Time for Curing
For the past year, I’ve been suffering from a bad case of psoriasis. The symptoms are blizzards of dandruff and red scaly patches of skin. Not even the dermatologist’s shampoos and prescription medicines worked. Strangely enough, when I first tried salvia divinorum, the symptoms temporarily vanished. My next two sage sessions also brought about immediate but short-lived improvement in my skin condition.
After dinner today, I'm itchy again.
My wife watches me scratching my head in desperation. I sigh. “Looks like I need some medicine. It’s been a week since my last dose.”
She nods and eyes me quizzically. “You mean that medicine?”
“Of course,” I reply. “Do I have anything better?”
“I suppose not. You’ve tried all the shampoos. But please don’t go crazy.”
She looks at me ironically. I show her a weird face, like I’ve gone bonkers. Laughter.
“I promise, if you promise not to knock on the door. I’m locking it anyway. I need some serious curing tonight—alone. And do me a favor, try to keep the kid from knocking. It’ll only be an hour.”
Thus assured of an uninterrupted salvia session, I retire into my “sacred space”, the family library and computer room. Tonight’s music to set the mood: “Tibet”, Mark Isham’s improbable 1989 blend of ethereal synths, rousing jazz horns, and occasional haiku recitations, resembling more a long acoustical koan than music. I leave only one light on, the computer monitor, so I can track the time. Then I ready the “divine inebriant” and healer of my dandruff woes.
Two weeks ago, I ground dry salvia leaves, stuffed them into a bottle, and poured enough 195-proof Everclear alcohol to slightly cover the powder. After four days had passed, I passed the mixture through a sieve. I left the green liquid in the open for two days to evaporate some of the alcohol. For the final step, I added some water to make a roughly 40-proof elixir. Whew!—a lot of work. This better be good.
Now I’m testing my homemade tincture. The
green liquid fills my mouth and still burns uncomfortably despite the
extra “evaporation step”. There’s also some bitterness, though much less than
with chewing re-hydrated leaves. I struggle to hold the tincture in. It’s
Ten minutes later, I’ve yet to feel any effects. I remember Albert Hoffman’s salvia-alcohol solution that he took home from the Sierra Mazateca, only to discover later that it had lost its potency. Did I make the same mistake?
Apparently not. At
I wasn’t planning to swallow the tincture, but I guess that's what I do around
Things get even stranger: the jaw/hood "unfurls" into the horizon, forming the ground beneath a dark, deserted, cartoon-like townscape reminiscent of puppet theaters or children’s playhouses. The kid’s ghost town unfolds before my eyes, its buildings sprouting like plants in the “fast forward mode" of time-lapse photography. Occasionally, the darkness is broken by the pale light of this fantastic world’s weak “sun” and extremely short day.
Among the dozens of “make-believe” structures, I recognize a fire station, a schoolhouse, an impossibly small train station, a cottage with smoke billowing from its chimney, and a giant mailbox. One of the “houses” takes the shape of the cartoon character Goofy’s head, complete with a snout-like vestibule. I catch a glimpse of the family junk and storage room I used to play in as a child many years ago.
The visions remind me of the phantom girl running with a hoop through the streets of a desolate oneiric city (in “Mystery and Melancholy of a Street”, a painting by Giorgio de Chirico).
At