Thanks to the Miley Cyrus bong smoking video, and to the kid who killed six people in Tucson and shot Representative Gifford in the head, Salvia Divinorin is in the news in a way it has never been before. Having seen the Cyrus video, yeah, she was not smoking weed - that was pretty identical to the salvia videos you'll see on YouTube.
Researchers say that Salvia is the most potent hallucinogen known to science - and that there may be some serious medicinal uses for its active constituent, salvinorin A. A pretty high percentage of people who use it once never want to repeat the experience. My guess is that if you use salvia as your first experience with hallucinogens/entheogens that you are not likely to want to repeat such an intense and overwhelming experience - the brief high is very much different than the serotonin-based hallucinogens like LSD and psilocybin.
An article posted at AOL News earlier this month offers a good introduction to the drug and its possible medicinal benefits.
Powerful Hallucinogen Eyed as Treatment for Alzheimer's, Chronic Pain
Doctors hope further studies of salvia, a powerful hallucinogen that is sometimes smoked by recreational users, will unlock treatments for a variety of neurological disorders including Alzheimer's disease and illnesses that cause chronic pain.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins Hospital recently completed a study that examined the effects of salvia or salvinorin A, on humans. "It is unlike anything that exists," Dr. Matthew Johnson, lead study researcher, psychologist and assistant professor of psychiatry at John Hopkins University, told AOL Health.
Johnson believes that gaining information about how salvia affects the brain could lead to medical advances and the creation of new drugs to treat a variety of illnesses and conditions that affect the brain.
Salvia divinorum is the active ingredient in salvia, which resembles marijuana and, according to researchers, is the most powerful hallucinogen in nature. This study, which appears online in Drug and Alcohol Dependence, is the first controlled trial to be conducted on humans.
The study participants were two men and two women who had previous experience with hallucinogens. The volunteers smoked the drug in 20 sessions over the course of two or three months.
They inhaled a range of doses of the drug in pure form and were asked to rate its strength. Due to the extreme effects of this often controversial drug, participants were allowed to take breaks when needed and were told they could completely withdraw from the study at any time.
Participants reported they had an awareness of where they were after smoking the drug, but they also had a feeling of "leaving this reality completely and going to other worlds or dimensions and interacting with entities," Johnson told ABC News. The participants also showed no changes in heart rate or blood pressure, and the study concluded that the drug has no physically adverse effects on otherwise healthy people.
According to an animal study, salvinorin A activates opioid receptors in the brain. When salvinorin A acts on these receptors, a person feels high. Addictive drugs, such as morphine, also stimulate opioid receptors. However, salvinorin A stimulates another type of receptor called the kappa opioid. "It is unique in the way it affects the kappa system," explains Johnson. "Salvinorin A selectively hits the kappa receptors and affects them more cleanly than any other drugs." Because of their structure, salvia molecules have smaller impact on the brain's processes, and have less potential for addiction.
Johnson says there are many possibilities for the use of this drug. "Right now, we're just understanding its basic effects on humans," says Johnson. Future studies and research will provide more information on the possibilities for this new drug.
Salvia is legal to buy and sell in many U.S. states; however, the U.S. Department of Justice's Drug Enforcement Administration has labeled salvia a drug of concern. To date, 13 states have adopted legislation that bans or regulates the use of salvia. In addition, legislators and federal officials in many other states are considering regulating the drug.
Salvia Ingredient Studied As Medical TreatmentFinally, an article on Huffington Post by Dr. Harold Koplewicz offers his own perspective on this drug - and he believes we must regulate the drug - which I oppose for ALL entheogens. This is only a part of the article - the most relevant part.January 3, 2011
Listen to the Story
[3 min 48 sec]There's a long history of trying to turn mind altering drugs like LSD into something that would be useful for therapies. Scientists are trying to do that with the latest popular hallucinogen. It's called Salvia Divinorin. It's been in the news lately because teen idol Mylie Cyrus was apparently caught on video smoking it.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
There's a long history of scientists trying to turn mind-altering drugs into something that would make a useful therapy. Now they're trying to do that with a hallucinogen that is legal in many states and becoming more popular. It's been in the news lately because teen-idol Miley Cyrus was caught on video apparently smoking it. Some scientists believe the active ingredient could turn out to be valuable for treating problems such as drug addiction, chronic pain and manic depression.
NPR's Joe Palca reports.
JOE PALCA: Salvia divinorum is a plant. It's a member of the mint family. Smoking it sends users on an otherworldly voyage.
Dr. MATTHEW JOHNSON (Johns Hopkins Medical School): Some people would speculate that it's another dimension. Others would describe it as the spirit world.
PALCA: Matthew Johnson studies hallucinogenic drugs at the Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore. He says people who smoke salvia describe a high very different from other mind-altering drugs.
For example, people on the drug psilocybin - what makes magic mushrooms hallucinogenic - are aware of the real world around them and can function in it. During the brief-but-potent high, people on salvia can barely move, and they feel as if they've left planet Earth.
Dr. JOHNSON: A completely different reality where they're interacting with things they're either calling entities or angels or figures that have even given themselves names in this otherworldly experience.
PALCA: Johnson wanted to see if there were any physical side effects to this mental trip. So he invited people who had used other hallucinogens to try salvia and looked to see if there were any potentially harmful spikes in heart rate or blood pressure.
Dr. JOHNSON: Under the conditions of the study, it did appear to be a physiologically safe drug.
PALCA: At least for the things Johnson measured. But he says while the drug may not be harmful physically, it can be mentally.
Dr. JOHNSON: There's the psychological toxicity. That is to say, this is a strong drug and people can do strange, potentially dangerous things when they're on it.
PALCA: So why study this drug? Well, in addition to the weird trip it takes you on, it tends to make people feel icky, kind of depressed. And that depressive quality may be useful in therapies. Here's how.
Salvia belongs to a class of drugs that activate something called the kappa opioid receptor. Heroin and morphine also activate opioid receptors, but they activate the mu opioid receptor.
Dr. ELENA CHARTOFF (McLean Hospital): When you activate the mu receptor, like you do with heroin or morphine, you get a euphoric - you get a rush, a high.
PALCA: Elena Chartoff studies opioid receptors at McLean Hospital in Boston.
Dr. CHARTOFF: But when you activate the kappa receptor with a drug, you get kind of the opposite effect, that depressive-like effect.
PALCA: The depressive effect might be used to counteract the mania of manic depression or negate the appealing effects of narcotics as a way to control drug addiction.
Salvinorin A, the active ingredient in salvia, has a powerful effect on the kappa opioid receptors. Chartoff says scientists are looking at ways to take molecules like Salvinorin A...
Dr. CHARTOFF: And altering them using a chemistry to develop compounds that have all the beneficial properties, but don't have the disadvantages.
PALCA: Hallucinations are generally considered an unwanted side effect in drug therapies. But pharmacologist Bryan Roth of the University of North Carolina says those properties may be useful for neuroscientists.
Dr. BRYAN ROTH (University of North Carolina): One of the things to me that's interesting about drugs that are hallucinogens is they alter the way we see reality.
PALCA: Roth is trying to figure out which brain circuits Salvinorin A acts on -where in the brain we decide what's real and what's not.
Dr. ROTH: You know, what could be more important than how we view reality, right?
PALCA: That's a hard one to argue with.
Joe Palca, NPR News, Washington.
Salvia: Good For Research, Bad For Recreation
Salvia is legal because its method of action -- how it affects the brain -- is so novel that it is unrelated to any of the drugs currently regulated or outlawed by the federal government. But this is also why it should not be outlawed entirely -- because of the possible research benefits, which often, sadly, shrivel up when the government decides to outlaw instead of regulate.The point is that this plant is telling us things we didn't know about how drugs interact with the brain. Its psychoactive ingredient, Salvinorin A, appears to target a single specific receptor in the brain that is implicated in a variety of psychiatric disorders. Down the road, this could lead to treatments for everything from depression and schizophrenia to addiction and even diarrhea. If the hallucinogenic side effects are removed or mitigated, derivatives of salvia or related chemicals could provide a path towards new psychopharmacological treatments for mental illness, and we must protect that promise.
In no way am I calling salvia a possible "medication" -- as it naturally occurs and is used to "trip," it is what we call a drug of abuse. But there is a possibility that research can yield valid, even life-saving medical treatments.
So it's important not to make a mistake here: Salvia is a powerful hallucinogen -- it must be regulated. But we don't know enough about it to say how it should be regulated. We must balance the need to keep our children safe with the imperative to explore its potential for breakthrough medications.
We must be reasonable, as we have not always been in the past, while still being vigilant.
I'm watching David Icke's Wembley event and there was a story he told of a woman who had a stroke in the left side of her brain so only the right side was functional. And what woman described fit with David's explanation of the universe as said in the event, and an alarm went off in my head. That's because, I tried salvia once, and it was the most other-wordly experience of my entire life, and my experience was just like they had told. I find the connection very peculiar. When I had tried it, it scared me out of my mind because I had no explanation for what I had seen and heard during the experience. It was so overwhelming and until I had heard David Icke explain how he understands the universe and that lady's experience during her stroke, I had no explanation whatsoever. But now, I'm kinda wondering if Salvia is a connection for us to see the world as energy as Icke explains. If you receive this comment, even almost 2 years after publish date, I'd love to hear what you think and if your studies have advanced.
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