Aspects of the Entheogenic Experience: Fear
The first time i took salvia i remember being ok when it first hit the trip was this odd cartoony type thing of me as dots falling into place to make me, like i was one of my pointillist drawings, this is my closed eyed visual btw (I hardly ever open my eyes when tripping). Anyway my trip's goin fine(I have tripped before on mushrooms and DXM and later on DMT) and we're trippin at night and we're all pretty goddamn toasted off the weed we had (It was club shit, u know how it is) and we hear these firecrackers. This is when my paranoia set in, I immediatly thought they were uzis. So i started freakin out and opened my eyes from the trip and my vision is really weird everybody was melting and i just went into disillusionment thinking that I was making a whole bunch of noise and screaming at the top of my lungs (just thinking that Im doing things that aren't real or just thinking i was going to die stuff like that). I don't remember how much I took but I think my friend said two bowls to myself. This expeirence was very terrifying but also eye opening.
anonymous - Salvia 10x & Cannibis
After doing a few stretches, I took about 4 droppers full of salvia tincture with about 1 1/2 droppers of water. I sat down in my bedroom and meditated on the question, "How can I improve my meditation practice?" I began to feel a strong grinding energy that seemed to be attempting to shred my mind and body. It had a strong gravitational pull. I attempted to be receptive to the energy and allow it to take where it willed. Sweating profusely, I began to feel cold and got into bed under the covers.
A feeling came over me that I have experienced before in different ways on psychedelics. It was as though I was looking at myself from an outside vantage point and the emotion that accompanied the experience might be described as shame or self pity. There was a feeling of being small and somehow pathetic. The feeling was strong and persistent but at the same time, lacked the depth and timeless quality of a truly transcendent experience. I was able to not identify with this unpleasant feeling but at the same realized that it exists in me unconsciously to a far greater extent than I have ever before been aware. There was a feeling of judgement towards myself for being powerless and foolish. There was also a mild feeling of frustration and even hostility towards Salvia Divinorm for giving me such an unpleasant experience. I kept this feeling in close check as it also lacked a genuine quality, reflecting rather the ego's desire for comfort and gratification.christopher david - salvia divinorum tincture
The next day I found out that when I clapped my hands together my friend saw me dissappear and in his mind die. The whole forest turned to a wasteland of burned embers. All life was gone. He freaked out and made his way somehow back to my parents house. He walked in the door and went into their bedroom and got in bed with them like a scared child. They turned on the lights and saw him. He started crying and told them I was dead. But he did not know what happened. He told my mother that I hung myself or had drowned. My mother stayed up all night comforting him and stroking his head as he wimpered like a baby. The next day I made my way home in the morning after I got back in my body. But no one was home. They were in the park looking for my body as they thought I was dead. I still thought I was dead so I started looking through the newspaper on the kitchen table for my obituary. I wanted to attend my own funeral. No one was home and I was convinced they were at my funeral.
Bob Hanes - very high dose of LSD
Extreme, terrifying FEAR beyond FEAR
Within 30 seconds after taking a hit of Salvia from a water pipe, it suddenly became apparent that everything I was, everyone I knew and every experience I had was not real. It was as if giant beings were playing with me on a board game, I was a wooden toy figure of the game, and they had decided to fold up the board and put it away.
I thought to myself "Who would be so mean-spirited to make me think I was real all this time when I am not?!" In addition to the fear, was the strongest sense of disappointment I've ever felt. I was crying and screaming for help.
I was completely dis-associated and this caused more fear than I have ever experienced in my life. I was "messed-up" for three days, because I did not know if I was really back or if this feeling would start over again. I mostly got over it with the help of a caring friend, but I've never been the same since.
The effects just came on so suddenly, it ramped up so fast and that started off the "fear-fest" that was this experience. There was nothing good about it, except for the fact that I learned just how HUGE my ego is that I would be petrified to lose it.Sparks - Salvia Divinorum
Due perhaps to recent spinal surgery, chronic pain, split with girlfreid, homelessness, loss of job etc, this was quite a bad trip. I inhaled deeply & very suddenly i did not know what had happened, but thought my spinal injury had snapped or something, & that i was dying. Things became intense. Suddenly a rip seemed to appear above my bed, in space/time??. I saw my parents peering down at me from a hospital ward, with a doctor. They were screaming at me to wake up, & that it had all been set up to get me out of a coma i'd been in & it was my last chance to awaken to "reality". I think i kept saying "i don't know how to", because my body seemed to be being twisted & gripped painfully by weird gravity, then the rift closed up. I fought the 'tugging of my soul from my body' feeling, thinking, "not yet, too much to do, gotta say goodbye", but gravity seemed to twist me in half, & i eventually tried to give in, effectively trying to allow the tugging into death, which of course didn't happen! After discovering that i was now physically joining up with & distorting the universe's fabric irrepairably, i thought,"i can't even go to a hospital, cos the doctors & the entire building will join onto me & distort beyond repair." I truly believed i was destroying the whole universe. I then heard a huge, booming male voice, saying;"You are Benji, you have always been Benji, you will always be Benji." This also terrified me. I felt it as well as heard it. But i know what the message meant, & despite the whole trip being more terrifying than imaginable(i remember thinking afterwards that a gun to the head would've been less scary), it gave me new life, new appreciation for the gift of life. (Male, 40yrs.)
Benji - Salvia divinorum
i was in the hospital for overdose, i had a vision of myself being placed in a holding cell, like i was an ancient puzzle hanging on the wall, it flowed and i looked like some kind of mayan calender, with countless others surrounding me, each in their own holding cell. thoughts of all the people whom i would forever see, their lives torn apart from my death, all the guilt and pain flowed through me, and there was nothing i could do.
nave rotool - DXM and Cannabis
My very first experience with an entheogen was in March 1967. And luckily for me, i experienced the full effects with no fear at all. This, i think , set the ground for future trips with very little fear in them. First: Set is important...(how you mentally prepare in advance, your anxiety levels in general, how adventurous are you in general? etc.) Next: Setting is important...( the immediate environmental surroundings, how safe, relaxed, and comfortable the general situation is before and during the trip, the people you're tripping with--are they friends or not? etc.) Tripping alone is not conducive to a good trip. As i said in telepathy :"psychic amplification"---good friends that you have a natural connection with will greatly enhance a trip, at least for a medium-intensity one. Merging with the Godhead i haven't achieved, so i can't comment on that level. For me, having a naturally low fear response has been a blessing. Its allowed me to experience entheogens without feeling strange and worried when i'm in that mind-state.
Moloko - fresh mescaline cactus, pureed with vanilla ice cream
With the handful of salvia trips I have had, I've found I usuall have a temporary moment of fear in the beginning, when making that transition from normal reality to salvia's reality.
I was curious to see how saliva would effect me if I smoked it alone. So one evening I smoked some, mixed with a small amount of cannibas, with the lights low and soft music playing in the background (I also recorded it on video in order to see just how I reacted afterwards). At first I felt the familiar discombobulation, and then I began to hallucinate in a dream-like sort of state. I saw myself/felt like I was getting hit by a car, but everything was goofy and exaggerated, as if I were in a cartoon. I was entering another world through the tires of this bizarre car which had run over me, being pushed into another dimension, piece by piece, but only through the side of my face. I was stuck between two worlds, and I felt claustrophobic going in face-first. At this point (I know from watching the video) I was covering my mouth with my hand, grabbing at my face with a puzzled, frightened look. It felt like this was going on for ages, although it all happened in the span of three minutes. Everything was moving slowly. I tried to get a sense of this new world I was coming into. Then, I heard a tiny, high-pitched voice talking to me at the same slowed down pace. Though I couldn't tell you what it was saying now, it seemed to explain to me what was going on. Soon, the fear melted into humor, and all of a sudden I started laughing, realizing how ridiculous the whole situation was. I stood up and walked over to my bed, and a few seconds later, I was coming down, suddenly back in my own reality again.
Poppy - Salvia 10x
To begin, I could have posted this in either the category for fear or the death/rebirth category. I chose fear because I think fear of death is a fairly common experience.
I believe that I have experienced what it is like to die through the use of entheogens. During the beginning of several of my trips, I developed this fearful feeling that I was going to die. Then I would start to freak out. I would think to myself something like, "it is coming on too strong! I took too much! I've done it this time! I'm going to die! I don't want to die! I'll never take another psychedelic again if I can make it through this!"
At some point during each of these experiences, I would grow tired of fighting for my life and decide to just let go and die. At the point of letting go, I would often feel a little bit of sadness that my life was over. Then I would feel great peace within myself. And this is where it would always get interesting. Time would stop being a part of my new/old reality. Also I wouldn't perceive any of my senses; I would be sort of out of body. I would instantly know all the knowledge in the universe, or the collective unconscious. We don't have the words in the English language to adequately describe what this is like. Experiencing the Godhead is life changing, to say the least. Eventually, toward the end of my trips I would regain awareness of time, my senses, and those around me.
You see I wasn't really dead, even though at the time I thought I was. My ego had only stopped clinging to this illusory reality. I think that is what happens when we die. We just stop clinging to the illusion and return to what we always are deep within ourselves.
Krystle A. Cole - Multiple LSD Trips
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