Effects of salvia divinorum

In My Humble Opinion
21

Ah, being “on drugs” magically waves away all self-discovery, despite the fact that a large portion of the world’s most important and groundbreaking personal discoveries happen “on drugs”, particularly psychedelics. Most of the modern American musical taste is based on psychedelic drugs, musicians who used them, and musicians who copied (ah, sorry, “were inspired by”) musicians who used them. Not to mention that you’ve probably been “on drugs” in the last 72 hours, like caffeine, or aspirin, or maybe nicotine, or alcohol, or Vicodin.

But wait–there’s a difference! Those drugs are legal! Well, er, so is salvia. So go smoke a rope.

22

So many non sequiturs, so few worth replying to.

elelle & fetus, I’d be interested in the answer to my question: If you’d had an experience while stoned that included a pink gay pipe smoking whale would you or would you not conclude they exist?

Cuckoorex: Tuesday, at 11am.

23

[QUOTE=Psilocybe]
I actually heard a woman chanting some syntax to me, and then all around me there were alien totums beckoning me. […] I did that without a sitter, and ended up wondering around not knowing where the aliens were leading me.

Strong shit. I would recommend staying clear of this one.
[/QUOTE]
Heh heh. Years ago I made and ingested an extract of a beautiful datura plant that I’d cultivated for a few years. I also did this without a sitter. I’d very carefully researched the whole affair, but…

…when it started to come on, I was sure I’d fucked up massively, and got online to belatedly try to determine what I ought to do in case I’d inadvertantly given myself a dangerously high dose. My limbs felt heavy and felt deeply, deeply poisoned. My vision was blurred, and reading was difficult.

I became distracted because the article I was reading strangely mentioned the lindenmayer strings which described datura brugmansia and its relatives. I had been working with L-systems quite a bit and was surprised to find them being casually used in an article about the pharmacology of the plant, in place of illustrations. (I had no difficulty visualizing the forms that the strings represented, which was unusual.)

I pulled my attention off them when I remembered “Oh, yeah, I’ve poisoned myself,” and eventually found a remark that in case of poisoning it was important to lower body temperature with an ice-bath or cold shower – so I stumbled to the bathroom, stripped down, and got under an icy shower.

While I was in there, a woman I’d never met came into the room and pulled back the shower-curtain. She said nothing, but looked at me with an intense expression of concern on her face. “Hello?” I said. No reply, just this continued look of concern. Somehow, I felt the need to reassure her: “I’m okay – I’m just having a shower.” She lingered a while longer, but eventually seemed satisfied that I was alright and left me alone. I finished up, towelled off, got dressed, and went out into the living-room. I felt much better. I was surprised to find that my brother was waiting there for me. I hadn’t seen him in a long time. By this time I had completely forgotten about the datura, and didn’t feel “altered” in any way. I had a great time catching up with my brother, who apologized for being away for so long and said that he just wanted to make sure that I was okay. We had a great catch-up visit, and I had a great time filling him in on everything that I’d been up to since we’d last spoken. After a while, he had to go, and I went out to pick up a few things. I don’t remember anything after that… just waking up in bed the next day.

When I spoke to my roommate, he expressed interest in how I was feeling and said it looked like I had an “interesting” night. Then I got filled in on the consensus reality version of the night’s events:

When my roommate had come home, I was in shorts and a t-shirt, sitting on the couch, holding a bright yellow datura flower (which gave him his only indication of what the hell was going on) and having an animated conversation with someone who wasn’t there. He sat and watched me for a a while, tried to speak to me, and got absolutely no response. As far as I was concerned, he was invisible. He was eventually satisfied that I was going to be alright after I rode it out, and went to bed.

(I should note that my pupils were still massively dilated and it was impossible to read. Anything fine just became a blur.)

After my roomate told me his side of things, I began to look around the house at what I had wrought. In the bathroom, I found the clothes that I had gotten out of, and a curious thing: There was a full-length mirror set into a frame in the wall, facing the shower. I had somehow taken it out of the frame and leaned it against the wall.

More worryingly, I had lost my wallet. I remembered my shopping trip, and worried that I’d dropped it outside – as it happened, it contained the rent money – in cash. Tore the entire house apart trying to find it. It did eventually turn up – in a dark corner of the basement. (There’s nothing in the basement, and I have no idea how I navigated the steep stairs.)

What struck me about the whole experience was how completely normal everything seemed in the thick of it. As real as any waking moment – no hint that things were unreal. No visual disturbances or “cosmic craziness” feeling like you get with the popular substances.

I suppose I should have clued in that something was up at some point during my extended visit with my brother – I had evidently completely forgotten that he’d died many years earlier, of a drug overdose.

24

[QUOTE=Princhester]
Dude, you were on drugs. If you’d had an experience that included pink gay pipe smoking whales would you have concluded that it was amazing to discover they existed, too? You have as much evidence that your experience reveals anything about yourself that is actually true.
[/QUOTE]

Sweetheart, I have no evidence that you exist, either.

25

For one thing, we’re not talking about being “stoned”, which means you sit around on the couch and eat chips and laugh at cartoons. We’re talking about tripping out on psychedelics, which as noted have a long history of inspiring major life breakthroughs. Sounds nitpicky, but your word is about sitting around and being dumb, which isn’t part of the discussion.

Secondly, if I were smoking salvia (not “stoned”) and had an experience that included a pink gay pipe smoking whale, obviously it meant something. Maybe I’m gay? Maybe I’m struggling with my identity? Who knows? Obviously I’m a grown man who knows that pink gay whales don’t literally sprout up in living rooms and smoke pipes. What WhyNot was talking about was a specific connection made in her mind between current behavior and previous cognition/behavior. Whether or not you think it’s ridiculous doesn’t matter one lick; obviously it was important to her, and she felt she was enlightened. It sounds silly to someone who hasn’t taken psychedelics, but it sounds to me like a very positive experience for her that probably did her a lot of good, at least in brightening her mental state and making her world a little more sensible and connected. She hasn’t enacted any world policy based on it yet, nor has she started a war on it or affected your life in any way nor claimed an amazing scientific discovery. She feels she was enlightened about a piece of her personal life that you clearly don’t understand. You shouldn’t be expected to, of course, but you also shouldn’t be going around spewing vitriol on other peoples’ happy moments. I don’t know you, though; maybe you’re just an asshole.

I’ve heard that about Datura, that the troubling part is that it all seems totally real. I had some friends who tried it and they also had interesting “conversations”, including one having an animated argument with a towel.

26

[QUOTE=fetus]
Secondly, if I were smoking salvia (not “stoned”) and had an experience that included a pink gay pipe smoking whale, obviously it meant something.
[/quote]

Why “obviously”?

OK, good. So we are agreed that things that one experiences while tripping do not necessarily mean that those things actually occurred.

So do you think that the fact that WhyNot had a hallucination in which she felt she was in the womb and moving her hand in a particular way means that she actually moved her hand a particular way in the womb? Review the third and fourth paragraphs of this post before replying.

27

Furthermore, in WhyNot’s post, she is talking about an experience with THC, not salvia. Now, I wouldn’t claim to be the world’s authority on relevant terminology, but I could pretty much swear that I’ve heard one or two people (no doubt not Truly Hip people like yourself) refer to themselves as being “stoned” in connection with THC. No?

28

[QUOTE=Princhester]
So do you think that the fact that WhyNot had a hallucination in which she felt she was in the womb and moving her hand in a particular way means that she actually moved her hand a particular way in the womb? Review the third and fourth paragraphs of this post before replying.
[/QUOTE]

With certainty? No, of course not. However, I do now consciously remember other times (post-birth) and ways in which the movement manifested - as a toddler, a child, etc. I know those times were “real” in “real history”, and that can (and has) been verified by my mother, who was driven batty by my compulsive hand-waving all my childhood. I don’t see why the in utero one should be different. Could it be? Sure. But it all just fits together so nicely, I don’t see why I need to pick it apart.

The memories were brought forth by the chemical. But that doesn’t mean the memories are false.

As for “stoned”, that’s a relatively recent term for pot smoking, and one that is a great description of hanging out on the couch with a bag of Fritos and a bong. What I took was highly concentrated THC, and I experienced psychedelic effects. It’s very rare that you can smoke that much quickly enough for marijuana to be truly psychedelic. I feel that my experience are better described by the old-school marijuana terminology of “tripping.”

29

[QUOTE=WhyNot]
The memories were brought forth by the chemical.
[/quote]

How do you know that?

30

[QUOTE=Princhester]
How do you know that?
[/QUOTE]

I don’t understand the question. I didn’t remember. I took a chemical. I remembered, without trying, while being under the effects of said chemical. I later verified these memories with an outside source (Mom).

Is it the anthropomorphizing you’re having difficulty with? The fact that I referred to the plants as “teachers”? If it helps, just remember that I’m one of those wacky tree-huggers who literally hugs trees and talks to plants. I’ve been studying herbalism for many years. Plants are just as alive and active to me as people. Even if all they do is sit there, their sitting there helps me to reach new insights about the world around and within me. I just like to give credit where credit is due.

31

Whynot, I’d be interested in your answer to my question: If you’d had an experience while stoned that included a pink gay pipe smoking whale would you or would you not conclude they exist?

When you’ve answered that one, we can talk further.

32

Because salvia doesn’t just throw images at you, generated randomly from selected firings of unrelated neurons. When you see something on salvia, it’s something intimately connected to your life, and you know what it means when you see it. Could it be a load of bollocks? I’m not going to say it can’t be. But it would mean something, and I’d know what it meant if it happened.

For all I know, she could’ve made the whole story up. I have no idea if she moved her hand at all in the womb and frankly it’s not that important to me. What is important is that it was a positive experience for her. Pyschedelics and sometimes “trippier” cannabis work their magic by (IMO) connecting otherwise unconnected ideas. Somebody on these boards explained that a lot better than I could, but basically what I’m trying to say is all the hand and womb business means a great deal to WhyNot and seems to have been a positive thing for her, and who am I to go piss on that?

Whoops! You’re correct, my mistake. Looks like she used a THC extract, though; I’ve never done that and don’t know much about it, and I would gather from her description of the experience that there was nothing “stony” about that stuff. Stoners compare strains of weed to one another, calling certain kinds “stony” or “heavy”, meaning they’re more likely to turn you toward melting into the couch than toward having groundbreaking insights. I would deduce from what I know about weed and what little I know about her method, combined with her description of the experience, that isolating the THC means you don’t deal with any of the stuff that makes it “stony”.

But that’s a lot of speculation on my part. You are correct.

But you’re barking up the wrong tree with this gay whale business. I’d rather not dissect the argument, I just have to wonder: Why do you care so much?

33

fetus, this is General Questions, not Group Hug. It’s about facts. It’s about fighting ignorance. Anyone who’s been around here as long as you have knows or should know that this is not a forum in which it is regarded as inappropriate to challenge ignorance because it may be detrimental to someone’s “positive experience”. Nor is it a forum in which it is necessary to justify caring about fighting ignorance: on the contrary, if you don’t care about that, and care instead more about ensuring everyone has a positive experience, what are you doing here?

The question posed by the OP is the effects of salvia. If you have any cite for the proposition that one of the effects of salvia is to allow one to access real memories of things that occurred while one was a fetus, let’s have it. Otherwise, stop polluting GQ with speculation and unsupported belief.

34

Or perhaps more relevantly, a cite for the proposition that one of the effects of THC is to allow one to access real memories of things that occurred while one was a fetus, let’s have it.

35

Since the OP was actually looking for personal opinions on what smoking a (probably legal) herb was like, this one should have been moved to a forum other than General Questions. Now that it’s a debate about those opinions, it certainly needs moved.

Let’s try IMHO.

samclem GQ moderator

36

[QUOTE=fetus]
Because salvia doesn’t just throw images at you, generated randomly from selected firings of unrelated neurons.
[/QUOTE]

Just curious, because I don’t have a dog in this fight - how do you know that’s true? Plenty of people think that dreams can be combinations of meaningful imagery and random crap from neuronal firing, plus the brain’s attempts to remember what one has learned during the day. Why do hallucinations from this particular drug have to be meaningful?

37

For those of us who are fascinated with the human mind, everything is meaningful. Dreams are meaningful. Drug experiences are meaningful. Momentary flashes of information are meaningful. Fleeting deja-vu memories, lasting less than a fraction of a second, are meaningful. If it’s happening in your mind, it’s meaningful.

38

Going by that standard, even randomly-generated images would be “meaningful” - so why the distinction between that and the supposedly “intimately connected to your life” images from salvia?

39

[QUOTE=Princhester]
Or perhaps more relevantly, a cite for the proposition that one of the effects of THC is to allow one to access real memories of things that occurred while one was a fetus, let’s have it.
[/QUOTE]

I think you need to provide a site telling us that the effects of hallucinogenic drugs are completely random and meaningless images. Images you see on drugs are not normal, but that does not make them random. If the images produced were just random lights, then I would say they were random. Though if the abnormal images were still very specific images, then it is a huge leap in logic to assume they are random.

A pink gay whale smoking a pipe is something very specific. Your brain, with a little help, chose to produce this image out of infinite possibilities. Can you really explain this specific image of a pink whale fucking another male whale (how else would we know it’s a gay whale), while smoking a pipe, as random?

40

[QUOTE=Princhester]
Whynot, I’d be interested in your answer to my question: If you’d had an experience while stoned that included a pink gay pipe smoking whale would you or would you not conclude they exist?

When you’ve answered that one, we can talk further.
[/QUOTE]

No, I would not conclude that they exist. I would conclude that my psyche had some interesting (to me, not to anyone else) elements to explore on the themes of pipes, whales, the color pink and gayness.

Like **Lakai **said, my mind could come up with a million images under the influence of something that may essentially be a Random Image Generator with a Stay Focused accessory. My religious beliefs lead me to believe that they’re not entirely random, but I have no more externally verifiable proof of that than any other religious tennant. I believe that the images which do come to me are relevant to me in some way, and I explore those further. So far, I haven’t been wrong.

One of my religious teachers is fond of saying that to achieve Enlightenment, you connect everything in the universe with something else. Connect the dots, and keep connecting them until the only dots left to connect are you and God. That’s just the particular dot my mind/psyche/spirit/soul chose to connect that night, with the aid of a rather highly processed marijuana plant.

That said, I’m sorry I posted it in a thread about the effects of salvia in GQ. I have a bad, bad habit of hijacking threads with tangents once the question is answered. I should have started another thread. I apologize to the OP and to all the readers who clicked to learn about Salvia and are now perplexed and bored with my hand.