Disregard Everything I Say

The popular and freely available hallucinogen known as Salvia, is in my opinion probably one of the most confusing experiences a human being can possibly go through making it perhaps the most difficult of all substances to explain. This is a substance that feels completely unlike all other psychedelics and is technically classed as an A-typical dissociative by erowid.
The reason it is so unique in terms of effects is due to how it effects the brain, while pretty much all of the classic psychedelics work by simply happening to fit into our serotonin receptors Salvia does not do this and instead targets the brains k-opoid receptors creating for a completely bizarre style of tripping that many people find terrifying. So I will attempt to break down this thing down into it’s base components right here.

Bodyhigh:

The physical sensation of this sort of trip is almost entirely characterized by what I call “Salvia Gravity”. This is present at even mild trips and increases proportionally with dosage until it is all encompassing, beginning with a heavy sensation that pulls and tugs at the body. As this increases it inevitably becomes so powerful that it swiftly lifts the tripper up and out of their body in a direction that simply doesn’t make sense and into a place so different from anything previously experienced that words fail to describe it.

This is sometimes accompanied by the sensation of pins and needles all over a persons skin that for an unlucky few can become very uncomfortable, most people however never experience this feeling at all.

Headspace:

While most drugs usually enhance or heighten certain cognitive functions and simultaneously lower others Salvia does not do anything like this. Instead it literally lowers everything all across the board, it’s this effect that contributes to Salvia being extremely confusing and creates for an experience devoid of introspection for most people as this isn’t a substance that creates profound thoughts, just profound experiences.
The average first time user of Salvia generally experiences a mixture of extreme gigglyness and confusion. Paranoia and panic are also very common for the unprepared and this can be accounted for by the fact that k-opoid antaganists have been shown to cause such feelings in people, you combat this in just the same way that the paranoia induced by weed can be handled. Simply take Salvia in a safe, comfortable environment away from noise and brush off all negative thoughts as irrational paranoia before they can even begin to develop themselves.
This only really happens at mild – moderate dosages, however a breakthrough Salvia trip feels completely different mentally with a huge amount of egoloss but not necessarily egodeath being very common. This is egodeath at 99% and feels as if you are receiving the sensory input of your trip, but not fully conscious enough to think about the implications of it until you come down.
Language use is also extremely affected with many users going as far to report that their thought processes become replaced with a completely garbled and nonsensical alien language. This can be described as pure syntax that is completely devoid of meaning.

Visual effects and Hallucinations:

The visual effects of Salvia have a completely alien and unique style to them not found anywhere else, instead of the typical fast flashes of geometric patterns found during a typical trip these visuals are of a completely different nature.
Salvia’s typical open eye visuals are unimpressive but rather confusing, a sensation of being flattened into one unified surface is common when a persons eyes are kept open and this seems to play heavily on different sections of your vision as the objects in front of your face become devoid of meaning.
Closed eye visuals however are instead most commonly experienced as murky yet defined shapes that are not quite as abstract as your typical closed eye visuals but instead more heavily based on mathematical constructs such as extremely elaborate fractals that come with a sense of physical scale and depth to them. These constructs are often so huge that they expand for hundreds to thousands of miles and do not change by means of quick morphing flashes but instead change by panning, zooming and rotating slowly into view as more and more detail is gradually revealed. A sensation of folding between frames of still constructs and visuals is also quite common and these often behave in a similar fashion to the structures found on dissociatives such as MXE.
The hallucinations at low to high doses, these are very murky to look at but still extremely detailed as most of the details are felt instead of seen. For example you may be hallucinating during a breakthrough trip that there is a crowd standing in front of you and although you can barely make them out using your sight you can sense and feel every last one of them in a level of detail comparable to normal vision.

Although these hallucinations are limitless in their potential and can encompass anything there is interestingly enough one very commonplace scenario found on Salvia which is the sensation of becoming a random inanimate object. This object could be literally anything but the most common seem to be, a conveyor belt, a brick in a wall or a book.  

Leaves vs Extract vs Oral:

There are three different forms of Salvia trips with the leaves providing a much more relaxing trip when smoked that is equally as intense visually and the extract being much more intense when it comes to the body high and the physical sensations of tripping on Salvia. 
Orally active Salvia is taken by creating a tea or chewing on leaves/extract, this results in a trip that lasts upwards of two hours instead of 15 minutes and eases you in and out of trip slowly rather than hitting you like a tonne of bricks before you can even exhale. It’s worth noting that the traditional method of Salvia consumption is orally with the Mazatec shamans claiming that Salvia “does not like to be smoked”.

I personally prefer smoking Salvia leaves as it seems to be a much more pleasant experience and are extremely cheap and available all over the internet.

Some statistics:

A survey performed 6 months ago involving 170 people performed on the r/psychonaut board over at reddit provided this guide with some very useful charts and statistics on the topic of what your average person experiences during a Salvia trip and can be found right here.