Cracking the Hard Head.

"The dream
That came through a million years"

Olivia Newton John
Xanadu

I have been putting this off for long enough and am ready to tackle the Hard Head. I don't mean the true Hard Head of course as they could smoke 100% Salvinoran A and wander off without even getting a bit dizzy. Fortunately they are quite rare. The people I am referring too are people that we over at ¡BeSaged! refer to as having Hard Head tendencies.

I'm going to go off on a tangent for a moment, but don't worry, it does relate to the subject at hand. I have the feeling (though I have no data to back it up) that Salvia Soft/Hard Headedness is a bell curve. Extreme Soft Heads on the one end (people who can dream just from getting a whiff of the smoke in an incense) and Extreme Hard Heads on the other.The big bulge in the middle would have everyone else, and of course the closer you are to the Hard Head end, the More you have Hard Head tendencies.

Ok, back on task. You have gotten your Salvia, maybe even a pretty good extract, a 10x or 15x. You've smoked a few bowls of it and while it made you feel a little weird, it didn't do much else. You're first instinct might be to try and buy a stronger extract. That is a viable option, but let's explore some other avenues first.

First of all check around and make sure you have a reputable vendor. A low quality 20x Salvia can be less potent than a high quality 5x. If you do check around and find out that the original vendor that you tried does not tend to sell high quality material, when you do find a reputable vendor, be very careful, because even though you may have ordered the same level of extract it could be an order of magnitude stronger than the other batch.

Let's assume however that you have a reputable vendor and high quality product, and are still getting nowhere. The first thing I would suggest is, before smoking your Salvia, that you meditate for 10 or 15 minutes. This, as I'm sure you know, tends to bring you into a calm place. The calmer that you are when you do Salvia, the more likely you are to dream and the better your dream will tend to be.

Some of you are no doubt thinking "Meditation doesn't really work for me SageDancer! What should I do?" Fear not. Meditation doesn't really work fir me either. There are other things that can be done. I can think of one thing that someone could smoke before doing salvia that would bring you to a calmer level. Now don't jump to conclusions on me! What I'm talking about is Wild Dagga (Leonotis Leonurus. It is as far as I know, and assuming you are over the age of Majority (and if you are not, go away. You shouldn't be reading this anyway) legal everywhere, but as always, check your local listings! Wild Dagga is actually probably not a bad idea for anyone who wants to do Salvia, as it also tends to make the dream more manageable.

The next thing I will do is go over smoking method. I know I touched upon this in an earlier entry, but it bears repeating and I probably will add information that I did not earlier. Firstly the lighter. Some people say that you must have a torch lighter, and others say that a standard lighter will do just fine. I will bow to the wisdom of Daniel Siebert on this one. He says that while it is very handy to have a torch lighter for plain leaf, it is not necessary for extracts. I've done both with a plain lighter and both worked just fine for me. I prefer to use the torch lighter though, I just like them. Seriously they're cool. The coolness could be just enough to get you into the dream. One thing I would suggest about the lighter though is to get a pipe lighter. If you haven't seen one, its a lighter that has a bit of a bend in it that keeps the flame away from your thumb. It also makes it less awkward for lighting a pipe.

As for the pipe itself, I always recommend the water pipe. These are great for cooling the smoke, as it is REALLY hot. Some people think that the smoke goes through too much cooling in a water pipe and some of the Salvinorin A ends up on the side of the pipe. If you subscribe to this idea, fine, but you will want a long pipe. A short pipe doesn't give the smoke much chance to cool at all and it can be a real throat burner. I have found that I can't get enough smoke in with a short pipe to have anything but an annoying body buzz.

The next thing you need to remember is to hold the lighter to the Salvia for the full duration of you inhale. Salvinorin A does take a fairly high temperature to vaporize (I don't recall off the top of my head but if you really want to know, you can google it). That temperature is high than the temperature that Salvia burns.

The next thing is hold in the smoke. You don't have to be Hercules or anything. If you can go a good 15 or 20 seconds that will probably do. If you are capable, go ahead and go longer, but don't strain a lung. You may have to build up on this. This is the good thing about extracts, they tend to be far less harsh that plain leaf.

The Last thing that I will say before getting to the more experimental stuff, is to get the entire dosage that you have decided to smoke in as quickly as possible. Preferably under 2 minutes.

The next methods I will describe I term experimental. Unlike the tried and true stuff above, that you can find quoted all over the Internet, these are more creative ideas, that are to be used with the above.

For this method you will need both an extract and plain leaf. Some would say that this will not work, but I believe it will (in fact, in a round about way, I know it can), for at least some of you. We will start with the percentages method*. The first thing you will do is figure out a dosage of plain leaf. This is not supposed to make you dream (be careful though, because it could). Measure out 1, or even 2 bowls of plain leaf, and separate them into 10 mini-doses. Also measure out a small dose of your extract (keep it very small, especially if you have a high level extract, you can always try again later and increase the dosage of the extract a bit). What you will do, is once every minute or 2 (you may have to have your sitter help you with this after a while) smoke a mini-dose until they are all gone. For some reason when you do it this way, the Salvinorin A doesn't seem to degrade in your system the way it does when you take it all as one big jolt. As you do this, you will probably find that things get stranger and stranger the more mini-doses you take. Once you have taken your tenth dose of the regular leaf, load up your extract (your sitter may need to do this for you) and and hit it hard. I'd advise laying down (I always do for Salvia).

For the next Method all you will need is an extract. First rinse out your mouth with a mint mouthwash with alcohol. Be careful to swish the front of your mouth, this is to help with absorption. Then take a pinch of your extract and hold it between the cheek and gum. Leave it in your mouth for a while. Hopefully with in a half an hour or so you will start to feel the beginnings of the onset of Salvia. At this point, remove the Salvia from your mouth and smoke your regular dosage. This probably will only be effective if you tend to verge on dreaming, but just can't make it over the hump.

As of right now, I have only one more method to try, and that is perseverance. There is what some call the "reverse tolerance". Some call it "potentiation". Whatever you call it, it does seem that the more one does Salvia, the easier it becomes to dream.

That's really all I have right now, if I think of any more things I will add them (probably as another entry). Next time "Cushioning the Soft Head." That one will probably be pretty short.


*Once I tried the percentages method. It was interesting, but I didn't make it all the way through. I got through maybe 5 doses, and felt the need to put the pipe away (I did) and then lie down. I dreamed. It's not something I would do often. I hate the feeling of the come up of Salvia (usually it's not so bad because it lasts like 5 seconds and then you are dreaming), and the percentages method is just one long come up mostly, unless you do manage to dream, but even then the come up lasts for minutes.