“Quite a profoundly strange experience”. That’s what one study concluded about using Salvia Divinorum and analyzing the effects it has. So just exactly how insane is a Salvia experience?
I’ve had a few experiences with Salvia. However, as with many people, I didn’t find it as intense as my first one. However, that could be down to the fact that your memory remembers that first time because it’s so out of this world.
What I’m going to do here is tell you about my Salvia experiences. Especially my first experience, so you can see how I felt, and just what you could expect from doing it.
But more than that, I’m going to cover how Salvia compares to kratom, and how you can do your best to get a good experience with Salvia by buying the best quality you can.
What Exactly Is Salvia Anyway?
Salvia Divinorum is an intense hallucinogen. It’s also known as diviners sage, magic mint, Sally D, Ska Maria Pastora, Lady Sally, purple sticky, and shepherdess’s herb. Quite a bizarre and magical range of names which reflect what it does to your brain.
It’s actually a very fast acting hallucinogenic herb. Used originally by the Shamen of South and Central American civilizations (Inca, Mazatec, guys like that) to induce hallucinations, it’s now used in modern times by adults young and old.
Salvia is part of the mint family. That sounds all very nice and safe. But in terms of its effects and potency, it’s nothing like mint in this world. It grows in southern Mexico, and generally across South America.
Often sold as seeds, it is also available in a dried format. However, you can also get it as a ground powder or as a liquid.
It’s a legal herb experience, that produces a strong “trip”. It strongly mimics the effects of LSD. People say it mimics ecstasy, but for me, the experience you get in terms of an altered reality and perception is far beyond that.
Although it’s legal, it’s not stated to be safe. There have been bad experiences across the ages, and heavy use can induce psychosis and damage your mental health.
But used sensibly and occasionally, it can produce a fantastic range of effects. When I first use it, it was mind altering, incredible, but also slightly uncomfortable. I’m going to do here is talk you through everything you need to know.
How Does Salvia Compare To Kratom?
First, I will talk to you about the sort of Salvia experience you can expect, especially your first time, but now I want to talk to you about how Salvia experience compares to using kratom.
Although they can be similar at high doses, they are not the same by any stretch of the imagination. Let me explain.
At low doses kratom is a stimulant. You’ll feel upbeat, happy, but very chilled out. As you get a higher dose, you start to get a deepening calm, a deepening sense of detachment, along with feeling blissful and out of it.
It’s great for pain relief, it’s great for anxiety and depression. You’ll feel good, and you’ll feel like you’re flying at times. However, you are not completely “out of it”.
What I mean by being out of it, as you will be taken to another plane of existence. You will not feel like you’re in another world, sailing, flying, completely living in an altered reality.
So kratom gets you high, gets you happy, it gets you out of it. You’ll feel increasingly heavy and drowsy, detached, and sure, you’ll feel good.
Salvia is another type of experience. We are not talking about pain relief, happiness, detachment, drifting, over several hours that you are in control of.
Salvia is a punch to the head. Within 15 minutes you’re going to be flying off into another universe. But an hour later, you’re going to be firmly back into this world with a head full of questions and altered perceptions.
So, for me, kratom is great fun, as long as you are sensible. But it’s nothing like Salvia in terms of the experience you will have, either in duration, or how it alters your perception.
This Is How I Felt The First Time I Experimented With Salvia
I’ll be honest, I ignored the advice out there when I did my first experiment with Salvia. My first experience was on my own. That is not advisable.
But in my mind, I knew that the experience, the trip, would be short. Some people say it is as short as 10 minutes. But after 10 minutes you are at least tapering down, with the full effects pretty much gone after 30 minutes. How much damage can you do in that time?
So, I knew that you would soar up into the air pretty sharpish, within about five minutes, and that within 10 minutes of that starting, you’d start to come down the other side. But the bit in the middle of that could be quite out of this world.
I sat on the floor, fired up my bong, and took a big lungful of the highest quality Salvia I could find. I used the water bong because I’d read that that is less painful on the throat when you inhale the smoke.
I only went for the lowest grade Salvia extract. It’s listed at 10x strength. You can get varying multipliers, 10 is usually the lowest you will find.
Let me tell you, smoking Salvia was like flipping a switch in my head. Literally in the space of that one minute everything went from being me sitting in the room to a complete change of awareness, perception, and reality.
If you’ve ever done something like acid or magic mushrooms, LSD, anything like that, you’ll know what I mean. But this didn’t come on in an hour, this literally came on in about two minutes.
I felt like everything was spinning and I was soaring into another universe. This literally came on in about 30 seconds. Everything felt dark, with sparkles of light.
I couldn’t speak within 30 seconds either!
I moved my mouth but nothing came out. I started to feel detached from my body, like I was above it and looking down at it. It was literally like an out of body experience.
Everything around me vanished, every perception I had of me and the world around me was altered beyond recognition.
I tried to shut my eyes and ride the floating trip. I felt like I was soaring into space. I couldn’t keep my eyes shut because the rush was so intense. When I opened my eyes, things were dark, then not, it’s difficult to explain.
In the end, I just fell on my side and just lay there staring along the floor. I wasn’t on the floor in my head though, and I wasn’t where I actually was in my mind. I couldn’t move, but I didn’t want to.
That sounds scary, and in a way it was. But it was also wonderful. But it only lasted about five minutes, and then I started to feel the effects getting lower and lower with every passing moment. The intensity died quite quickly.
Another 10 minutes later, about 15 minutes after I took that first and only lungful, I was feeling pretty much myself again but with a slightly altered visual perception.
But it wasn’t totally over. I sat up for a moment and had some water. But then I just wanted to lay on my back and watch the ceiling. It slowly drifted around me, and I still felt like I was out of my body partly.
What was different though was my perception afterwards. I felt at peace, happy, content. And that lasted for a couple of days. I definitely felt an altered sense of the world around me, and I saw things differently.
For me, the Salvia experience I had was sensational the first time. I never quite recaptured its beauty, but every time it is similar. After wards, for days, I am at peace, happy, and productive.
Top Tips For Keeping Safe When Getting High On Salvia Divinorum
If you’re going to do Salvia, these are the safety tips I would recommend you follow religiously:
- The first thing you need to do is ensure you have a sitter with you. If you both want to do it, do it one after the other. At least have one of you coming down when the other one is going up. A sitter is essential because you can get up and walk around. I’m telling you, I’ve seen so many people start to move as soon as it hits them, they stand up and start walking around, even out of the house, to look at mountains that don’t exist, to talk to people that aren’t there. It can be dangerous.
- Make sure you use good quality Salvia and use the lowest possible dose. If you take too much, you can literally rewire your brain, and it can take a few days to sort things out.
- Use the best quality Salvia you can find. High grade purity, and I would go for the 10x extract. You can buy a lower 5x extract, but I didn’t find it that good. If you’ve never used anything hallucinogenic then you should use the lower extract value, but the 10x concentration is great for moderately experienced people.
- Don’t do Salvia frequently. Once every couple of weeks is my recommendation. Although the trip, the hit, is quick, the after-effects can last for a week or more. Your perception, your thinking, your sharpness, clarity, everything, can be slightly different. Allow yourself to get right back down to earth before you go up into space again.
Get The Best Experience By Buying The Highest Quality Salvia You Can Find
Some people get confused by the different extract grading of 10x, 20x, 30x and so on.
It basically means it’s an extract that is 10x more concentrated than standard Salvia leaf that is dried. It’s a more concentrated extract created by boiling the leaves down into a resin that is then shaved/grated.
The 10x Salvia tends to work out around 25 mg per gram smoked extract. 20x works out between 50-60mg per gram.
If you want to buy it, I’d recommend you buy Salvia from salviaextract.com. They have fantastic quality Salvia, and all the different strengths you need.
You’ll get fast delivery in the USA, and all the experienced people I know buy it from there as well.
In terms of pricing, a single gram costs around $20. That’s enough for one very good experience. Sometimes, you might get two experiences out of it, especially if you are a beginner. So it’s not that expensive to try.
My Final Thoughts On Experimenting With Salvia
I want to finish here with a warning. Some people do get depressed after using Salvia.
I have a friend who tried it a couple of times. They felt very dissatisfied with their life afterwards. It completely altered their perception and views for a few weeks. They felt sad, said they hated themselves, and that nothing they had done with their life was good enough.
They calmed down after a couple of weeks, but it took that much time to get out the mindset and rewire their thinking.
That’s the effects of Salvia. It’s why the Shaman used it all those years ago in central America and south America. It altered their perception, and help them to guide the leaders of the tribes because of the visions they had.
But if you have a history of anxiety or depression, I would stay clear of Salvia and less you are with other people during the experience, and in the weeks after it.
However, if you’ve had psychedelic experiences before, then you will not be disappointed with Salvia. It’s a very short experience, but the perception changes can last for a week or more afterwards.
In the moment, in those 15 minutes, it’s the most intense, altered state of reality, experience I have ever had.
