corvidus wrote:
I've also only smoked it. Worst experience I've ever had at the time with entheogens. Looking back on it now, it was exactly what needed to happen in order to open up my mind.
Yeah, the small handful of times that I'm smoked it, it was always hellishly dysphoric and overwhelmingly chaotic. Even at a time in my life when I loved taking psychedelics at any available opportunity, I loathed the salvia trip and feared it. But, similarly to what you're saying, the first time I smoked it (and it was the first drug that I tried, save for alcohol a couple of times - I hadn't even smoked cannabis at that point), it served as a powerful initiatory experience, unpleasant though it was.
Ah well, fleeting memories now.
Also, sorry for hijacking your absinthe thread with salvia rants. I drank a lot of absinthe in Paris, some years ago. My cousin lived there at the time, and he was something of an absinthe connoisseur at the time, so I got to taste a lot of good ones. It should be noted that there are differences in American and European absinthe, and in absinthe found in different European countries, for that matter - mostly having to do with what the legal thujone levels are in a given jurisdiction. For example, the Czech absinthe, it is my understanding, is crummy in quality from the perspective of taste, but contains high enough thujone levels as to be more psychoactive than, say, the more refined French ones. And here in the states, even though it was "legalized", the levels of thujone allowed are still lower than the EU standard.
For what it's worth, my wife claims that when she was in Germany, and drank some home-brewed absinthe made by the family with whom she was staying, she actually had mild visual hallucinations... before swiftly passing out.
