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Medicine Science

What It's Like To Smoke Salvia For Science (vice.com) 72

Posted by BeauHD from the first-of-its-kind dept.
Slashdot reader and Motherboard writer dmoberhaus was the final participant in the world's first brain imaging study on salvinorin A, the psychoactive chemical in salvia divinorum. He wrote about what it's like to participate in a psychedelic drug trial, and why he volunteered to smoke the world's least favorite hallucinogen for science. Here's an excerpt from his report: I was first introduced to salvia when I was a freshman in high school, and by the time I graduated I had smoked it about a dozen times. In retrospect, I would not describe a single one of those experiences as "pleasant," "enjoyable," or "fun." The last time I used salvia was almost a decade ago, and during that trip I became convinced that I had been irreversibly transformed into a suspension bridge. Good times. Despite a history of bad experiences with the substance, I volunteered for the Johns Hopkins salvinorin A study out of a suspicion that salvia probably had more to offer than what I experienced in high school. As a teen, each of my salvia experiences was under less than ideal conditions -- usually at a party or in a park after curfew. These sorts of situations lend themselves to paranoia and anxiety, which don't mix well with a strong dissociative hallucinogen. I figured if the settings were changed to a relaxed environment where I was surrounded by medical professionals, perhaps the nature of the trip would as well.
[...]
For the first salvia session I laid on the couch and donned an eye mask while [Manoj Doss, a postdoctoral researcher who specializes in memory] sat at the far end of the room with the smoking apparatus. The simple device consisted of a small glass bulb with a plastic hose connected to the top and was described to me as an "FDA-approved crack pipe." Along the bottom of the bulb was a barely noticeable residue of a white crystalline substance, which I was informed was one dose of 99.9% pure salvinorin A. I was given one end of the hose and instructed to begin a 45-second long inhale as Doss vaporized the salvinorin A with a butane torch. At the same time, Clifton began to play a new age soundtrack through speakers and came to put his hand on my leg to ground me during the trip. When the 45 seconds were up, I exhaled and felt the effects of the salvia almost immediately.

The first thing I noticed was the feeling of my body dissolving. Shortly after I began feeling the physical effects, the hallucinations began. I felt as though my head had split in two and a patterned stream began flowing from both sides of my face. This stream was a "harlequin pattern" of large brown and white diamonds that flowed away from me and began to form the "boundary" of an infinite three-dimensional space. These diamonds continued to tessellate to an infinite point and I felt as though I were suspended above this expanse, hanging like a figure head hangs off the bow of a ship. Throughout the trip, I remember being overcome by the profound beauty of the scene I was witnessing. If I tried to focus, I could remember that in base reality I was in a room in Johns Hopkins, but that didn't alleviate the feeling of being in an entirely separate reality, as though I were sitting in a container that cordoned me off from the 'normal' world. In summary, Oberhaus said "the experience was quite pleasant." He added: "I only had a brief moment of panic when it seemed like one of the notes in the new age soundtrack had been held for far too long. I began to worry that time was dilating and that I might be trapped in this space for eternity. When the music progressed to the next note, however, the panic quickly subsided and time resumed its normal cadence."

Oberhaus then took a higher dose the following day in an MRI machine. While the first dose of salvia in the machine didn't produce anything special, likely because it was a placebo, a very low dose, or that he had made some error during inhalation, the second dose in the machine resulted in a slightly less intense trip than the very first dose. "The reason, I think, was that the loud and persistent sounds of the MRI machine kept me tethered to the outside world and I was unable to fully immerse myself in the world that the salvia was generating," writes Oberhaus. "Still, I would describe it as a pleasant and visually striking experience."
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What It's Like To Smoke Salvia For Science More

What It's Like To Smoke Salvia For Science

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  • WTF? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Tuesday March 05, 2019 @10:26PM (#58222742) Homepage Journal

    WTF is this? Who cares? Some dopey Millennial took some hipster drug as a kid and got a job at Vice writing blogs at $100 a pop and gets paid to take drug trials because he can't make his rent.

  • Saliva? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Zaelath ( 2588189 ) on Tuesday March 05, 2019 @10:37PM (#58222762)

    I can't be the only one that read about 1/3 of TFS before working out I'd be reading saliva instead of salvia... /mutter

    • Nope, same with me. Except it took quite a bit longer to realize it. It almost made sense as a slang term for a drug.

  • How the fuck is there a new hallucinogen and I haven't heard about it? I must be getting old.

    The last time I used salvia was almost a decade ago, and during that trip I became convinced that I had been irreversibly transformed into a suspension bridge.

    Well, sign me the hell up.
     

    • It's not particularly new, and was apparently used historically by medicine men types. You used to be able to buy it in head shops about a decade ago, even in states that banned just about everything else, but eventually they all wised up and banned salvia as well. I've only tried it once, but it was pretty good shit. It's utterly strange in that you're going to have an out of your mind trip, but it only lasts around 10 minutes and you come down fairly quick. I think the people who have bad experiences eith

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      I had been irreversibly transformed into a suspension bridge.

      That was the good news. The bad news: You became Galloping Gertie [youtube.com]

    • After you take a hit, it's similar to the wa-na-na-na-na-na endless loop like you get from nitrous, then you get shrinking tunnel vision, and as you go from seeing with your eyes, to seeing with your mind, it feels like someone is running your face through a zipper.

      It seems like you can feel the salviated (lol) blood make its way through your bloodstream. Sort of a slightly warm feeling progressing through you, but when it makes it to your capillaries, it feels like someone blasted you with a flamethrower,

  • This guy sounds like a straight edge fool.
  • Sometime in the 90s I had read about salvia divinorum on the druggy side of the internet. A few months later I was wandering around one of those witchcraft stores with a girlfriend and noticed they had diviner's sage - the literal translation of salvia divinorum. I asked some witch lady if that was salvia and she said "No, but they have some across the street." They gentleman there told me it was to be used for incense only but that it would be necessary to use a torch style lighter . . . on the incense.
  • ...I do not inhale [youtube.com] ?
  • I watched some friends of mine use it and decided it's not for me.

  • How about actually providing a summary instead of copy pasting a bunch of TFA?

  • The benefits are that you are not consuming all the products of burning, that posses almost all the negatives from the smoking process. As for now, if you to continue smoking, it's better to vape. But you have to get some quality vape products like www.deliciousnimbus.com [slashdot.org] that has the good stuff. Give it a try tho.
  • The benefits are that you are not consuming all the products of burning, that posses almost all the negatives from the smoking process. As for now, if you to continue smoking, it's better to vape. But you have to get some quality vape products like www.deliciousnimbus.com [deliciousnimbus.com] that has the good stuff. Give it a try tho.

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