/psy/ - Psychedelics and the Shamanic Tradition

The next thing I remember was meeting something I'd "seen"* once before, on a previous salvia trip. For the purposes of this report, I'll call this thing the Combine. I'll try to explain what it is, because it's important, but I'm not sure I can describe it effectively.

On certain drugs, many people experience waves of pleasure going through their bodies. On salvia, I get similar waves, but instead of pleasure, they're a mixture of fear and pain. The fear and pain almost seem like a single sensation. If I do a high enough dose, I start to interpret these waves as an actual destructive force, an entity of sorts: the Combine. (I think that's where it comes from, anyway.) The Combine resembles a combine harvester, but with non-sharp "blades" that crush and grind rather than cut, and which extend outward from a central roller. It moves "slowly", always towards me. Its appearance is always accompanied by a certainty that anything that goes into it will be annihilated.

The first time I met the Combine, I ran from it when I "saw" it start crushing my house. I didn't think to do that this time -- I couldn't remember that such a thing as space existed -- and I was essentially blinded by open eye visualizations, anyway, so running would have gone poorly. I "saw" it approaching me, advancing inexorably through non-space, and saw its blades sweeping across my vision. And I really did see them: thin regions of alternating light and dark shades of the "color" you see when you close your eyes, turning into a pattern of elongated, interlocking triangles, like hastily-drawn monster teeth.

*Here, by "seen"/"saw" I meant that it wasn't "visible" in the same way real things are. I couldn't actually SEE it, I just knew it was there in a way that felt very much like I could. While I got an incredibly detailed impression of what it was shaped like, it had no color to it at all.

Everything familiar, my house, my family, went in first. A thought poked its way up from the bowels of my mind: "Is this really happening? This can't really be happening." But of course, it was. How could it not be? I was there witnessing it, wasn't I? I figured it was POSSIBLE that this wasn't really the End, that by some twist of fate I could be saved, but that seemed extremely unlikely. So, not wanting to be the sort of person who intentionally ignores reality to make themselves feel better, I threw that hope away. And then it was upon me.

There was a deep roaring "sound" that gradually rose and abruptly fell in intensity about once every second, in time with the Combine's blades. A snapping sensation, a sense of rotating, and pine trees also featured prominently in the synesthetic cacaphony, with the blades at one point being replaced by pine trees. I just kept wishing, harder than I've ever wished for anything, that this was all some misunderstanding, that the Combine would give up and leave me alone.

I eventually thought of running. I still couldn't see anything, and still wasn't really sure how three dimensional space worked, but I remembered I could move through it, and I did. Or at least, I tried. I immediately crashed into something. Somehow, I distinctly remember crashing into one specific table, despite not knowing where I was at the time. I was now free of the Combine, but I wasn't feeling any better.

I turned around, and while I was walking, running, or something, I noticed there was something on my head that was contributing to the overall sense of unpleasantness. It was on the sides of my head...the headphones. I half-realized I hadn't even noticed the music until now. I pulled them off, set them on a table, and unplugged them from my phone. I reached the end of the floor, just before a drop where stairs lead down to the basement door, and tried to collect myself.

>>165
That's as much as I've written so far, hold on. Everything after this point has not been proofread.

My mind wasn't working the way it was supposed to, and it was horrifying. I knew why it was, and I knew it wasn't going to stop any time soon, and I knew that I needed it to stop right then. I say my mind wasn't working the way it was supposed to, and I did know it was my mind at fault, but it felt more like reality was broken. It was as though the laws of logic themselves had been suspended and the universe had been plunged into an eternity of confused chaos.

I slapped the concrete I was leaning on, which gave me some measure of comfort and assurance that reality was, in fact, right where I'd left it. I looked up at the wall in front of me, intending to glean similar comfort from seeing it there. I instead "saw"* (in the same sense as before) that the wall was covered in what looked like crystalline shag carpeting. It was horrible. I got up and wandered around the greenhouse a bit to distract myself, my mind "screaming" in pain and horror the whole time.

It was then that I thought again of running. Not running from anything specific this time, just to distract myself. I figured I would run around the block, and by the time I got back I'd feel better. Maybe just being in a different place would make me feel better, too.

I dashed out the greenhouse door into the backyard. I passed my cat on the way, and said a hurried "Hello" to her purely out of habit. I kept going, ran across the snow-covered garden and up the stone steps, and ran through our yard and then the neighbor's yard until I reached the street. I felt basically the same, and then realized that running all the way around the block would be extremely unpleasant, if I could even manage to do it at all. Incredibly disheartened, I ran back to my house. (Although "disheartened" is a massive understatement -- it felt more like being in a lethal injection chamber and learning that the call the executioner just received was not, in fact, from the governor.) On the way, I thought of hugging someone, and what a relief that would be. But there was no one awake. I thought of hugging my cat, but I couldn't find her.

I sat down in a lawn chair to wait it out. I felt like I could sort of handle it at this point. I just felt really shitty, like an afterglow in reverse. And then I had the idea for a hot shower. I got up and ran once again, up through the garden and into the house, reminding myself out loud as I ran that there were people who loved me.

The shower helped a fair bit. I was still emotionally out of sorts, but the hot water provided a pleasant distraction. It was at this point that I really thought about what had happened. Why had I done this to myself? What sort of horrible monster was sober me that he could subject someone to something this horrible? I certainly could never do salvia again, never, never again, it hurt too much. As the shower went on and the effects wore off, I eventually relented and decided that I would just use a trip sitter next time. That seemed a fair compromise.

I didn't sleep at all that night. I was a bit upset still, of course, but that wasn't why. I just had too many thoughts buzzing around in my head.

Now, a few days later, the negative emotions associated with the trip are all but gone, replaced by fascination. Getting torn apart by the Combine was probably the most powerful experience I've ever had, and while I'm certainly hesitant to try salvia again any time soon, I don't regret the experience at all. A trip sitter is great if your goal is to have fun, or to avoid having sore shins the next morning, but having someone there to comfort me would have greatly reduced the impact of the trip. I highly recommend everyone take salvia alone.