dried salvia and the quid method

[hajimumtaz]

As I've previously mentioned, I have been truly enjoying salvia divinorum. However, I'm very interested in trying different methods of ingesting it, primarily to have the option of a gentler but longer experience.

I have dried foliage, and I've read that the proper dosage is 2 to 5 grams of dried leaves. But in measuring out 5 grams, I have no idea who could fit that in there mouth!

Has anyone here tried using dried salvia for the quid method? Do you have any ideas, techniques or things I should be aware of?

Thanks! haji

[max_freakout]

ive not tried the quid method, but ive tried the alcohol tincture which AFAIK is very similar, and i give it the thumbs up

it comes on much slower and lasts about 3 times as long as smoking it

[scaredstraight]

ive not tried the quid method, but ive tried the alcohol tincture which AFAIK is very similar, and i give it the thumbs up

it comes on much slower and lasts about 3 times as long as smoking it

Was that a purchased or homemade tincture? Could the tincture be made the same way that one might for cannabis?

Daniel Siebert's website 'Sage Wisdom' does state that the effects are similar to that of the traditional oral ingestion.

Oral ingestion would seem to be a better way to use Salvia for more reflective and contemplative thought. One could actually take away more from the experience, and apply it toward their waking life. Being able to remember more of the experience would seem to make that experience intrinsically more rewarding (ego-death aside.)

This would be a more preferable method for me, and would be considerably better for solo runs if one couldn't have a sitter available (sleepwalk prevention.) Though I haven't experienced any wondering, walking, crawling, and so on as of yet; it appears that many have.

This could also make it more abusable as a 'party' or 'getting messed up' substance. I can't really see it as being a very good substance for that kind of thing myself. But, I've thought that before of other substances and then watched some drunken idiots do just that.

[dopefiend]

I don't think you can use dried leaf for the quid method, it'd be very bitter-tasting and probably all crumble in your mouth. The idea is to pick the leaves straight from the plant I think. Not that I have any experience of it of course, but that's what it looked like on the Sacred Weeds Salvia documentary (click here (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4829797616419921428)).

[Xochipilli2012]

I don't think you can use dried leaf for the quid method, it'd be very bitter-tasting and probably all crumble in your mouth. The idea is to pick the leaves straight from the plant I think. Not that I have any experience of it of course, but that's what it looked like on the Sacred Weeds Salvia documentary (click here (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4829797616419921428)).

Daniel Siebert mentions on his site that you can re-hydrate dried leaf material and use that orally--but I haven't tried that yet myself. I'll post the instructions later in this same thread. Or read them for yourself (about halfway down the page). (http://www.sagewisdom.org/usersguide.html)

What I did try (last night, in fact), was Daniel Siebert's Sage Goddess Emerald Essence from SageWisdom.org (http://sagewisdom.org). I used the "undiluted method" which Siebert describes as "not recommended" because it burns like a mother! But diluting the tincture with water reduces its effectiveness and requires more elixir for the same effect that the straight tincture might achieve.

Within 3 minutes of the first dropper-full I was experiencing the distinct, tingly, cyclic, rotating wave thing that I get from smoking. It's way more gentle and you do have more time to process the experience. I did 3 staggered doses four minutes apart, which is the recommended approach. (I had brushed my teeth and mouth prior to my first bit of tincture--which may help explain an extremely rapid onset.)

I was alone in a quite room in the dark--but I had the distinct feeling that there were 3-4 people in there with me, and they "felt like" humans, not "other entities." In fact, I had to stop and verbally interrogate myself. "Are you alone right now?" My rational mind said "Yes, of course." But this didn't change the palpable feeling that I was interacting with others.

I also got a different sense of time--and whether it was due to all the exposure to the block-universe-time concept from my discussions with Max and my reading of articles on Egodeath.com (http://egodeath.com), I get this "hit" that time did extend out in all directions, including what I call from my current frame of reference"my past" and "my future." That all moments all that continuum were "real" and could interact with one another in that instant. But I didn't get a sense of that my future was therefore determined. It was interesting to experience time in that fashion, without undue respect to whatever instigated or framed it so.

Eventually I composed myself to turn on my iPod (it was too late at night to play music in my apartment without some risk of neighborly intervention--not at all ideal under the circumstances. I had ripped a copy of EROCx1 (http://www.myspace.com/erocx1)'s Kykeon (http://gaianbotanicals.ecrater.com/product.php?pid=483445), which was explicitly mixed for entheogenic voyaging. I highly recommend it. It was nice to have clips of Tim Leary, Terence, and Rupert Sheldrake rise from the lush textures of EROCx1's soundscape. It most definitely did seem that someone intimately familiar with entheogenic voyaging was at the helm.

I was so intrigued by last night's experiment I thought I would try again tonight. But I'm going to give it a rest as the alcohol in the tincture did mangle the epithelium under my tongue as there is a whole layer of tissue there that is sloughing off 24 hours later. It doesn't hurt, but I think it would be wise to take some time to recover.

I'm curious how chewing my own fresh leaves will compare a few months from now, which is when I anticipate having enough fresh leaf material to chew.

Bizarre stuff, that.

And very compelling.

[Xochipilli2012]

THE QUID METHOD:
(appropriated from SageWisdom.org (http://www.sagewisdom.org/usersguide.html)without permission)

A ball or cylinder of rolled-up leaves is made. This is called a quid. It is to be chewed. The leaves are chewed slowly--about one chew every 10 seconds. They are kept under your tongue between chews. For half an hour keep the quid that is being chewed, and the juice that forms, in your mouth. If you can, hold it in your mouth without spitting or swallowing. Then, after the half-hour chewing time is over, spit it all out. Have a bowl to spit into, and a towel handy. Salvia juice stains carpets and other fabrics, so be sure the bowl won't tip over.

Quids can be made from either fresh leaves or dried leaves. Those made from dry leaves are less bitter. To make a quid from dried leaves, weigh out 2-8 grams of dried leaves. A gram scale accurate enough for this can be purchased for under $50. If you have no scale, count out 8 to 28 large whole dried leaves. Place the leaves in a small bowl of cool water for 10 minutes. Once the leaves are wet and have been soaking for about 10 minutes, remove the leaves from the water, squeeze the excess water out of them, and ball them up into a quid. Some people skip this soaking step when they are in a hurry, but chewing on brittle dry leaves may be unpleasant. If you wish, you can sweeten the quid with sugar, honey, Stevia extract or an artificial sweetener like Equal®. This will make it less bitter and more pleasant to chew.

If fresh leaves are used instead of dry ones, you will need from 8 to 28 large fresh leaves.

The effect of Salvia quids can probably be increased by first treating your mouth in a special way to increase its ability to absorb salvinorin A. To do this you will need a toothbrush and an alcohol/menthol containing mouthwash such as Cool Mint Listerine®, (or any other brand that contains alcohol and menthol). Gently brush the lining of your mouth, including the tissue under your tongue, and the top surface of your tongue. This removes layers of dead cells normally present. Do not brush hard enough to cause bleeding. Then rinse with the mouthwash for at least 30 seconds. Be sure to get mouthwash everywhere in your mouth, including under your tongue. Then spit out the mouthwash and rinse once with water.

You will experience very little in the first 12 to 15 minutes of chewing. Don't be misled by this. Full effects are usually felt by 30 minutes (the time you spit out the quid). They remain on this level for about 30-60 minutes more, then start to decrease. The whole experience seldom lasts longer than an hour and a half, but this varies.

[hajimumtaz]

Thanks for the information, and the experience report.

I think I'll need to bite the bullet and order some tincture. My salvia is all crumbled up so measuring 28 leaves wasn't really possible -- so I weighed out 3 grams. I was able to fit it into my mouth (though not pleasantly) and had a very very light, only slightly noticeable experience. I haven't yet tried re-hydrating the leaves or brushing the inside of my mouth with alcohol. Perhaps that is key.

Thanks again. Hope you had a nice holiday and will have a great weekend.

[scaredstraight]

Does anyone know how to make the tincture?

Do you think it would possible to take the dried extracts and soak them in Everclear or some other high proof grain alcohol (something like making Green Dragon?!

I have 5x, 10x, and 15x packages left; and I've considered giving this a shot. Or, would I just be wasting my time?

[hajimumtaz]

Hello ScaredStraight. I have been wondering the exact same thing. I recently came across this thread:

http://www.entheogen.com/forum/showthread.php?t=14395

I have a very limited entheogen budget so I haven't been willing to potentially waste the .25 gram. I am very interested in getting confirmation on this technique, so please do share your results if you decide to give it a shot. :-)

On re-reading it I see that he used a quarter gram, not a half as I first thought. Perhaps I will give it a try sometime soon. But let me know if you try it first, I'll be sure to do the same :-p

Best, haji.

[max_freakout]

i dont think it would be to hard to make a tincture, i think it would have to be very concentrated, but everclear should work

at some point im planing to try and make a concentrated leaf extract with acetone

[hajimumtaz]

Please do let us know how it works out for you, Max.

I am considering using some Isopropyl (rubbing alcohol), but it is only 70% pure and I have read contradictory advice regarding its efficacy. Unfortunately, I called around to the pharmacies in my area and they no longer carry the 90%+ type that is more often used.

Following perhaps one more valiant attempt, I might temporarily give up on smoking or chewing plain leaf as I can rarely achieve any noticeable affect with them. If I do so decide, I might as well try to do something with them, even if it might lead to waste. I guess first I'll try to get my hands on some acetone or really pure drinking alcohol...

[scaredstraight]

i dont think it would be to hard to make a tincture, i think it would have to be very concentrated, but everclear should work

at some point im planing to try and make a concentrated leaf extract with acetone

With acetone. When I've used acetone to make LSA from Baby Woodrose seeds, it always makes for a very "WEIRD" experience. I stopped using it as a pretreatment to the alcohol, and got a more 'stable' trip from the finished product. But, sometimes the weird experience would be better.:D

[scaredstraight]

Hello ScaredStraight. I have been wondering the exact same thing. I recently came across this thread:

http://www.entheogen.com/forum/showthread.php?t=14395

I have a very limited entheogen budget so I haven't been willing to potentially waste the .25 gram. I am very interested in getting confirmation on this technique, so please do share your results if you decide to give it a shot. :-)

On re-reading it I see that he used a quarter gram, not a half as I first thought. Perhaps I will give it a try sometime soon. But let me know if you try it first, I'll be sure to do the same :-p

That experience he describes sounds pretty intense.

I'll do it! And, I'll let you know exactly how it goes. I'm a sucker for experimentation.:D

[hajimumtaz]

So I have been trying the quid method for weeks with next to 0 effect. Several times I felt a little off baseline, but it never felt even remotely psychedelic or visionary. I had also very little success smoking plain leaf. So combining those two states of affairs, I was very close to attempting a potentially wasteful 70% isopropyl (I've read that 90%+ is required, but there didn't seem to be a consensus), because I was having little success with plain leaf anyways.

Fortunately, I tried one more time to do the quid method. I am going to spell out exactly what I did, just in case it might help others who have been unsuccessful when trying to chew plain salvia leaf.

t-12, put a little over 5 grams of dried salvia (no more than 5.5, I suspect, though my scale doesn't weigh lower than grams) in a bowl, add enough water to almost cover the salvia. then pushed the salvia down so that none of it was dry. my thought here was to add just enough water to get it wet, without adding more than absolutely necessary.

t-10, brush the entire inside of my mouth. My cheeks, my gums, under my tongue, just about everywhere, very thoroughly and with significant pressure (it was mildly uncomfortable

t-8, used mouthwash, the active ingredients included eucalyptus, but I made sure to note alcohol in the inactive ingredients. This stung a bit due to the hard brushing in the previous step, maybe I brushed too hard...

t-5, said a prayer, considered my intentions (I wanted to have time to learn more from my salvia experience, as smoking it ends too quickly), I was also hoping to gain some analgesic effect for my hurt back, and I was hoping to see something interesting:-P

t-5, turned on the Planet Earth (on the discovery channel?). It's about ocean life. For the next five minutes, I periodically push the salvia down into the water, and notice that it has absorbed most of the water in my bowl.

t-0, took 1/3 of the plant material and slopped it into my mouth. This tastes tolerable, though not pleasant. Unfortunately, the added water content makes my mouth fill with liquids quicker than when I tried chewing straight (un-re-hydrated o_O) dried leaf. I chew a few times along the length of the material, push it between my cheek and my teeth, or under my tongue for a few moments, then push it back out with my tongue to my teeth again to chew. I am mostly careful not to swallow or spit out anything, but when the liquid builds up too much, I push the cud to the front of my mouth and form a little screen with my teeth and then suck the fluid back so that my teeth prevent the plant material from going down my throat.

t+20, I swallow the first ball of cud. I notice I am definitely off baseline, but not by far. To date, this is as far as quid has ever taken me. I grab the next ball of cud, about half of what is left, and slop it into my mouth. I chew and chew and repeat the previous step.

t+35, Yay! I feel pretty far off baseline; similar to how I feel when I smoke just under the amount of extract required for a "serious (tho not necessarily ego-killing) salvia experience". I am still very grounded, but am experiencing a some pretty visual distortion and am thinking is more soft, playful and random. I am excited, but the taste is starting to drive me crazy. The first cud was tolerable, for some reason this is getting worse...

t+40 Strange. I feel a burst of uncomfortable, almost feverish heat. I worry that I am having a bad reaction to the long-term salvia effects. I quickly convince myself that this is silly and try to calm myself. Within a minute, this is gone.

t+50 I am feeling pretty good, but am not having much in the way of visions or noticeably enhanced psychedelic thoughts. So I swallow the second ball of cud, and replace it with the rest of the plant material (about 1/3 of the ~5 grams was left). This is pretty difficult, as my tongue is rebelling. But I slop it into my mouth, and begin the chewing process over again.

t+60 Wow. I am having visions. My mouth is packed full of salvia, and I get the feeling that I am inside a body of water. Soon, I become part of the filtration system and water tank at Seaworld o_O! As I turn my head and move the water around in my mouth, I experience the water flowing through "my" filtration system, and around the tank. I observe inwardly and notice a large creature sort of casually floating through my murky depths. It seems to smile... is it a manatee? In the back of my mind, I know that I am on salvia, and presume that I am having these visions because of the large amount of water in my mouth. I swallow as before, and continue chewing and seeing and thinking.

t+65 I finally swallow most of the last ball of cud. I still have lots of salvia stuck on, behind and between my teeth, as well in every other crevasse of my mouth. I lay fully back, and just really focus on enjoying the experience and thinking (because I was so shocked by the success I had mostly forgotten to pursue some of my "personal issues" I meant to explore while in salvia space).

t+75 Around this time, an intense wave of sleepiness washed over me. This is a comfortable, warm sleepiness -- reminds me of opiate dreams. I am having visions and dreams mixed together, and it became difficult to distinguish between the two (eg, I imagined/dreamed I was smoking the DreaMTime mix that Tirikite Toker mentioned.. I have never had DMT, but I have been kind of obsessing over trying it so I suppose that thread has been on my mind). I struggled to stay awake for a little bit, but must've have given up because the next thing I know...

t+300 I awake in the early morning, refreshed, but with one of the worst tastes I have ever had in my mouth. I went to sleep with bits of salvia still in my mouth, so they sort of -- stewed :-/ -- overnight. Make sure to spit/rinse before you go to sleep!


I think the key for me was realizing that I don't need to put all 5 grams in my mouth at once. I was listening to the Siebert interview on the Psychedelic Salon when I realized that it could be eaten in portions over time. Perhaps the brushing and the "rehydrating" the leaves helped as well.

best of luck! haji

[EROCx1]

[COLOR="DarkOliveGreen"]Eventually I composed myself to turn on my iPod (it was too late at night to play music in my apartment without some risk of neighborly intervention--not at all ideal under the circumstances. I had ripped a copy of EROCx1 (http://www.myspace.com/erocx1)'s Kykeon (http://gaianbotanicals.ecrater.com/product.php?pid=483445), which was explicitly mixed for entheogenic voyaging. I highly recommend it. It was nice to have clips of Tim Leary, Terence, and Rupert Sheldrake rise from the lush textures of EROCx1's soundscape. It most definitely did seem that someone intimately familiar with entheogenic voyaging was at the helm.Wow, thanks for the great compliments!

[Lowlight]

Here's my 2 cents...I find that the combination of chewing and smoking is BY FAR the best method i have found so far over nearly four years of use.

1. Try brushing you teeth and gums, then wash out with Listerine for a good 40 secs or so.

2. Get about 8 fresh or rehydrated leaves and chew them for AT LEAST 20 mins. Chewing the leaves grounds you much more than just smoking them and lets the plant/human relationship unfold in a more powerful and meaningful way.

3. Spit it out, them have some dry leaf in a bong ready to smoke - take 2 hits without a breath in between holding each breath for about 25-30secs or as long as you can manage.

4. Then Lie down in the dark with YOUR EYES SHUT - opening your eyes fucks your visionary experience up on Salvia as you are overlaying 2 realities which seriously messes with the mind.

5. Implore the plant to show you what it has to show, or ask it a specific question. Be respectful, remember you are in someone elses environment!

6. If the dry leaf doesnt push you through, try 5x extract (1 hit to start with). Salvia is all about finding the level at which you can work with the plant. 10 x is usually as waste of time in terms of trying to learn something meaningful as it is too powerful to allow a measured exchange between your self and the plant. High strength extracts are like putting your head next to a giant blow touch, its a crazy experience but it's far from educational in a meaningful way.

Also, if you can handle it without feeling it to be too 'newagey', pray to the plant in the days before the experience. She hears everything...

[cereus]

The method that I use is really simple and works wonders for me.
Put the dry leaves straight in to your mouth and chew the quid for the usual half hour, and then smoke one bowl of dried leaves. It will take you in to the salvia vortex for at least 15 minutes maybe half an hour.

:)