Sending desolate sparks
that fire – midday
brief jubilee
Madness lies here.
Gold shines ahead
you see glitter
Gnawing, pawing rutting cutting
you tear me with silence.
Goad, grieve, rend, cleave
your wail of woe
Feeding your fear.
Anger hastened leads
me inward
Accustomed to gloom and
murk those tendrils tighten
And I join your amicable
misery
Paralysed by fear.
Indecision spurns anxiety, narrowing the window between deciding on an action and where no action becomes an action in itself.
Focus.
Step out, survey.
Stare down each path, each choice, weigh up and analyse the risks and the rewards, those who will be helped, and those who will be harmed by your choice.
Panic grows with the responsibility that comes with awareness.
Who are you to choose? What possible value do you have? To make these life altering decisions without consent of others?
Turn inward.
Hate. Hate self. Feed on others. Fuel hate.
Take the path of least resistance?
Walk, claustrophobic alongside fellow sufferers, light at the destination blocked by shuffling grey empty souls.
Desire to escape grows. Break through the throng, ignore angry shoves in the back. Perhaps they push forward?
Off the path, darkness. Swim through. Find another path.
Exalted, set forward once more.
Clear ahead, run cackling past old souls, feel their envious stares.
Suddenly stop.
Look back at the other path. See them from your new vantage. Tired eyes, furrowed brows. Tears.
Fly back. Give directions.
Silence. Avoidance. Shout and scream, stupefy.
One looks up, hopeful.
Smile, take their hand, pull them out.
Walk on. Don't look back.
I feel like trying Salvia again in a couple of days, and I guess I want to share my experiences with this powerful mental, physical and spiritual plant.
So what is Salvia? Where is it from? Who used it originally?
Courtesy of salvia.net :
"
Salvia is endemic to the Sierra Madre Mountains in Oaxaca, Mexico. In this region it is used by Mazatec curanderos and curanderas in different rituals. The plant is mostly used when these shamans felt they needed to discover the cause of a patient’s illness in the supernatural world. The shaman entered a visionary trance that allowed him to see what steps have to be taken to cure the patient. This is still a common usage of salvia under the present generation of Mazatec Indians. The plant is also used for prediction, meditation and the search for the divine.
Little is known about the usage of Salvia divinorum before its Western “discovery” in the 20th century. It's probably been in usage for hundreds of years, but it was only when R. Gordon Wasson, the famous botanist who also introduced psilocybe mushrooms to the Western world, brought back a specimen in the 1960’s that the plant became an object of scientific research. However, it remained an obscure plant until the 1990’s, when Daniel Siebert began his research on the plant. Nowadays, salvia is widely known and sold in many (web)shops. But, there is still a lot of research to be done into the chemistry and effects of salvia.
Modern research into Salvia divinorum started in the 1930’s. Salvia divinorum was first recorded in Western literature in 1939 by Jean Basset Johnson, who did research on the use of hallucinogenic mushroom in Mexico. He saw that the Mazatec Indians used the leaves of “Hierba Maria” to induce visions. R. Gordon Wasson continued research in the 1950’s and confirmed the psychoactivity of salvia. Together with Albert Hofmann, the discoverer of LSD, and Roberto G. Weitlaner, he was the first to bring back live specimens back to the west. They sent one of those specimens to Harvard University in 1962, where it was analyzed by Carl Epling.
It remains unclear how long salvia use dates back among the native inhabitants of Mexico. It is suggested that the plant was introduced after the conquest of the new world. The evidence to support this is that the Mazatecs do not have an indigenous name for the plantl: they use names referring to Mary or sheep herding(“Hierba Maria” or “ska Maria Pastora”), while both christianity and sheep were introduced by the Spanish. Moreover, the Mazatecs have a method of consumption that is quite inefficient, which suggests that they are not aware of the enormous psychoactive potency.
However, R. Gordon Wasson, and others after him, suggested that Salvia divinorum could possibly be the same plant the Aztecs called "Pipiltzintzintli" (literally "the purest little prince"), , which was described by a Spanish author in the 17th century. In the 1980’s researcher J. Valdés III continued to investigate the history of salvia prior to Wasson’s "discovery". He suggests that "Pipiltzintzintli" is most likely cannabis, not salvia."
OK, so now we know that it has been used since time immemorial, by Mexican Indian shamans to enter the spirit world, where they could identify illness in a person by looking inside them.
It was used in religious service as well, for meditation, and exploring the inner conscience that usually remains quiet within us.
Salvia is nothing like weed, save the easiest way to ingest it is to smoke it. If you eat anything on Salvia, you will likely vomit. I tried to give an Italian friend some water while he was tripping, and he poured it down his shirt. I held to his lips and he took small, frightened sips, his eyes rapidly blinking as he no-doubt reacted with madness to the feelings of the water trickling down his body.
So how long does it last? What does it feel like? Am I breaking the law taking it?
The effects of Salvia typically come on very fast, reaching their peak between 5 - 25 minutes after inhalation. The effects also subside quickly, leaving you (relatively) normal in a couple of hours.
However I cannot stress enough that Salvia is not a party drug. You will not be looking and acting your best while tripping. It is true that it can be hilarious to watch people tripping ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7dDGJo_qkc ), and it is always a good idea to find a trusted friend who is sober to sit with you while you explore another dimension.
I'm going to be quoting salvia.net a lot, and I reccomend that if you plan on taking Salvia, check their website - read trip reports, thoughts, opinions, and share your own afterwards!
"A number of people report that the effects of salvia became stronger after having used it a couple of times. Some people appear to become more sensitive and will reach a higher level of effects after a couple of times. On the other hand, quite a large percentage of people (around 10%) are fairly insensitive to salvinorin. Many of them will reach effects at a higher dose, but a minority will still feel nothing, even at higher doses.
If you are a first time user, it is advised to use only a small dose to test your sensitivity, because the effects can sometimes be overwhelming. Always make sure a sitter is present."
"Salvia is often grouped with other hallucinogenic psychoactives, but in fact its effects are unique. Salvia is sometimes marketed as a legal cannabis substitute, although the effects are in no way similar. During the trip several states can occur: 2-dimensional hallucinations, out of body experiences, becoming an object, traveling back in time, being in more places at once and uncontrolled laughing. On his website www.egodeath.com Michael Hoffman discusses what he considers the religious effects of Salvia Divinorum. Erowid mentions the following reported effects in their Salvia FAQ:
The famous salvia-researcher Daniel Siebert made up a scale for the strength of a salvia experience. His S-A-L-V-I-A trip scale shows 6 trip stages:
When smoking or chewing salvia leaves or extract, many people will be able to reach level 5. For them it is not necessary to experiment with stronger ways of taking salvia. We advise you to try smoking or chewing (or a combination of both) a couple of times and to gradually increase the dose, if you are experiencing little or no effects. Stronger forms of salvia should only be used if you have some experience and know how sensitive you are."
Music is extremely synthetic to a Salvia trip, but not in the way you'd suspect. In fact, it's nearly impossible to predict how you'll interpret music during a trip. Most people listen to relaxing music that doesn't have much in the way of vocals, so you should probably go with that until you really figure out what a Salvia trip is like. I also strongly advise against listening to any “scary” music until you have plenty of experience.
So there you have it. The best news about this drug is that it's (as of May 2011) legal to buy this amazing plant.
Road to Ruin Martin Peel 3 rd March 2011 Edited 27 th November 2019 Second Edit and Illustrations 25th Novembr 2023 ...
