Today I had one my first experiences with Salvia.
I will be telling the experience soon and hope to get opinions about the following:
The KAPPA OPIOID SYSTEM, how it affects behavior and whether up or down-regulated state is more beneficial for a 21st century smart human.
First of all this is the first hallucinogen I have had an experience with and was not sure what to expect in general. I thought I would get something like virtual reality and I will be in the observer's point of view. What happened was quite fascinating, though.
The first time I did it was weird, it took me by surprise and I got into a dream like state where I could still think.
The third time I did salvia, after a few minutes of the dream like state I was back in the reality. I soon realized however, that my state of consciousness is alter. I felt like I am PURE CONSCIOUSNESS, other people have called this "death of ego". The feeling of SELF was not the entire body and mind but the PURE CONSCIOUSNESS only.
Imagine you have a large human like robot, of a size of a large building, and you are sitting somewhere in the head of the robot. Visualize your view of the world at this point. How would you see the world ? What would you feel ? This is what I was feeling during the experience. The robot was my BODY and the driver - the "you" in the example was MY CONSCIOUSNESS sitting in my head, observing the world. The feeling of my eyes closing seemed like you would feel if a large door was shut in front of you.
A lot of my subconscious processes, that work PARALLEL to the consciousness to produce behavior were barely present. Anxiety, fear, shame was basically nonexistence. There was only PURE CONSCIOUSNESS. I could do and say precisely ANYTHING I wanted to do. Have you experience social anxiety or discomfort in social situations, when it feels you don't have control ? When it feels your voice, your face expression or your behavior is partially out of your CONSCIOUS control, being governed my circuitry of fear, anxiety, social acceptance, anger or anything else ?
Salvia was the EXACT OPPOSITE of that. All those were inexistent. Every part of the behavior was under complete control.
My BRAIN FOG and DEPRESSION was gone. My thought was CLEAR and CLEAN.
Now here is my hypothesis of the neuropsychiatry that was happening:
Salvia has a very clean action - KAPPA OPIOID AGONIST.
Kappa opioids and Mu opioids have somewhat opposite effects. Kappa Agonist are supposed to have no euphoria whatsoever.
One of recent Depression models is that it's a state of UPREGULATED KAPPA OPIOID SYSTEM.
Kappa Opioid System is hypothesized to represent the APPROACH / AVOID spectrum of the person towards challenges.
I read about the above and decided to give Salvia a try. I wanted to AGONIZE the receptors to achieve LONG term DOWNREGULATION of the system. I was expecting to feel fear and dysphasia after few minutes of administration, but was stunned to achieve the full control and pure consciousness I was talking about.
One explanation is the following. Kappa neurons are usually coupled with dopamine neurons. Dopamine in the anxiety and fear systems creates anxiety and fear. Kappa neurons have inhibitory action on dopamine neurons. Increased Kappa activity caused by Salvia my decrease the activity of the subconscious areas of the mind, causing fear and anxiety leaving a feeling of PURE CONSCIOUSNESS.
Here is the DILEMMA, however !
Why is it then that previously, DOWNREGULATED KAPPA SYSTEM was considered preferable ? This is inconsistent with what I observed.
Some people have experimented with JDTic which is a KAPPA ANTAGONIST. I would love to hear how they felt during the acute and withdrawal states. Any parallels ?
Anyone else has similar experiences with Salvia ?
P.S. I previously associated DOPAMINE with increased CONSCIOUS control. However being high on Salvia, I snorted some RITALIN which had NO EFFECT on the drive, motivation or thought process of my PURE CONSCIOUSNESS. Had I not have Salvia in my system I would feel the effects of the Ritalin a lot.
Edited by vaarmen, 22 November 2015 - 02:02 AM.