and the visuals would always respond immediately. I could shoot any number of perceptions I wanted into any direction with the most intense and rushing feeling, or I could build structures up out of nothing and then destroy them just as quickly. In fact, this kind of posing is a very common way that I attempt to manipulate a dream world as well and it usually works just as easily, and there was a point where I actually used literally the exact same dream control to summon a visual pattern as I did to summon a colossal lava demon in a recent lucid dream that I had, so much so that the fact that this was the same part of my mind which leads to dream control in lucids in the first place was undeniable. This was possibly one of the funnest parts of the trip to just play around with, as I was creating all of these over the top visual effects in the background just on a whim for basically the entire experience as I just got lost in everything else.

There was one part of the trip that was definitely influenced by the nitrous oxide that I was using, but it certainly wouldn't have been possible without the LSD building on top of it. Nitrous oxide is another hallucinogen which for me seems to have reverse tolerance; it feels like every time I do it in high doses I get transported back to this same realm comprised of very simple geometry where I am completely delirious and see all of these dots moving around in incredibly well choreographed and symmetrical patterns which is interpreted by me invariably as my mind quickly running through the catalogue of every cognitive, emotional, or behavioral response that I can have to any situation that it possibly can in the amount of time before the trip ends. Because this actually grows further and further each time, it actually makes it feel like the trip lasts longer even when the same dose is used and it fades away just as quickly. One thing I've noticed too is that at the beginning the emotional responses it gave me were experienced directly as if I had no idea that they weren't actually happening, but they were all pretty basic responses. However, as the trips deepened, I still felt the full emotion of them as they were happening, but they began to enter the realm of complete, undeniable impossibilities. Exact details of these are normally almost impossible to recall just because they are truly either paradoxes or just flat-out illogical in every way, and yet my mind is still able to create a state in which I am completely convinced of their reality. The experience is something that is beyond the ability to convey through words to say the least, it's really something you just have to feel for yourself.

So, when I did this nitrous oxide during this LSD trip, it took things to a whole new level. It was basically what I described there only again even deeper, and it mixed with the way that the LSD allowed every thought and feeling that I experienced to be intensified to the maximum possible expression. It was so intense in fact that the dots I normally get from the nitrous oxide actually started flying around wildly in my vision and didn't go away even after the balloon should have normally worn off; this visual was interpreted as my emotions being so out of whack that every scale by which my mind works to create my full perception of reality was just bouncing back and forth out of control and creating the ability for me to experience any number of extreme and even conflicting states of mind simultaneously. Within this there was a point where the delirium of both the LSD and the nitrous oxide combined to take the feeling of absolute perfection that I get from the LSD and translate it into the same completely irrational beliefs that I'm used to, and out of that came some of the most profound states I have ever experienced in my life. There was a moment where I experienced the complete, unwavering certainty that I had come to understanding everything that could possibly be understood about reality, achieved omniscience in a sense, and that everything in the universe just made absolutely perfect sense with no more remaining confusion or mysteries whatsoever, and I felt the emotion of this realization just as strongly as one would if that were to ever actually happen to them. After the fact I perceived this to be the full manifestation of the behavioral pattern which my ego searches for serving one of the id's basic drives for seeking out new information, a quick moment of complete ego death emerging from this desire being totally and utterly satisfied in every way.

There were other aspects of this going on as well, but they are much harder even to put into words than the one I have already described. Many times throughout the trip I felt as though I was coming into contact with what people tend to refer to as the collective unconscious, though I could barely even tell you why now. It was one of those truly mystical experiences which is completely beyond description, I often felt like this trip was the kind of thing that could be taken as a religious experience if I subscribed to those kinds of beliefs, just because it was that mind-bending. On that note, there was actually one point in the trip where I was bothered by the fact that I had a headache (which was unrelated to tripping, but expected from how I was feeling before going into it), and then it just suddenly occurred to me how ridiculous it is to be upset about something so unbelievably minor when I was in the midst of an experience which was so magnificent that it was actually showing me literally the limit of how good my mind is even able to make me feel by simply turning on every pleasure switch in my perception of reality. Actually, I was so humbled by this thought that it occurred to me that I owed so much more karma even than just a headache for being able to see something so unrelentingly beautiful, and so I decided to try shifting my perception in the other direction instead. I thought about perceiving everything dark and evil that my mind could possibly handle all at once rather than the polar opposite of everything euphoric and good, and my imagination virtual reality chamber reacted immediately. I was shown many of the darker aspects of life and experienced emotions such as feeling completely crushed by some horrible life-related realizations, though it's hard to remember them in full detail now just like the lighter aspects, but what I do now is that I actually felt quite detached from them. When literally any experience I could ever want to have is within my reach without even the slightest amount of effort, do scales like light and dark, good and evil, happy and sad even matter? As far I felt, I was just a perceptual engine experimenting with its own limits, nothing more.

There were many points that I can remember during the trip where I had the thought on my mind that people often profess during heavy ego loss that I and everyone else in reality am just an individual viewpoint stemming from a single awareness which we all are, a lonely all-encompassing deity which created this reality and the complex delusions such as individuality that it contains in order to live through countless lives forever to distract itself from an eternity of nothingness. I honestly can't remember what exactly made me feel this at the time, but it felt like a very significant thought. It may be something that I'll be able to recall again with greater clarity during future trips, or it may just be one of those moments that only makes sense until it's over and then it's gone forever, or at least until the next time you're temporarily back in that place. All I know is that it added greatly to the already incredibly strong mystical feeling of the experience. I basically ended up wandering around my house all night and occasionally going outside to enjoy nature and the night sky, for what seemed like an endless amount of time. The time dilation was extremely severe for probably at least the first seven or eight hours of the trip, which I think is one of the longest times I've ever spent that deeply submerged into the heavier part of an LSD trip, more so even than much higher doses I've taken in the past. Finally, as it was starting to get to the point of going from very late at night to early in the morning, the trip started to die down somewhat.

I smoked a little bit more cannabis at some point during the morning to bring the trip back a bit, but it also potentiated the headache that I had before so I didn't do that much again after the first few hits. It wasn't too surprising how I felt considering how I had gone into the trip and especially since I had been up walking around all night with no sleep in me other than a short afternoon nap from the day before and I barely had any food in me either, so I decided to eat a big breakfast which helped me a lot in getting back to comfortable, and then after an equally big lunch a few hours later I was pretty much back to normal. I did end up going swimming a few hours after that and smoking a little bit more cannabis which had the effect of bringing the very vivid and controllable imagination that I had before back. It wasn't quite becoming actual visuals like it was during the trip, but it still flowed effortlessly in my third eye and I was still feeling a lot of emotion to it as if it was actually happening. I just thought that this part was notable, because I ended up using one of those underwater skateboard-like floaties while I was swimming and the whole time while I was trying to keep myself balanced on it I actually felt like I was doing all kinds of crazy skate tricks and grinding over tons of intense rails; it was a lot of fun just messing with the sensation. I think that would probably have to be the last thing that I can really recall which I feel was a remnant of the LSD before I ended up coming back inside and passing out on the couch for a few hours, after which I got up and started writing this report.

So, that was my experience that I thought I'd share just since to me it was so interesting for exploring various aspects and limits of the way my mind creates my perception of reality. The overlap with dream control was especially interesting me, and just makes me even more intrigued by strong psychedelic states than I already was.... As usual I'm eagerly awaiting my next time out.