General

"Hell is not fire and brimstone"

by John Boy

Yesterday was my fifth and definitely last dance with Salvia. It had been nearly 10 years since my last experience. My first two trips were amazing. Totally outer body. Not like mushrooms. They just distort reality. This is a completely alternate universe, existence, reality. I felt I had a guide.. someone or something that led me and showed me how pliable the universe was. Traversing foreign landscapes, becoming landscapes, flying through the cosmos. A very very intense and pleasant journey. Then two bad trips. I had been sent to a places that looked different but that had similar implications - The implication that I would not be returning to earth. That it was over. In this first bad trip I had been swept up by a cosmic broom. My existence relegated to a piece of cosmic dust. It was black everywhere - the cold void of space. I still had my consciousness and was aware of my human past but something told me that this would be my new life. A prison of the mind. I could still think and feel but I could only be a piece of dust... I no longer had the senses that create pleasure. Taste, touch, smell. When I finally came back my sitter said I had a look of extreme worry on my face during the trip. The second bad trip took me into an orange shag carpet and then made me one of it's strands. I had no carpet like this in the house... so it was purely mental. This trip had more visuals - it was very cartoony. The rest of the strands were also conscious and they were laughing at me. They had been observing me daydream the entire earthly experience and they were mocking me for actually thinking it was all real. I was depressed. I had remembered "I'm not a human living on a planet earth. I'm a carpet strand and all we do here is stare at each other and collect dust." Then I came back. That was ten years ago. It had scared me so bad I swore I would never touch the stuff again. Then I read the teachings of Don Juan. I knew most of it had been made up however the drug trips were far too accurately described to be a farse. They inspired me to recommune with the spirit world. I felt that as an older, more experienced man I would not succumb to darkness. So I picked some up and went outside to smoke. Immediately I voiced out "oh no". I knew exactly how it was going to go. I got sucked into the bowells of the earth. It was a bluish grey cavern with a line of people marching and working. They cheered that they had got me back. They were chanting something over and over again. It was something like "it's happening again". I could look up and see a sort of sphere with the "show" I had just been watching. It was my earthly vision.. My backyard, the grass, my roomate next to me. It was as if the earth experience was my five minute break time. Something to disrupt the monotony of living in a bluish cave. And they had just ended my break. I thought I would never come back to earth again so I struggled to get back to the tv screen. I clawed at it. As I pulled at my backyard and the cave pulled at me I could feel my trip trying to comd to an end. Then finally I was fully back. I looked around. I breathed the sweet air. I felt the grass to make sure it was all real. I had been so terrified. The relief I felt to be back in my body and back home was indescribable. People say once you have a recurring Salvia trip that you just keep going back to it. I'm done. If hell exists then I have been there. It is not a fire or demons. It's far worse. It is a pointless existence in a dreary place with the memory of earth haunting you. That night I went to the bar and got shit faced. Some dude started a fight with me. Head butted me.. split my lip, and punched me square in the head a few times. I think he was a boxer. I was so drunk I couldn't even fight back. I got in my friends car to go home and I felt great. Life felt amazing again. Even getting clocked. I don't know if Salvia is just a mind fuck or a glimpse of the afterlife. I pray to god it's not the latter.