Power Plant

You’ve seen the screwy YouTube videos, but what exactly is salvia? And for how much longer will it be (mostly) legal?
-By Whitney Joiner
Illustration by Douglas Frasier

On a Friday night last fall, I sat in a friend’s living room and tripped harder than I had since my college dorm days. This time, though, I wasn’t nervously buying questionable substances from the Phish-hugging, hackey-sacking stoners at the nearby hippie college; this trip was facilitated by a psychoactive herb, Salvia divinorum, which I’d bought online for around $30. And in Texas, my current home state, it’s perfectly legal.

That night, my salvia-savvy friend—I’ll call him Greg—introduced me to the herb. We’d planned our night after he’d touted it as a quickie hallucinogen: “It only lasts ten minutes!”

Salvia, a member of the sage genus and the mint family, is native to Oaxaca, Mexico. The region’s Mazatec Indians traditionally use it to induce hallucinatory states during shamanic healing rituals. I loved the idea of buying hallucinogens online; salvia’s legality somehow made it seem more subversive, than, say, scoring coke in a bar bathroom. Plus, I’d always wondered about the efficacy of these “shamanic” herbs, and while I’m not invested enough in the question to try some Morrisonian peyote-induced desert spirit journey, I did like the possibility of a ten-minute trip.

They say each generation gets the politicians it deserves, and maybe the same could be said of drugs. After all, it’s not 1972 anymore: Who has an entire weekend to devote to recovering from Friday night? A fast and furious trip seems perfectly apropos for a multitasking, Facebooking generation always on the lookout for the next hookup.

Greg, his wife, another friend, and I sat around the fireplace and packed the pipe. Wary of spending cash on something that would turn out to be no more exciting than dried oregano—and wondering if my stoner years would up my tolerance—I’d bought an extra-potent extract to maximize the evening’s potential. “Hold it in for 15 seconds before exhaling,” Greg said, passing the pipe. “You’ll probably start laughing, and then the trip will start.”

Got it. I took the pipe and held in the smoke. A couple of hits later, and boom: I was wasted—and fast. First, I was overtaken by out-of-control laughter. Then my surroundings started to close in: My friends sounded echo-y and far away, and I had to close my eyes to keep from spinning. I felt as if I were being pulled backward into darkness, like I was on an amusement-park ride, backing into a tunnel. My mind suddenly settled into the basement of my early childhood home, with its late seventies orange-and-brown color scheme. Bizarre. I have to say that the complete loss of my motor
functions—I couldn’t lift my hands—and my auditory and visual senses wasn’t particularly appealing.

Interesting? Sure. Fun? Not really. My companions, on the other hand, loved it, although not in a euphoric way. “It’s like going to a new place, mentally,” says Greg, who’s used salvia multiple times. “But if you’re using it recreationally, you’ll probably be disappointed.”

As of this writing, salvia is legal in most states. But it won’t be for long if the feds get their way. The herb isn’t yet classified nationwide as a controlled substance, but the Drug Enforcement Administration is currently going through the motions. “We’re in the process of researching salvia under the Controlled Substances Act,” says DEA spokesperson Rogene Waite, who told me that 1.8 million people age 12 and older have tried the drug. There aren’t many statistics on salvia, but according to Waite, men use it more than women, and it’s more popular with teenagers (shocking, right?) than any other
demographic. “We’re really concerned [about its use],” she says. “Just because a substance isn’t illegal doesn’t mean it isn’t dangerous.”

So what exactly spooked the feds? Some lawmakers are grateful to YouTube for introducing them to the drug. For the past year, salvia users have been posting videos of their trips on the site. Most of these stoned movies are mind-numbingly boring, the script unwavering: Dude smokes, laughs, falls over, lies motionless, maybe tries to talk or wave his hands, eventually comes down. Not exactly riveting theater. The images are so dull, in fact, they could even serve as a deterrent for some would-be smokers. And yet, a few YouTube vids might nonetheless prompt a federal ban of the substance.

If that happens, it would seem a bit extreme. After all, there hasn’t been a rash of salvia-related crime to contend with. In May, in what seems to be the only known case of a salvia conviction, a North Dakota bottling-plant worker, Kenneth Rau, was arrested for possession with intent to deliver; police found his stash when they entered his home in search of Rau’s son, who was on probation for drug charges. Rau senior faces up to five years. And the drug hasn’t been proven to be harmful. (A Delaware mom claims otherwise, however: After Kathleen Chidester’s discovery that her 17-year-old son Brett was using saliva prior to his suicide in 2006, Chidester championed “Brett’s law,” the Delaware statute that outlaws salvia in that state.)

So far salvia doesn’t appear to be addictive. “I’m not aware of any studies that show that it’s habit forming,” says Dr. Thomas Prisinzano, a chemistry professor at the University of Kansas who has studied the drug. “But enough studies haven’t been conducted to truly say that it’s not addictive.” Given the way the drug’s main psychoactive ingredient, salvinorum A, acts in the brain, Prisinzano says he wouldn’t expect it to be addictive.

A researcher at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, Dr. Jacob Hooker, lead author of a recent salvia
study, seconds that. “No other kappaspecific agonist [translation: a drug that hits the brain’s same opioid receptor as salvinorum A] that’s been reported has shown an addiction liability,” he says. “So if we’d have to make a prediction, we would say it shouldn’t become addictive.”

When salvinorum A enters the brain, says Hooker, it flows to the cerebellum, which controls motor function (hence the inability to, you know, move), and to the occipital cortex, the brain’s visual-processing unit (hence the altered sight). Prisinzano is in the process of studying whether salvia could be used to treat pain and drug addiction, since it hits the same receptors as morphine. Making salvia illegal on a federal level won’t necessarily hinder his or Hooker’s research, he says; they’ll just have more bureaucratic hurdles to battle. “Illegalizing it means a lot more paperwork, and it’s hampering to people who want to conduct clinical trials in humans to get a better understanding of the psychopharmacology,” Prisinzano says. “I’m not advocating for it to be legal—I think it needs to be regulated—but let’s do some controlled studies and understand this compound before we rush to judgment.”

The growing salvia controversy is a source of frustration for Daniel Siebert, a medical botanist and longtime salvia user who is currently working on a book about the herb. The YouTube videos, he says, “portray salvia in a way that’s very different than the way it’s traditionally used. It’s a great tool for evaluation and introspection. But to get that, you need to take the right dosage.”

Apparently, smoking as much as you can, as fast as you can, isn’t the way to go. “A lot of people are getting these excessively potent extracts and smoking too much, and it produces a disorienting, confusing experience,” Siebert says. “That’s a departure from the time-tested method.” When Siebert uses it, he tries to follow the traditional Mazatec method: sitting in a quiet space, alone, and chewing the leaves rather than smoking them. This, says Siebert, results in a gentler experience that lasts longer. “I use it to focus on issues in my life,” he says. “It guides the mind into the inner psyche, and your subconscious comes more to the surface. You’ll have visions, which, to me, are coming from the unconscious. It’s a way to obtain useful information about yourself.”

Siebert sees salvia as traveling down the same regulation road as peyote, mushrooms, and other hallucinogens. But the one thing that might keep salvia from becoming a federal priority is the fact that it’s just not that much fun. “It doesn’t produce euphoria or have a stimulant effect,” says Siebert. “A lot of people are looking for things they can use at parties and concerts. Salvia doesn’t lend itself to that. Most people who’ve tried it don’t like it. I just don’t think it’s ever really going to catch on and become a drug of widespread use.”

He’s probably right. I’ve subsequently tried salvia again, smoking much less at a sitting than I did that first time last fall. I didn’t have a similar reaction; in fact, I hardly felt anything at all. And, as it turns out, that was just fine with me.