This guy spent 8 years living someone else’s life while tripping on Salvia

I just read an incredible Salvia trip report over at Medium.

Steve Cantwell’s article recounts the time he and a buddy smoked Salvia divinorum thinking it was actually synthetic marijuana. (For the record, you should never use synthetic marijuana, and it’s also ill advised to take Salvia without having a sitter and being well prepared for the experience).

Instead of the marijuana-like high Cantwell was expecting, he dropped into what he describes as a “whirlpool” that appeared beneath him.

Cantwell, who was in Alaska at the time, was spat out into Texas, where friends pulled him out of the water and explained he had nearly drowned while water skiing. This was all part of the trip, he figured, and he expected to snap out of it at any moment.

But this went on for eight fucking years, finally forcing Cantwell to conclude that he really had been a Texan resident all along and that the old life he remembered was the result of some kind of drowning-related brain damage. He finally snapped out of it, though, and concluded that in the “real” world, his eight-year trip had actually lasted only about 45 seconds.

Toward the end of the article, Cantwell writes that in the years since his “return,” he has “more questions than answers. Lingering doubts about reality and time.”

Welcome to the club.

It’s not unusual for people to experience some kind of time dilation while tripping. My own trip seemed to last millions of years, as I lived millions of different people’s lives. Is it possible that Cantwell experienced something similar, but for whatever reason was only given a slice of a single lifetime instead of the millions that I experienced? Or maybe his eight years in Texas were simply the only life of millions that he was allowed to remember.

Whatever the case may be, Cantwell’s piece is worth a read. His descriptions of waking up in Texas are funny, poignant and a little sad. It’s interesting stuff for anyone who has experienced their own terrifying and incredible salvia trip.

Read Cantwell’s article here: “The Salvia Trip That Took Me from Alaska to Texas.”