Some shake
If you have ever been curious about the mind-bending effects of hallucinogens, but have been scared by the fact that most are illegal, then you’re in luck.
There are many over-the-counter hallucinogens that are natural and safe and that won’t make you fail your drug test.
The most intense and exciting of these is definitely a little sage plant known as Salvia. Native to the Sierra Mazateca in Mexico, this plant is famous for its immediate psychoactive effect.
It looks like sage, and it is usually sold already ground up and ready to smoke. If you’ve never smoked anything in your life, I would recommend you use a bubbler. It’ll be easier on your throat.
I would also recommend trying it in a safe, comfortable place where you wouldn’t mind embarrassing yourself a little. It will make you hallucinate, so you shouldn’t try it on the roof or while driving or near any fiery or sharp objects that you might mistake as talking pieces of candy.
While everyone trips out differently, the high usually only lasts for about 15 minutes.
However, it is a very intense high, and these 15 minutes may feel like a lifetime.
It is very difficult to describe a salvia trip. It’s like trying to describe a nightmare. The longer you wait to tell it, the more you forget, and no matter how much you talk about it, you always feel as if you’re leaving something out.
But you are nonetheless left shaken by all the horrible, impossible things you experienced.
One of the first effects most people experience is what feels like a shift in gravity. It might be really slight, and you might simply find it a little difficult to stand without tipping over. Or it might be really intense and you might feel as if you are literally being pulled up out of the earth. This usually leads to an intense fear that if you don’t hold on to the floor or to the bed or to others, you will uncontrollably fly away into outer space.
Another common effect of Salvia is unstoppable laughter. It feels as if your mouth forces itself into a smile, and there is a general tickling throughout your body that makes it impossible to open your mouth without laughing wholeheartedly.
The hallucinations are a lot harder to describe. Liquids turn into solids, objects turn into one-dimensional drawings, space-time moves unbearably slow and it gets hard to tell where the self ends and where the rest of the universe begins.
Some people say they feel as if they have died and their souls are just floating around, and that any source of light becomes a glorious, terrifying entrance into heaven.
Others compare it to accidentally falling into a black hole or to getting trapped inside a mirror.
I’ve heard accounts of people who feel as if their world turns into a coloring book, and that the walls, which become giant book covers, constantly feel as if they’re about to close in on everything.
Inanimate objects turn into charming companions, and the floor turns into lava, except when it turns into water.
Sounds and noises freeze in midair and become concrete and tangible, and it becomes possible to count every single beam of light as it slowly spins and fills the room.
There is sometimes a feeling of claustrophobia or suffocation, and clothing and jewelry feels extremely restricting and hot.
There is also a feeling that you have gotten yourself permanently lost and isolated, and even though the rest of the room is within arm’s reach, you feel as if you’ve slipped into a different dimension where no one will ever be able to find you.
Again, everyone has different reactions, but it’s usually the case that they only last for about 15 minutes. So while you might think that you’ve died and gone to hell or that you’ve gone completely crazy, I can assure you everything will quickly return to normal.
There is not much of a risk for overdose or dependency on Salvia, which is probably due to the fact that most people only try it once and then hate it.
So if your connect is out of town, or if you’ve never talked to flowers before, head on over to Illusions for a legal high that will change everything about everything.
LEO OCAMPO can somewhat be reached at gocampo@ucdavis.edu.
