Salvia
When you mention “salvia”, most people won’t know what you’re talking about. This is because salvia isn’t necessarily widely known or that popular in comparison to other more common drugs. Salvia is actually a mind altering herb in the mint family, and it originates from southern Mexico. Salvia is also common to Central and South America. It’s used by smoking the leaves of the plant. A burning question someone might ask is: what does salvia actually do? While “mind altering” is kind of a loose term, salvia is essentially a hallucinogen. It can cause the user to get intense hallucinations similar to those from an acid trip. Salvia happens to be one of the most intense hallucinogens that we know of.
Salvia is a very unique psychedelic and though it’s often compared to LSD or DMT, there are definitely differences. Some would even describe it as the one truly atypical psychedelic. For instance, the trip from salvia is usually pretty short-lived in comparison and the hallucinations are often mainly tactile hallucinations. A lot of people describe it as bugs crawling on their skin. Normally the drug can lead to a synesthesia condition. (Synesthesia means the crossing of senses.) Unlike LSD that creates visual/auditory synesthesia (meaning the person using it can see things that they’re hearing or vice versa), a salvia trip can lead to visual/tactile synesthesia. This means that you can feel things in your body which you are seeing, or the other way around. Although the salvia trip is short-lived, it’s a lot more intense than other types of drugs of the psychedelia variety. This has to do with the fact that salvia affects the brain a bit different than other psychedelics.
The risk of having a “bad trip” while abusing Salvia as compared to other psychedelics is really high. A “bad trip” basically means that the user is thrown into a very unpleasant experience on the drug, with scary hallucinations and vile sensations or emotions. Fortunately for these people, salvia hits the system right away and then only lasts around twenty to thirty minutes at the most. The effects from it start to wear off anywhere from around five to ten minutes.
But like all psychedelics, salvia is often predictably described by the hippie drug culture as being spiritual and “mind opening”. On the contrary, a majority of people who have tried salvia have described it as an unpleasant experience.
Where Salvia Stands Legally
Although this enigmatic drug isn’t yet illegal on a federal level, it’s banned in over fifteen states in the U.S. Other states simply ban the sale of salvia to minors. However, there are gas stations and head shops all over the United States that supposedly still sell the substance.
While there aren’t many urgent efforts right now in the direction of turning salvia into a federally illegal drug, there honestly doesn’t need to be. In other words, this drug is not very popular, not very widely used and by no means does it fall under the category of a “party drug”. And it probably never will be known as a party drug. What it comes down to is that the drug isn’t going anywhere, but because it’s very much under the radar it doesn’t require immediate attention on a legal standpoint anytime soon.
The Effects of Salvia
Some effects, aside from hallucinations, from being on salvia are described as sensations of merging with objects, nausea, numbness, sometimes tremors, lightheadedness, intense vertigo, uncontrolled laughter, disorientation and poor motor skills. Lots of times people black out while on salvia. Salvia has been linked to re-triggering panic attacks. It has also been linked to schizophrenia, suicidal thoughts, depression, uncontrollable crying, anti-social acts, aggressive or violent behavior and anger. These symptoms usually de-escalate once the drug wears off. However, in some cases it doesn’t. This is an extremely dangerous aspect to the drug and should be a warning sign to ward off people who are interested in experimenting with salvia even for the first time. To make matters worse, salvia can be fatal in the way that any hallucinogen can be fatal. Because salvia causes you to hallucinate intensely, it forces the user out of reality entirely. Therefore your mind can lose its power and you can end up very badly hurt. In a situation like this, if the user gets behind the wheel, for instance, they can be done for. Due to the fact that salvia causes the user to trip very hard, their mind is in a very vulnerable state and this could have damaging effects on a mental or emotional level even after the trip is over with. There’s evidently a lot of risk involved in using salvia because not enough research has gone into it.
Is Salvia Addictive At All?
Because there has been quite a lack of research that has gone into this drug, the findings in regards to addictiveness is kind of officially inconclusive but there are stories roaming around of people who have appeared to be addicted to the drug (even if on just a psychological level). There have been two popularized suicides stemming from people that had been using salvia regularly and then randomly stopped for whatever reason. Though the user might not have physical phenomenon occur or withdrawal symptoms when quitting the use of salvia, there could just as easily be some mental stuff going on which impinges the person negatively. At this point no one can legitimately say for certain whether salvia is addictive or not. If someone continues to abuse this drug, however, they would still require rehab or some sort of treatment program in order to overcome the fact that they’re dependent on a substance.
Who Normally Uses Salvia?
Obviously salvia isn’t too widely known, which is why most people get their information on this drug via YouTube. This is also why it might seem like a mystery when wondering who exactly uses salvia. Most people who have reported smoking salvia are marijuana users. This probably has a lot to do with the similarities between the two drugs. They’re both herbs and are both smokeable which must be a big part of the appeal. A majority of these marijuana users that want to experiment with salvia are in their teens. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse’s Monitoring the Future survey in 2014, it was revealed that 1.8% of 12th graders used salvia in that past year.
In conclusion, salvia is not a very prevalent drug, nor is it exactly illegal. This makes it an enigma, complicated with mystery and further questions. There definitely is a scarcity of data on the drug itself at this time. However, the important thing to know in regards to it is even though it’s natural doesn’t necessarily make it the safest of hallucinogens. Like any psychedelic, or any drug for that matter, salvia has its own set of unique negative effects linked to using it.
