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Salvia Divinorum – J D Arthur

About a week later, I decided to smoke again. I loaded  two pipes with Mazatecan leaf, as I'd done previously. I was expecting another plunge into madness and had no expectations. After smoking, I began feeling the same disorientation - the same feeling of fighting for control; I began to see, as well as feel, the same '50s motif – the same cartoonish images.

This time, however, something was just slightly different.  It seemed as if there were some type of link with my last excursion. It was as if, rather than starting out with a new series of inexplicable images, I was somehow picking up where I'd left off. There was an odd sense of continuation.  There seemed to be something interesting about the experience this time - it felt a bit less threatening, less foreign.  There was almost an element of humour, as if I were being told that I didn't need to be taking things so seriously. There were also, on some level that was totally unknown to me, various images that seemed to parody my holding on to the ordinary world. The mechanism of this parody eludes description; it was more like a complex of feelings reminiscent of the fever dreams that claim one’s mind during illness, than an actual scene viewed with the eyes. This, in itself, was an interesting phenomenon. It was almost as if I were being chided, on some level, for my state of mind.

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One bowl 5X Mazatecan:

After smoking one bowl, the effects were instantaneous, immediately, I saw a symmetrical flower, perhaps eight pointed, which opened into the other world, as I sensed the Presence of beings, simultaneously. The immediacy of the change was startling.  There was quite a bit of disorientation. I sensed that there was someone there.  Suddenly, I encountered a male about forty or fifty years old with a black moustache. He appeared to be Mexican.  It occurred to me that he might somehow be connected with the salvia I had just smoked - possibly a farmer or some sort of guardian of the plants. He was laughing good naturedly at my growing predicament - l could not remember who I was or from where I’d come. I knew that I had another life somewhere but couldn't remember anything about it.  I couldn’t remember whether I was an adult or a child and was quite disoriented.

This loss of memory came on very rapidly, since moments before, I d been aware that I d smoked salvia and what salvia was. I wasn’t actually aware of the point at which this amnesic state began, but only when I attempted to recollect did I notice my dilemma.

Suddenly, a very raucous parade, complete with marching band, flags, and a bass drum engulfed me. This was also so bizarrely out of context that I felt even more bewildered. The parade came from my right. After a moment of horrifying confusion, I realized that the parade was a prank performed by an old man who also appeared off to my right. He was older than the first and very thin.  He had evidently concocted the parade as a way of teasing me about my amnesic predicament.

Just then, two young girls entered the scene. They were about eleven years old, possibly twins, and were evidently daughters of the Mexican. They had black hair pulled back into buns and were wearing skirts and black shoes. They were also laughing, aware of my situation, and teasing me. One of them, as a way of describing my inability to remember where I was from, began joking. She said something, which on some level I found precise and hilarious, and I attempted to repeat what she had said.

When I began to speak, I was unable to form the words. At the same time, I realized that it was a language that I couldn't speak. Evidently, to demonstrate my anxiety about my loss of memory, she leaped down and put her foot into a crevice in the floor - which was not flat, but looked organic, like a living being. I noticed that I was standing, perhaps ankle deep in this crevice.  This somehow was meant to demonstrate my predicament. They were all  laughing good-naturedly at me, including the old man, who apparently was the uncle of the girls.

Shortly after this, the scene began to lose its intensity and slowly began to slip away. There was an image of a cloth slowly descending - as when someone is making a bed and the airborne sheet slowly comes to rest on the mattress. It was at this point that I began to remember who I was, along with some of the details of my other life.