Print Article : Left My Body, Got Stuck in a Word

Just before my out-of-body experience I was sitting in my old bedroom with my boyfriend getting ready to smoke some Salvia, a legal hallucinogenic herb which can be purhcased at many smoke shops for around twenty-five dollars a gram, depending on potency. I had done this before, but never had an OBE. I took a hit from a very large device, and I felt the effects coming on very quickly and stronger than ever before. It was almost as if I could feel something coming from very far away, on another continent maybe, zooming across the planet straight for me. I said, "Woah!" and suddenly everything changed.

I found myself sitting on the floor in a long white hallway with my back against the wall. There were about five other people I did not know that were also sitting on the floor on either side of me, and I had absolutely no recollection whatsoever that I had been sitting in my bedroom a moment before, or about the Salvia. I felt as though I had been there all along, and that nothing was out of the ordinary, although I wasn't exactly sure what I was doing there. There were rows and rows of television screens in the wall directly across from where we were sitting, all of them showing a different destination: a beautiful, sunny beach, the rain forest, the city, the desert...

Some people in white lab coats approached us and began explaining that they had discovered new technology that would allow them to transport us to anyplace in the world we chose. I didn't find this at all unusual. I remember thinking, "Wow, cool...It's 20ing.05, and they're discovering so many new things with science..." I spoke up right away and pointed at the screen showing the beach, "I wanna be there," I said. "Okay," one man in a lab coat replied, "You're there!"

I waited a moment, looked around. Something was wrong, but as I looked around I found that I was still in the same room, now kneeling on the floor with my back to the wall. "This is weird," I said. The people sitting next to me laughed a little, but no one would look at me. My skin began to tingle and burn all intensely. Suddenly I realized that my entire physical body had become one with the entire enormous white wall behind me, but now with tall black lettering on it reading, "THERE." I was stuck in this wall, and I tried to remain calm while I couldn't move or escape the burning sensations. "It hurts to be there," I said. The people next to me stayed quiet and looked uncomfortable. I cried out, "How do I make this stop?" and was answered, "Make what stop?"

Realizing that nobody knew what I was talking about I was thrown into a panic. I rubbed my skin where it was burning causing my tissue, veins, muscles, and bones to vanish like ashes upon removing my hands. I swallowed and felt my mouth and most of my throat disappear. I looked like a broken hologram, but even the missing pieces brought me tremendous pain. I felt myself flying forward, busting through wall after wall, each one a different bright color with tall black lettering revealing my attempts to bring myself back in to my body:

I felt completely helpless and everything continued to burn intensely. I tried to run, but my legs felt like rubber bands, and I found that I was suspended in the air, taking off flying forward in one-second spurts, each time bursting through another wall. I began to feel extremely weak, and felt as though I were losing consciousness. I was just falling through darkness sensing nothing; no sights, no sounds, nothing but burning and falling through blackness. Suddenly a distorted face appeared before me, urging me not to give in, and encouraging me to hold on. A tiny hole emerged in the center of the face, and began to grow larger, as though I was approaching the opening to a tunnel. As the hole grew and grew, it took over everything I could see, and I found myself sitting in my room with my boyfriend.