The Second Time I was Born

October 28, 2015

I cannot stress enough the importance of carefully choosing your setting, scenery, company (sitter) and situation every time, but, especially the FIRST TIME! A friend of mine told me about salvia and insisted that I try it. “Dude, it’s insane you’re gonna love it!” What he neglected to tell me was how to smoke it and this was a long time ago and thinking to research on the internet had completely escaped my mind. He gave me some, I mixed it with some weed and smoked it casually with some weed, nothing…

A few years later Sally came my way again, this time through a different friend though. We work together and while at work he had mentioned that he got some but had not tried it yet and wanted to know if I would try some. I told him that I would try some (I was under the impression that he would give me some to take home to try, this was not the case) and whenever he was ready I would take it from him. I had watched some YouTube videos throughout the day and got the impression that it wacked out a bunch of kids that would probably drink 3 beers and be wasted, I was not impressed.

The next morning he came into work and approached me. “Yo, I gotta leave early to do some unexpected deliveries, then I’m going on vacation to bike week, so it’s now or never” It was approx 8 a.m. and I had a choice, do it now, or wait a few years until this situation came about again.

I was feeling bold, and a bit adventurous that morning and from the videos of stupid kids I thought “Hey I can do this, it’s no big deal” If you’ve tried salvia then you already know I was dead wrong.

But first a bit of history, I have taken acid, a lot of it, blotter hits up to 8 at a time, microdots, liquid, and mushrooms quite a few times, one time a quarter-ounce to myself (my head was glowing but nobody could see it but me, even though I swore I had become a freak show and people were in line to walk past me sitting in my chair just to come see my glowing head). I have taken so much ecstasy that I should be in a lab at Merck by now, you get the idea. I am also 27 years old, not a 15 year-old kid on YouTube drooling on a couch while their friends laugh hysterically at them like a pack of hyenas. This was the logic I had chosen to give myself the green light to try this stuff, what the hell, right?

Now, my friend had not tried this stuff yet for himself, he was scared, the first person he gave it to was his wife and she ended up repeating the same jumbled phrase over and over again and immediately afterwards proclaimed that she would “never touch that fuckin’ crazy shit ever again!” So, as I had said he was apprehensive, but I didn’t ask if he had ever tried it, and he didn’t bother to tell me that he had never tried it either, this is where it gets interesting…We go out back of the warehouse near the loading docks and I huddle in between two trailers so that no one would see me smoking a tin-foil makeshift pipe at work. I took a huge hit and he informed me to hold it in as long as I possibly could, so I did. Given the tin-foil nature of this it became nearly impossible to hold it past about 20 seconds because of the horrible taste, but that proved to be enough.

I looked at him for maybe about 3-5 seconds with a look that said I wasn’t feeling anything, then the most peculiar event in my life (up until that point) took place. The air between my arms all the sudden took shape, not a visual shape, but a mass of energy similar to a invisible ball of gravity that sat down right on my throat and chest. I looked at him and said with obvious astonishment “what the fuck?” I was pointing at my chest to show him what was happening but he just looked at me and smiled “it’s working huh?” In that exact moment just given the tone of sarcasm in his voice, I assumed he must have done it too, done what? I had already forgotten what I had done, complete confusion and astonishment barreled in faster that I could give it a name. I think the number one thing that people cannot understand about this substance their first try is just how fast it can take hold of every possible rational you can grasp and rips it all away in a matter just a few seconds. All the drug experiences I had in the past could not prepare me for this, although the did assist in my ability to not panic.

Next he kept asking me questions and everything was caught somewhere between the incoherence of a strong nitrous hit and the breakneck speed of an insane acid trip where even mundane events seem to vibrate with such ferocity that there is no earthly comparison aside from standing in the middle of eight lanes of traffic all going 100 MPH. His voice then became a mess of hisses and spitting sounds like my ear canal had grown some kind of X-men like ability and I was only hearing the mechanisms to make the sounds before the words even came out. I then began to walk, don’t ask me how, even he was astonished that I was walking, albeit much slower than I usually do but I was walking. At this point I realized what I was doing and where I was, I WAS AT FUCKING WORK AT EIGHT IN THE MORNING TRIPPING CRAZIER THAN I EVER HAVE!!!! I tried to hand him the bowl because I didn’t know what to do with it and by now I figured he wasn’t actually high so at least he could do something rational, but not me, I still couldn’t even talk yet so I couldn’t tell him that all I wanted was for him to take the pipe from me. All he did was look at me and laugh and say “I don’t want that shit!” He began laughing again and my confusion and vulnerability had become almost too much, Jesus how long is this going to last! Soon enough another one of my coworkers came outside, he knew what I was trying and couldn’t help but come out and see what was going on, this only added to the fact that I now had become a spectacle and had no control over the millions of messages being sent into my brain. With the most willful and rational thoughts I calmly walked over to the dumpster and carefully placed the pipe into the trash where I was convinced it needed to go, and stay.

The next part is a bit fuzzy, I just leaned on the railing of a staircase, remaining vertical the entire time with these senses of gravity in places that I never experienced before. I waited it out, I purposely killed my trip because the realization of what I had done and where I had done it and when I decided to do it finally fell on me, I fucked up, bigtime. A couple strange things I do remember was that while I was walking I had to keep looking around and behind me because it felt like everything in my peripheral vision was encapsulated in Plexiglas and I was compelled to see what was on the other side. Next was the “membrane cape” as I like to call it. While I walked back into work and as I passed through the doorway it was like it was lined with super stretchy saran wrap. If you have ever seen the movie “the cell” (you should, especially if you’re reading this) there is a scene where dude stands up in his castle and walks towards J-lo and the entire room is lined with tapestries that cover the entire room. These are tied to his back and as he approaches they all tear loose and form this massive cape behind him. This is what the saran wrap had done, but instead of cloth it was a holographic, water-gel cape, that was filled with my fears and hang-ups and all this negative energy that was being expelled from my body, pictures of people laughing at me, my own confused face, a sea of confused emotions, indescribable really, but you get it.

Eventually I shook it off and let my muscles relax and had a bit of a headache. Later on I felt completely rejuvenated like I had been reborn. Inspired, warm, light, like a religious experience, even though before that I had never had one. Reason I tell this story is because the next two times I smoked salvia after that they were basically wasted because I was transported right back to that uncomfortable and vulnerable space and was enveloped with guilt and fear and thought I had done something wrong. Finally I stared at an Alex Grey print I have and that distracted me away from all that nonsense, but let me tell it was not fun for a few times afterwards. Salvia has a way to bring you right back to where you were when you left off. So, be careful where, when, how, and who you try salvia with every time, but especially THE FIRST TIME.

R.K.

by: R.K.