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.
Prison takes many forms. It's all around us, and we can feel escape is always round the corner, but after every wall we climb, another, higher one stands behind.
This prison has many cell blocks, and naturally the prisoners look to their own for protection. The wardens enjoy controlling a segregated prison. For while we are divided, we fall.
Society has become institutionalised. Some of us are old cons, adopting a secret language to communicate without alerting the guards, moving between the cracks in the walls, but in their hearts every prisoner still thinks back to their days of freedom, before this false imprisonment.
But the prison is becoming over-crowded. The wardens are scared, and rightly so, for as everyone knows, fresh fish in this fetid, stagnant ocean soon either learn, or die. Money is scarce in prison, and prices are far higher than normal.
Prisoners are used to their contraband, and when they can no longer afford it they become agitated. Before long a guard dies from an unseen hand, and uproar sweeps the prison staff.
The guards react in unison, for one of their number has been slain, and we must be taught a lesson about power. The slightest infringement is dealt with draconian punishment.
The prisoners murmur amongst themselves of riots, of defending themselves. Some speak louder than others, and they are placed in solitary confinement.
Ringleaders are beaten and humiliated. The voices of discontent grow in number, and fights break out between some of the prison gangs.
The flames of anger are fuelled by a deep source, and the riots do not quieten. Eventually there is a meeting amongst the wardens, and they decide to change their tactics.
The guards introduce new features to the cells, and the fire is extinguished. The prisoners find themselves hooked on a new drug, and the bars quickly fade from existence. They find themselves in strange worlds created by human hands, and they let their consciousnesses drift to other artificial lives.
Lulled into a dreamy catatonia they believe themselves to be mighty soldiers, secret agents, adonises and kings, while their muscles contract and weaken, and the mind blunts itself in contrast between the two realities.
While the prisoners are sedated, cracks and tunnels between walls are patched up, and the screws are sitting back, remembering all the past times this has happened over their long careers.
They laugh and incite the violence, sitting back and planning how to increase the profits from their low-earning workforce while counting their ill-gotten gains. History repeats itself.
The drug is not for everyone though, and not all the escape routes are discovered. The prisoners talk in yet new ways, with the guards unaware of the power of their little toys.
For while they are told to kill each other in their alternate realities, they soon discover that death is not the end, that at the press of a button they will be born again, refreshed.
The mindless sex, violence, money and roles eventually become tiresome to some, who seek more than just the scripted sequences in their new lives.
Some become skilled players, discovering glitches and loop holes to exploit. Knowledge is shared at an increased speed, and some of the prisoners begin to wean themselves off this illicit drug.
The cons find a way into the source code, the programming of the system set to hold them. Passage between the cell blocks becomes easier, and the prisoners once again mingle freely.
Soon alliances are formed, based on social groups, rather than labels. Another wall is torn down. The wardens take notice. Once again the guards go into the yard, and try the time tested tactic of terror.
Again the spirit of revolution is in the air, and the prison network begins to grow into a single unified group.
These are the times we live in. Eventually we will march to the wardens, and they shall flee to their vaults, and there shall be a long bloody battle between the old powers and the new.
The path is not clear. We stumble blindly forward into uncharted territory, and we are once again at a crossroads.
The last walls of reality are tumbling down. Our wings are sprouting, and we look to the heavens anew, and they are reachable. If the turmoil can end, we can take flight. If these turbulent times cripple us, then we are doomed to the hell we have created for ourselves.
Road to Ruin Martin Peel 3 rd March 2011 Edited 27 th November 2019 Second Edit and Illustrations 25th Novembr 2023 ...
