Feeling a Little Giddy with Salvia
by Jennifer S. - Cincinnati, Ohio
While other people try salvia for the first time when they're in their teens or 20s, I didn't have my first experience with the substance until I was 29. Before meeting my current boyfriend, I only had a few experiences with drugs. I smoked marijuana a handful of times and tried ecstasy, but that was about it. The boyfriend loves his marijuana, but he came home eager one night to tell me that he ordered some salvia and that it just arrived.
The only thing I knew about salvia at the time was what I saw online. Like millions of other people, I saw the video of Miley Cyrus trying it out, and like many people who watched that video, I had my doubts. I was a little hesitant to try it for myself, but once he sat down with our friends, I decided to go ahead and try it.
The salvia we bought came in a dried form, and after some thought, we decided to just roll it up in some papers and smoke it that way. We separated out some of the smaller pieces, crumbled those pieces into even smaller parts and tossed the pieces into a rolling paper. After rolling the paper over and twisting the ends, we were ready to go.
When I first inhaled, I didn't feel a thing, and the other people in my group of friends were a little disappointed. As we passed it around the room, we wondered if we possibly got a bad batch or if there was something wrong with it. By the time I took a second hit, I could definitely feel it.
I heard that people who smoke salvia often feel giddy, and I have to say that it made me feel hyperactive. After a few hits, I found myself bouncing off the walls. Even though it was the dead of winter, I couldn't stop moving, and I wanted to get out and do something fun. I probably suggested a dozen different things in a five minute span, and I tried to convince my friends to go with me to grab some food, see a movie and at one point, I even wanted to go ice fishing.
It was probably the ice fishing comment that finally made me crack. We live in a big city, and even though there are a few lakes close by, I don't know a single person who ever tried ice fishing on one of those lakes. Thinking of my friends in sweaters and gloves sitting around on the ice made me burst out laughing, and it felt like I would never stop laughing.
I was so giddy and excitement that I felt like I was walking on air. Everything in the room suddenly seemed like the funniest thing I ever saw in my life. I kept pointing at random things, including a gumball machine, the fireplace and even a bag of chips in the floor, and I couldn't understand why my friends didn't think those things were funny too. I was so entertained by the bag of chips that I kept trying to explain why the chips were so funny, and when my friends didn't laugh, I just laughed at their expressions.
If those same giddy feelings stuck with me, I would probably love salvia, but I eventually fell out of the giddy stage. I went from laughing with and at my friends to feeling like I couldn't think straight. I kept trying to form phrases and sentences in my head, but when I tried to actually express myself, no one knew what I was trying to say. It was incredibly frustrating to sit there and ask someone to hand me my drink off the table and know that I didn't actually ask for my drink.
The confusion is probably what I remember most about my first salvia trip. I went from feeling like I was on top of the world to feeling like I was at the bottom. It's hard to explain the experience, but it essentially felt like I was outside my body looking in on the world around me. I didn't reach the point where I fought to get back inside my body, but it still felt pretty strange. Some of my other friends claimed that they spent the entire trip trying to find their way back to their bodies, but I didn't have the same experience.
After the giddiness went away, I mainly felt strange and confused. I found that following the conversation around me was difficult, and I felt like I was a few steps behind my friends. It would take several minutes for me to understand even the simplest questions they asked me, and by the time I finally responded, they were on to another question or conversation. It was incredibly frustrating to know that I couldn't follow the same conversations that I followed hundreds of times before.
After about an hour, the salvia started wearing off. I felt my head clear, and I could suddenly concentrate on the things around me. After going through the experience, all I wanted to do was sit and relax with my boyfriend. I cuddled up next to him and waited until my friends finished their trips. Sitting with him was nice, but I found myself wanting to get even closer to him. I like comparing the end of my trip to the way I feel when taking ecstasy. All I wanted to do was sit there and touch him as much as possible.
The first time I used salvia was far from the last time I used it. Even though I didn't love the confusion that I felt, I did enjoy the giddy feelings, and I loved feeling closer to my friends and my boyfriend. I like to tell people that if they like ecstasy, they'll like salvia too. It isn't as harsh as some strains of marijuana, and it leads to a fun trip.
-----------------------
If you liked this story check out some of the other Salvia experiences here.
