In effect, it acts in the brain quite opposite to the way that most opiates do, Addy says.Īddy adds that salvia is powerful, but not particularly dangerous if treated with care and due to its unique properties, it could teach us new things about the brain. Salvia might also have real potential to treat addiction, studies suggest, since in animals it appears to reduce cravings for substances like cocaine. Unlike many hallucinogens, salvia does not appear to affect levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin. These neuronal receptors are thought to be involved in interoception, pain sensing, mood and consciousness. Salvia is one of the most potent hallucinogens in nature, Addy says, and has a peculiar mode of action, acting on kappa opioid receptors. Most participants said that the trip was pretty weird, but ultimately neutral-not especially good or bad. "When you smoke salvia you're having an experience whether you want to or not," Addy says. Another four who didn't have a tough time also felt helpless to direct the trip, but "rode it out" without much trouble. In both cases, these individuals said that the fear arose primarily from the fact that they had no control over the experience. But once the effects wore off, they were fine, he says. Only two people had what Addy described as a "bad trip," meaning a difficult experience marked with anxiety. "I got the impression that other people could hear me and they were around," one wrote.Ī number of participants reported emotional changes: one-third said it made them happy, and four people described being scared. A total of 11 participants "sensed other people or beings" during their experiences. "I didn't have a sense of being in a position to observe myself," wrote one participant. Nine of the 30 said that they became completely unaware of their surroundings, undergoing an experience that was completely removed from the "reality" of the laboratory setting. It also affected people's sense of what was real. "I couldn't tell if I was part of the carpet, or you're part of the chair," chimed in another man. "I was blended in with the air around me," wrote one woman. Salvia changed the way people perceived their own bodies. A few people completely forgot that they had smoked salvia and couldn't remember why they were in the lab in the first place, Addy says. Nearly 60 percent reported similar feelings of disorientation, with some forgetting where they were in space. "I got completely in it and completely lost my orientation of where I was," one participant said. And it also seemed to alter self-awareness and sense of reality. In contrast to the effects of other psychoactive substances, the experience of salvia is also quite hard to pin down or characterize simply, with many people having quite different trips, he says.īut one common thread that ran through most of the trips was that salvia changes a person's "interoception"-the body's sense of its own physiological conditions. It's also particularly intense, and unique: it evades comparison to any other kind of drug, he adds. "When you smoke salvia it's like flipping a switch-everything is normal, and then immediately everything is different," Addy says. The first and most pronounced effect is the suddenness of the high. (A medic was standing by outside, but was never needed.) Addy sat next to each person while they smoked a pre-prepared sample of the herb, and after the 10- to 15-minute trip, talked with them about their experiences. While still at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, California, Addy got 30 participants to smoke salvia in a relaxed setting, in a lab, while seated next to him. Peter Addy, a researcher who is now at Yale University, decided to conduct the first large study to describe the subjective effects of smoking salvia. The reactions are varied, but often involve somebody spacing out, giggling tremendously, becoming incapacitated, stumbling about, or some combination of the above. for its psychoactive effects, and there has been a digital flood of videos of people smoking it on YouTube. They associate it with the Virgin Mary, and believe ingesting salvia enables them to speak with her.įor the past few decades, the plant has also enjoyed popularity in the U.S. This plant has been used in religious ceremonies by the Mazatec people of Mexico for centuries. And a few could "feel" objects by looking at them.Īll these reports come from people smoking an herb in the sage family called Salvia divinorum, commonly referred to as salvia. Others felt their internal organs being pulled in directions across all three planes, and through extra dimensions they hadn't known existed. Some people literally forgot which way was up, or didn't know if they owned their bodies anymore.
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