Salvia: more powerful than LSD, and legal

7zark7

7zark7

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[size=+1]Salvia: more powerful than LSD, and legal[/size]
Salvia divinorum - aka the 'YouTube drug' - is banned in many countries around the world, but not in Britain. Is it as harmless as its users claim?

In a cluttered living room in south London, Lee Hogan, a sound engineer and part-time disc jockey, perches on the edge of a cheap leather armchair and bends his head towards a glass water pipe. A friend, kneeling on the floor, holds the stem of the pipe and uses a cigarette lighter to burn a tea-smelling herb. The herb glows red, and as it does so, Hogan places his mouth over the aperture of the pipe (better known as a 'bong' to those in the know). He breathes in deeply, taking a lung-full of smoke.

It's the way that many people choose to inhale marijuana, but this weed is far more potent and far more harmful. Hogan is smoking salvia divinorum, a species of sage that also happens to be the most powerful hallucinogenic herb known to man. It's also perfectly legal.

It doesn't take long for the effects to take hold. Seconds after breathing in the smoke, Hogan leans back in his chair and lets out a deep, slightly manic laugh. He hugs himself and starts to giggle. The giggle then transforms into a whimper, which, in turn, becomes a series of high-pitched squeaks. He is trying to talk, but makes no sense whatsoever. Then, mouth hanging wide open, he looks around the room. His eyes have glazed over and he doesn't seem to know where he is. As he slowly manoeuvres himself in his chair, his head rocking from side to side, he looks like a man who has just been hit over the skull by an iron bar.

Full article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/5090078/Salvia-more-powerful-than-LSD-and-legal.html
 
!_MDMA_! said:
yep cuz 5 minute and eight hours trips really compare well
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heh. :) it's like saying, "Lightbulb brighter than sun" - when one is an inch from your eye and the other is 93 million miles away! :)
 
the most powerful hallucinogenic herb known to man
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BS, A good hit of DMT is WAY more potent than I've ever found Salvia.. Though does that count as a herb? honestly why even bother making articles like this, they imply it's dangerous yet people who try it are in the minority and people who enjoy it enough to take it on a regular basis are really in the minority and they're probably able to handle it well so it really isn't an issue.
 
journalists who post this crap should be forced to do Salvia. So that they could later re-affirm just how awesome and addicting this drug is.
 
PredatorVision said:
BS, A good hit of DMT is WAY more potent than I've ever found Salvia.. Though does that count as a herb? honestly why even bother making articles like this, they imply it's dangerous yet people who try it are in the minority and people who enjoy it enough to take it on a regular basis are really in the minority and they're probably able to handle it well so it really isn't an issue.
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Do you understand basic math? A good hit of DMT is measured is multiple milligrams. A good hit of salvinorin A is measured in hundredths of milligrams.
 
The article appears to have reader comments but I can't seem to click anything to access them. This article needs some balancing...
Is Discus broke or something?
 
Inedible said:
...his point is that salvinorin A is way more potent than DMT. I thought that was obvious.
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^ more potent per given weight is pretty irrelevant.
Drug users adjust for the weight by altering their doses.
People use a small amount of LSD, but a larger amount of cannabis, to get high.
If you use the whole "more potent per given weight" perspective,
then you might agree with those silly people who say "we have more powerful cannabis today than we did in the 1960's - 20 times more powerful! it is not the same old weed, but something you should protect your kids from."
They somehow can't guess that people probably smoke less today to adjust.

Calling salvia the most powerful psychedelic is the same type of thing.
Instead, let's recognize that salvia can take you out of "yourself" entirely. So can LSD and DMT.
So can cannabis. (Ever try eating 5+ grams of good hash?)
So can aspirin. etc.

Similarly, salvia, chewed, can have a mild, gentle, relaxing effect.

Of course, the duration of the effects may be radically different when Salvia takes you somewhere else vs. when LSD does so.

But the only way I can really think that the "more potent per given weight" perspective is relevant is when you are considering processing/moving (e.g. shipping or smuggling) a substance.
Not in the way that the fear-mongers are trying to sell - how far from consensus reality you will be taken if you use it.
 
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Not a bad article in that they do mention the possible medical benefits, also quote advocates and present counter-arguments to the "it killed my son so ban the stuff!" bit.

The main criticism I have is that the effects of psychedelic drugs are presented as something harmful, undesirable and useless. As if the only outcome of these type of drugs is harm or, if your lucky, you might get away with it. It would be nice if the author cited that recent study that showed that Savia showed promise in relieving depression etc and at least mentioned that people do, in fact, experience positive life-enhancing changes from using psychedelics.
http://healthland.time.com/2010/12/...ntists-and-regulators-interest/#ixzz17fJ3CNHp

Otherwise it's like saying that all fire is dangerous and harmful and should be banned. Fine, but we would have to live near the equator, give up on modern transport and radically change our diet if we did that. The difference between fire and psychedelics is that society already knows what benefits fire can bring.
 
Calling saliva the most powerful psychedelic is the same type of thing.
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No one said it was the most powerful psychedelic. They said it was the most potent psychedelic, which it may very well be (at least until something more potent comes along).

In terms of ability to throw you out of this world and into something entirely different and kind of amazing, Salvinorin A is quite possibly the most powerful psychedelic there is, but that's a difficult claim to consider since it's so different from classical psychedelics. It's pretty much tied with smoked DMT in my mind, but I imagine each side has its partisans.

If you use the whole "more potent per given weight" perspective,
then you might agree with those silly people who say "we have more powerful cannabis today than we did in the 1960's - 20 times more powerful! it is not the same old weed, but something you should protect your kids from."
They somehow can't guess that people probably smoke less today to adjust.
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Just because you disagree with the conclusions drawn from facts doesn't mean you should come up with your own.
Cannabis is almost definitely more potent today than it was fifty years ago. With the impressively sophisticated breeding and growing operations out there now, THC levels have steadily increased. There just wasn't anything like that in the 1960s. It's taken a while for the techniques and information to spread, but as of today, good Cannabis has way more THC than it used to.

I don't know about you, but virtually all of the stoners I know don't just smoke a bit until they're hit and stop. It seems like they just keep smoking until they're absolutely baked unless they run out. I would be surprised if in the 1960s people were smoking even two or three times what most of us would smoke today.

Maybe people have cut back some because of the high potency, but it seems fairly unlikely.

If you want to argue that cannabis potency is irrelevant, you should be saying that since THC is a partial agonist, there's a ceiling effect on it, so at some point you can keep smoking and not get any higher. That's more likely what's going on.

It's still only a partial rebuttal to those statements. Today's cannabis not only has much higher THC levels, it has much lower cannabidiol levels (especially taken relative to THC levels). From what research we have today, it seems that THC has a pro-psychosis effect, while cannabidiol has a pronounced anti-psychotic effect. It's quite possible that the seemingly recent development of cannabis-induced psychosis is actually the result of such THC-selective breeding. It's just another way man played around with nature and screwed things up.

Cannabis in 2010 is very different from Cannabis in 1960, and it's possible, even reasonable to believe that smoking high quality cannabis poses more danger than the lower quality material.

Additionally, when drugs are particularly potent you find many more overdoses. Most people can't accurately measure in tenths or hundredths of milligrams, so they wing it. It is an inherent danger of the drug? No, obviously it's a direct result of human inability or stupidity, but it's one that's unlikely to ever dissipate.
 
In terms of ability to throw you out of this world and into something entirely different and kind of amazing, Salvinorin A is quite possibly the most powerful psychedelic there is, but that's a difficult claim to consider since it's so different from classical psychedelics. It's pretty much tied with smoked DMT in my mind, but I imagine each side has its partisans.
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As I said earlier, it really depends on what you consider a full trip.
A thumbprint of LSD may "throw you out of this world" more completely (I wouldn't know).
Eating lots of cannabis can be extremely powerful as well - just as powerful as a strong acid trip (in my experience).
Taking ayahuasca can be just as strong as smoking DMT, in my experience.



Just because you disagree with the conclusions drawn from facts doesn't mean you should come up with your own.
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Conclusions are always drawn from facts through perspective.
Disagreeing with the conclusion doesn't necessarily mean disagreeing with the facts underlying it. One could be disagreeing with the perspective, as I was.


I don't know about you, but virtually all of the stoners I know don't just smoke a bit until they're hit and stop. It seems like they just keep smoking until they're absolutely baked unless they run out. I would be surprised if in the 1960s people were smoking even two or three times what most of us would smoke today.

Maybe people have cut back some because of the high potency, but it seems fairly unlikely.
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You may know a lot of "smoke-till-you-drop" stoners, but I don't know even one.
(Possibly due to age differences; I am middle-aged.)
Personally, I only very rarely need more than one hit of weed to get high, and I do stop there. If tolerance is an issue, I take two hits, and never need more.
People in the 60's smoked much, much more than this to get high (judging based on my own parents' stories ;))


Additionally, when drugs are particularly potent you find many more overdoses. Most people can't accurately measure in tenths or hundredths of milligrams, so they wing it. It is an inherent danger of the drug? No, obviously it's a direct result of human inability or stupidity, but it's one that's unlikely to ever dissipate.
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Good point. This can count as another way that gram-for-gram potency affects drug users. However, many of us, including me, can easily go an entire lifetime without an overdose.

My point was simply to point out the scare tactics of the original article, which made claims about the incredible potency of salvia, implying that this potency means that those who use the chemical go further from consensus reality and the chemical is therefore more dangerous.
While (smoked) salvia experiences do commonly take users very far from consensus reality, that is due to their method of administration and dosage choices, and not entirely an artifact of the chemical itself.
Some people enjoy intense experiences, and they might smoke 50x extract or eat 5 grams of hashish to get their intense high.
Some people prefer milder experiences, and they might prefer to chew several salvia leaves to get a milder high.
 
Kathy Chidester has no doubt that Prof Schifano's fears are justified. Three years ago, her 17-year-old son, Brett, committed suicide after smoking salvia.
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Of course, they have no evidence of salvia being harmful, so they they pull out some subjective bs like this which means nothing in terms of the relative safety of the drug.

If this was a valid claim for salvia being harmful, than why the FUCK isn't zoloft, or other similar antidepressants illegal yet, since my sisters boyfriend fucking KILLED HIMSELF not long after being prescribed zoloft (as well as countless other people)? Fucking bullshit article. Do they actually thing the relative safety of a drug determines whether or not it should be legal? Fuck no. Not only do other drugs cause suicides, but salvia is physiologically less toxic.

I couldn't even finish the article after reading that part, im too upset over this now. Bad(and good) memories. :(
 
great article

very informative...
I hadn't heard of anyone dying from salvia before... I don't think its the drug that killed him just making a fire inside a tent that did it but I can see how going crazy from excess salvia use 'made' him do it...

Reminds me of one time, when I was young and dumb, I tried getting high off "sleepy grass" (some grass they feed sheep that has DMT in it) and I made a little fire and held a blanket over me and inhaled it for a short time then got fresh air. I'm really lucky I didn't kill my self doing that dumb stuff...
This article really made me think.. kids can do some dumb things.
 
fryingsquirrel said:
Thank God salvia doesn't last 8 hours, that would be more like a chemical weapon.
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I'd be interested in exploring lower dose levels for an extended period of time.
You'd definitely have to be careful with dosing if it lasted that long of a time but it could be fun if you hit the right dose.
 
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