“Salvia Divinorum is known to the Amazonian Shamans as a ‘Spirit Plant’ because when ingested it produces visions. Today, I was due to smoke some on camera as part of a PR stunt to promote the film ‘Reckoning Day’. The on-hand doctor passed me a bag filled with an unspecific, dried plant material. The bag read ‘Salvia Divinorum, 20x extract’ - 20 times stronger than that used by the Shamans.

 

“As I exhaled a large cloud of smoke reality froze, laughed at me and fucked off. I was ripped out of my body and brutally flung into another dimension (I learnt later that this ‘new dimension’ was in fact the floor which I had hit quite hard). I did not make any memories for the next 10 minutes. How can the machine work if the controller is missing? I was experiencing oblivion. I was absolute nothingness. All around me was a big fat blank: a solid hollow mass. I hated it. I screamed into the blankness, desperately trying to get back into my body. I started pleading to whatever had pushed me out of my life to let me go back. I returned for a second, and then I was sucked into the void again. I strained with all my might to open my eyes and feel my physical.

 

“The next thing I remember is sitting back in my chair (the guys had helped me up after I apparently started jabbering insanely and trying to crawl under things). I gradually started to return. I noted my psyche as it began to rebuild itself: childhood memories, check, personality, check, ego, check, social face, check. They all slotted back into place like so many computer disks. I was back in my terrified, sweating body. The whole thing had lasted 15 minutes.”