Thanks for the reply.
of course there are distinct but very related: you got dissociative drugs that can cause dissociation as a state of mind. The former can produce the latter.
"...dissociatives are unique in that they do so in such a way that they produce hallucinogenic effects, which may include sensory deprivation, dissociation (psychology) , hallucinations, and dream-like states or trances..."
from above Wiki article
While I accept your and Wikipedia's take on the semantics, and I think dissociative in the pharmacological sense is
probably the best word we have at the moment, the "hallucinations, and dream-like states or trances" of dissociative identity disorder, depersonalisation disorder, and dissociative fugue are not the same experiences as you get from taking dissociative drugs. Not even close. Depersonalisation/Derealisation disorder and fugue state does not cause "hallucinations" in the psychedelic or deliriant sense (or any sense), and the dreamlike quality of experience has in common only the element of surreality.
The first part of the definition given by wikipedia is that they "reduce or block signals to the conscious mind from other parts of the brain", which is also the action of everything from analgesics to a stroke. It's a broad term that by that definition includes Salvia, but the reason PCP, K and DXM are the most commonly brought up is because of their use as dissociative anaesthetics.
Another class, deliriants, are strictly classified by affinity, but the psychological state they produce, delirium, is described to by almost exactly the same set of words, It is still possible to tell dissociation and delerium apart, because the latter involves delusions. Like that the world is unzipping.
Salvia felt quite "real" to me, the only dreamlike aspect being the absence of anything actually real. Dissociative mental disorder, which I have had the misfortune of experiencing for a while, is like being stuck in a hazy bubble, where your knowledge of reality is intact, but the tangibility of it is gone. It's not an altered state of consciousness with the complexity and feature-richness of drugs. I do compare Salvia to DP/DR occasionally though, I think the terror both produce are kind of alike.
On Wikipedia though... it also describes hallucinogens as drugs which cause "subjective changes in perception, thought, emotion and consciousness." which is the effect of any psychoactive drug, yet we rarely class drugs like alcohol which certainly alter at least two of those as hallucinogens. On the other hand, the Wikipedia article on dissociative refers to LSD as having dissociative effects at the bottom.
The issue I'm trying to raise here is that people use "I feel dissociated" (referring to the psychological sense of "a partial or complete disruption of the normal integration of a person’s conscious or psychological functioning" (wikipedia)) as a justification for classifying salvia as a dissociative, while ignoring the fact that it produces an experience dissimilar to the classic dissociative anaesthetics, who everyone agrees are dissociatives (rather than psychedelics).
I won't argue that Salvia's broadly a dissociative, definitively a hallucinogen, and generally a psychedelic (in the greek sense), as well as causing temporary delusions, but that tells us nothing about its effects or why we should group it together, as you say, with other drugs of the same class. That's why I believe debating the applicability of the term is meaningless in this context.
nonsense. Salvia is different indeed, but it bares some typical characteristics of dissociative drugs, among other things an anesthetic feel and dreamy-like consciousness loss.
The fact that Salvia does not remind you anything is one thing. Sally D does not equal 20x or 40x extracts. Breaking through is one thing and smoking x80 is another. Going in too fast will understandably created a confused, alien feeling. Some people make something of it, some not. Most remember few shit from their near amnesiac doses anyway
But MDMA also produces a "dream-like" state and an anaesthetic feel for a lot of people, and it is also widely considered a psychedelic for some, yet still has its own class which it shares with MDEA and MDA (entactogen-empathogen). There's a post somewhere else here where someone says they get the same effects from Amanita Muscaria as a low dose of LSD - assuming he's telling the truth and isn't the only one, why are we so reluctant to call AM a psychedelic?
You are probably right though - unless a whole class of Salvia-like drugs emerges with effects consistently distinct from classic anaesthetics, the term dissociative will be used.
I still feel Salvia requires a classification of its own beyond merely dissociative, as it's a vague term inexhaustively characterising its effects, and I think a group with K, PCP and DXM (and if we believe wikipedia, LSD and MDMA and dissociative disorders) is a mischaracterisation of both. I did try plain leaf (I actually still have a greenhouse full of em, but I'm sadly no longer able to consume it). The spectrum of effects from quidding up to smoking extracts I noticed didn't bring ketamine or DXM to mind one bit. Trouble is, I have such trouble affording any general character to the effects that I can't even imagine what you'd call it. It seems
to me to encompass the effects of all classes while being way more different than any of those within the classes. I'd even go so far as to say DMT was more like LSD than Salvia was like DXM, at any dose or plateau (a lot of people will disagree with me here)
On the other hand, if you get quite similar experiences, and not just similar descriptions of experiences, from ketamine and Salvia then my entire argument is moot and I'm sorry for wasting your time. It is certainly strange that there's consistency of effects (the ladders, zips, wheels, gravity, extra dimensions) but less of comparison. There's someone in this thread who even compares it to cigarettes and another who compares it to alcohol. That tells me we're dealing with something people are finding hard to relate to anything.
