In a popular article this week, The New York Times reported on the rash of online videos showing teenagers smoking the hallucinogenic drug derived from leaves of the plant Salvia divinorum. In this video (warning: it has a fair amount of profanity), a girl named Shannon takes one hit from a bong and appears overwhelmed; she’s unable to talk and extremely disoriented. Minutes later, as the effects wear off, she says she feels scared and would not do it again.
Clips like that are hardly an advertisement for the drug, which can be legally bought online. Some states, however, have passed laws ranging from limits on possession to making Salvia illegal. But the video accompanying the Times’s article also shows another kind of user. On camera, a 29-year-old father from Waco, Texas, identified only as Nathan, smokes a pipe of Salvia, then appears to enter a state of meditation while reclining peacefully in a chair. The drug, he says, “awakens something inside you that is greater than yourself.”
Healing properties?
It is this potential for good that seems to have caught the attention of researchers, and Salvia, whose toxic side effects (if any) are unknown, is only one of several hallucinogenic drugs some scientists believe may have healing properties that overlap with the religious or spiritual experiences users report.
In a 2006 study conducted at Johns Hopkins University, for example, volunteers were given controlled doses of psilocybin, the active ingredient in “magic mushrooms.” Some volunteers experienced anxiety at the time, but two months after taking the drug, most said the experience had “substantial personal meaning and spiritual significance and attributed to the experience sustained positive changes in attitudes and behavior consistent with changes rated by community observers.”
Psychiatric researchers in South Carolina received the go-ahead from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to use ecstasy (MDMA) to treat patients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, and found that many patients were able to approach and diffuse fears that had left them almost disabled, according to the Washington Post Magazine. And a recent Baltimore Sun editorial called for further research into the drug’s medicinal value.
Next: Exploring the spiritual connection
Comments (14)
The only thing mystical about salvia is the fact that it’s remained under the radar for so long. If these super potency extracts 20X – 60X hadn’t surfaced, along with their horrible repercussions, it would still be an unknown drug. Sadly it has taken several related deaths to make people stand up and take notice. The DEA needs to get focused, and stop waiting for each individual state to regulated salvia. Let’s be proactive and save some lives.
When I was young, I used marijuana, LSD, and psilocybin.
It wasn’t until in my 40s, long after I’d ceased the other entheogens, that I learned about Salvia divinorum. I immediately discovered that it is nothing at all like anything else I’ve ever tried. It is something very far removed in a realm entirely its own. It cannot be compared with anything else.
I also discovered that while its effects are extremely overwhelming for a few minutes and then quickly fade out, its use is self-limiting. It is not habit-forming. On the contrary, once I’d done it about 10 times, it clearly communicated to me that it had nothing further to offer me, and since then I have felt no desire to return to it. It’s the opposite of addictive. I think if used safely, with someone to watch out for you, it has good potential to open psychological blockages and refresh the spirit. But only as an initial opening, it won’t be a continuing thing. After that one needs to integrate one’s Salvia insights into ordinary reality and go on from there.
I decry in the strongest terms this anti-entheogen hysteria that drives criminalization of plants. So much valuable research into human consciousness has been stifled just because of hysterial, irrational calls for making all entheogens illegal. It happened in the 30s with marijuana, in the 60s with LSD, and now they’re at it again. Consciousness researchers need to resist the anti-entheogen hysteria!
Salvia should be research to see if it is useful and can be used for medical use. if it is proved that it is not beneficial to health, then the government should make it illegal.
If spinning around on a bar stool to become dizzy became popular, and the government could not tax every revolution of the stool, it would become illegal overnight.Studies would prove it was harmful, because some people fell off and got hurt.
Stools would be confiscated and mobs would be incited to burn them in piles;(for your own good).
It would be illegal to manufacture a rotating stool,seat,chair, or other apparatus that could be used to induce a dizzy or drunken state.Of course,people would be modifying roller skates, skate boards, or other innouclus devices to achieve a cheap high, which would of course, be illegal.Prisons would fill with violators
that simply wanted to entertain themselves.
“Whatta ya in for?”
“I’m a pianist.Got caught spinning around too many times on my stool”
Sound silly?
Of course.
If a person wants to get dizzy,drunk,or stoned in his own home, as long as it does not endanger anyone else, it should not be illegal.
My 2 cents worth
A collection of the funniest, most amazing and exciting YouTube video clips selected especially for You – have a great fun!
You people who think the government should control a life changing experience sicken me. You’re just like them: if it can teach you something they don’t want you to know, make it illegal. Stu is absolutely right. I also believe that Joanna is absolutely right and it is these types of materials that can help save us, or help us discover what we really are.
i was wondering what good there is to a drug that makes one go nuts! i’m intersted in researching on the effect of these hallucinogens on fertility since most drugs affect this area negatively. i’m calling for contributions. thanks and stay sane.
No it doesnt have any healing properties..
- http://www.salvianoid.com
I think It us really used in traditional spiritual practices by the Mazatec people of Mexico and is legal in both Mexico and the United States. However, three states have banned the leafy green, making its possession — like that of heroin or cocaine — a felony. see here http://www.potentsalvia.com
You know stu and Joanna is right. I had to laugh at stu because he had a point. I have not let the government stop me from expressing my self. Its like if they outlawed piercings and tattoos I would be in serious trouble I am a human pin cushion…shoot me…ya know? just leave the stoners and alcoholics alone ya know leave us ALoNE!!
Very eager to try the diviners sage. hoping to see if it has the ability to help sleeping disorders & Depression, As well as being a new experience.
Thanks to everyone posting experiences, Opinions, and medical benefits.
hey guys, check out this site I just found about Salvia: http://www.salviasociety.org I heard about it on Fox News last night. The guy who owns it was talking how he’s trying to stop legislation in different states from banning the herb. I hope he succeeds, meanwhile they just banned it in my State (Minnesota)
This stuff sucks anyways who cares. The plant is cool looking though and it gets huge and looks exotic. Not dangerous, the leafs taste bad and don’t do anything. Only those extracts do anything but it’s unpleasent and stupid. People are dumb if they think that is spiritual or whatever, it’s just dumb.