Salvia, Zips, and the Path of Least Resistance
Salvia, zips, and the path of least residence
In many Salvia trip reports, people speak of unzipping. Either they get unzipped, or something representing reality unzips.
It’s a beautiful metaphor, but in the world of salvia it often feels less like an idea and more like a physical, felt or viewed experience — something tangible.
I’ve always wondered, before zips were invented, what did people see or feel when they took salvia? Did this situation simply not exist? Or was it replaced with something? Zips were invented in the early 1900 — salvia, being a plant, predates that to a tremendous degree. After reading many reports, I’ve found other experiences that seem to allude to the same feeling: curtains being drawn, fabric tearing, something breaking into two.
So the idea of a separation relating to a revelation has always been there. But it got me thinking: these other concepts still exist in the modern world. Curtains split, fabric splits, objects split. Not everything that separates and reveals happens via zips. So why did zips become so prevalent in salvia trip reports?
The simplest answer I can reach is that zips are a huge part of modern western living. They’re on our clothes, our bags, our belongings. It’s not that it’s an intimate thing, but more so that it’s something we see all the time. Our mind may be grab onto zips because it’s an easy visual to pick from. Its everywhere for us.
The mind, like electricity, tends to take the path of least resistance. Zips are a simple concept for it to latch onto for many people, so it pulls it with ease.
Zips are usually experienced early within a salvia trip. The issue is that as you get further into the world of salvia the less the mind cannot pull from its typical tools anymore. The experience is too intense (in most cases). So the zip acts as one of the last signs of the mind’s ability to act with ease.
The idea of the mind taking the path or least resistance sounds almost mystical, but it doesn’t have to be. The mind likes patterns. The mind likes familiarity. It’s always pushing us to recognisable narratives and scenarios. It’s constantly worldbuilding as it takes in sensory information and tries to slot it into place with everything else. You see it most commonly with trauma. If something egregious happens to you, the mind uses it as a way of mapping other experiences. It becomes a way of viewing the world.
The mind has its own Occam’s razor algorithm engraved onto it. This is not to say its always right, but that it struggles to accept ideas that deviate from its original conclusions which are driven by a simple means of navigating the world based on its current knowledge.
Final words
The reason this fascinates me so much is because the zips feels so foreign in a world as mystical as salvia. It feels as though something so human-made doesn’t belong. We think of psychedelics as being a mystical opening — even in a secular way, we tend to see psychedelics as stripping back our notions of reality. Salvia can be seen to do the same, and the zip works as an evocative metaphor for that. It just seems so disturbingly familiar for that to be the way.
What began as a simple inquiry into a common, almost innocuous, symbol of salvia has left me thinking about the nature of reality, phenomenology, and perception.
For further critical discussions on substances, culture, and medicine, check out my physical magazine, Existential Horror. This is a 250+ page publication designed to be a critique and celebration of psychedelia and substance-use culture. Vol 2 is out now!
