Salvia Divinorum & The Sage of The Diviners

Two years into cannabis entering my life, I came into contact with another plant. I was arrogant and naive.

As I stuffed this new flower called salvia into a bong, I did not anticipate my soul to seemingly exit my body and float 100 feet into the horizon. I was not expecting this thing that looked somewhat like pot under a 5 am inebriated sky to give my brain a sudden break from reality.

It is rodeo weekend in Notre Dame Du Nord, Quebec, circa 2008. In the ballpark of 50,000 people assembled in the tiniest connecting town you have ever seen, population 1,057; squished in between giant lake Temiskaming, the local native reserve, and the provinces of Ontario and Quebec. You could not pick a more fitting place for a 17-year-old punk from across the border and his gang of goons to escape the Ontario laws and norms. A place to engage in the most reckless and consciousness-altering weekend of our youths.

What are we and all of these ambitious folks doing in this small town that clearly can not accommodate? One hill, one weekend, 50,000 people, 50 or so trucks barreling up said hill with 60,000 lbs strapped and engines tuned to do the opposite of emissions cognizance.

Just absolute madness, you guessed it. As a teenager who grew up in Northern Ontario, this was all we knew on the weekend beginning every August.

That’s only daytime.

At night, where do all these people go, you ask? Yep, nowhere! Just… around. Drunk as you have ever seen humans in person, wandering, posted up in tents, loitering in neighbourhoods. There isn’t anything that is not happening. Mischief on every corner. Massive fights between rival towns and factions by and large consisting of hockey and country boys interested in nothing less than chaos, often crossing paths with natives. The weekend is summarized by mob mentality, drugs, alcohol, clashing cultures, all of which took place on native land where many laws are turned a blind eye to. Simply because the action is happening on the reserve in Quebec, away from the OPP and mature adults.

We survived show and shine; made it through tent city and thousands of piss drunk 20 year-olds ready to and certainly engaging in fisticuffs at any given glance; lived to tell the tale of an evening chalked with probably every drug and beverage possible for our puny livers to handle.

Things only got interesting then. 6 am, no sleep, no showers, 20+ shit beers deep(Coors), a bunch of fools posted up at Darryl’s right off main drag of the festivities. As the evening passed, every second moment is filled with the pulsing and growling of engines in the background. At night when the trucks aren’t racing up rodeo hill, they’re assembled by the lake, shined up and glowing all night. Most of them with a massive party surrounding and their drivers at the wheel strangely yet beautifully revving their engines, engaging in some ritualistic dance of their diesel grunts. It’s been over 10 years, and I can palpably feel it around me, not just hear it.

I take a hit of the bong…

I proceeded to have an out-of-body experience that changed the way I see the world. As I lay on a slight down-ramp leading off the back deck, facing a vast and mysterious backyard, which was just tall grass and pussy willows, with the humming of engines behind me. The chirping of birds announcing the new day, the part of me experiencing reality left my physical body. I floated out into the air like a ghost, out into the field. What my eyes saw from my physical body, a position in the clearing ahead, became my point of perspective, where I was actually out in the field, there, sensing everything. The sound of the air around me in the open, the smell of the trees, the lake, gasoline. The caress of tall grass and brush around me and the distinct feeling of a pussy-willow as I reach out and grab it. I can taste the environment. The air has its flavour. I see it all around me; I’m inside, the world all around me as I dance in the open.

Darryl was a jug in a shopping cart.

Then he was the rocker panel on a truck, just rolling down the road.

Corey described himself sitting down on the couch briefly after taking a hit, feeling like a book closing, page by page. The back of his body the book covers, as he sat, the inside of his body, page by page closing.

I eventually made my way back out of the field in my hallucinations, back to where I was lying physically. I proceeded to be in an absolute state of disbelief, frantically describing out loud what had just happened. The zombies around me couldn’t but mumble a response; everyone was dreaming.

Oh yeah, these were hallucinations.

Rodeo weekend and salvia.

I haven’t done salvia since these experiences, and I have always said since that point that I don’t need to do it again. I’ve experienced that automatic disconnect from reality, and I distinctly remember it being something I don’t want to endeavour again. With that said, it was an invaluable experience in my life, as was every other psychedelic experience.

Sure, there’s something to be said about the combinatory effect of salvia and marijuana, along with alcohol and possibly something else altering brain chemistry at that moment. With that said, I wasn’t having an out-of-body experience before salvia entered the equation.

One way or another, what a mess.

Salvia took me to an immediate dream state. A lucid dream accessed from a plant.

Psychedelic experiences can give us the recognition and appreciation of the power of these plants. They allow for broadened and enlightened perspective on life and the ease with which life, as we experience it, can change by simply altering brain chemistry with a particular plant.

Cannabis provides me with a daily haven of comfort and happiness that I enjoy to no end. Salvia dissimilarly was simply a tool to be used one or two times to access a massively new view on consciousness.

I do not endorse using salvia, at least not in the way I used it.

I passionately endorse the education of psychedelics and teachings of the power and potential of plants given to us by our earth.

The power of plants.
The potential of psychedelics.
The necessity for education.

Through the power of plants like cannabis and salvia, I have gained a unique experience and an individualized perspective. A different view from the natural consciousness I experience every other day of my life, where life is what it is. Sometimes that life, or your position in life at that time, seems inescapable. Through psychedelics and the power of mother nature, a plant, you can gain a perspective on perspective itself and how easily our perspectives can be altered.

This was a mystical experience for me. I believe it had some form of transformative effect on me or some understanding of what is possible. How easily perspective can change.

I am particularly fascinated by the effects of psychedelics and the possibilities for a plethora of use cases.

Psychedelics for healing and wellness.