By Elizabeth Roberts > Sophomore > University of Maryland /  Photo by Jon Dean > Savannah College of Art & Design

In her friend’s room, everything was made out of tiny puzzle pieces. Her sight was unclear and everything had a jagged edge. She walked out of the room and began to cry because she was in such a peaceful state. It became difficult to talk because her muscles felt like they had stopped working. When the roller coaster ride ended, she thought she was in kindergarten, giggling nonstop while struggling to stand up so she could become the line leader.

These were the compiled experiences from Anna Nickerson*, a senior at Ramapo College, dealing with delusions under the effects of salvia, a hallucinogenic drug that is legal in 43 states, although many are attempting to pass legislation to make its use a felony.

A mind-altering herb that was discovered in Oaxaca, Mexico, salvia isn’t supposed to be physically addictive, but there has been little research done. The drug is relatively new to the market and is often compared to acid because it involves seeing false images and experiencing unrealistic events. “In a salvia trip, the hallucinations all appear really real, whereas with LSD the hallucination is very colored and improbable things appear,” said Fabien Marot, a freshman at Chabrillan College in Chabrillan, France.

Salvia trips involve a mixed bag of hallucinations: sometimes they are positive, while other times people experience apocalyptic feelings. With either, physical manifestations of the salvia’s effects include temporary feelings of a loss of limbs, dizziness and general hysteria. “In my first experience with salvia, my spirit and vision had trouble, and I couldn’t move my body for two or three minutes,” said Marot. “I trusted that my body was a candle, my head had burst into flames, and everything I saw around me burned.”

It is common for many hallucinations to result in simulation life-death situations. “I had a bad trip once and thought the world was ending. Everything I saw was wrapping itself up and falling inwards like the world was imploding,” Brandon Goetz, a sophomore at Radford University, said.

Ken Weinberg, Director for Outpatient Services at Mountain Manor Treatment Center, has had patients that have gotten in trouble with the law because of intense salvia hallucinations. “They felt so weighed down by their clothes that they ripped them all off and got arrested for disturbing the peace,” Weinberg said.

Jim Weber, the director of the Drugs, Alcohol and You program at Colorado State University, had seen zero cases of salvia users in 1999, but this year, 5 percent of all drug related cases that came to him had to do with salvia. He believes that the biggest issue with this drug is the psychological dependence that students can develop. “Ninety percent of any and all addiction is ultimately psychological, which is far more enduring and powerful than ‘physical’ dependency by itself,” Weber said. “I’ve seen an increase in salvia usage…as the word gets out that it can make you trip and that it is still legal to buy, curious minds want to know. Lots of times they later regret it.”

Michael McCourt, a sophomore at Temple University, disagrees with Weber’s opinion on psychological dependency. “It certainly didn’t affect me physically and perhaps the only lasting ‘mental’ effects that I had was the lucid feeling that I had expanded my brain to areas it had never reached before,” McCourt said.

John Bosley, Clinical Director of the drug treatment center Junction Inc., believes that the potential for danger is immense. “Salvia can affect oxygenation and irritate your lung tissues. Any type of irritation can lead to inflammation, which in turn plays a role in cellular mutation a.k.a. lung cancer,” Bosley stated. Salvia can also cause serious misjudgments: “…you might think you’re immune from falling from far heights. If you choose to jump, you die,” Bosely explained.

Edward Keats*, a junior who left New York University, doesn’t recommend salvia. “Real trippers are the people that want to escape reality…I just wanted a high,” Keats said. “[With salvia] I felt out of control. Everything was imploding in on me and the world was coming to an end in a split second… I was scared shitless. I didn’t think I was going to live after.”

As the American government’s proclaimed War on Drugs may be coming to a close on certain products, many wonder why salvia is so widely decriminalized when it’s considered to be a “harder” drug than marijuana. “There hasn’t been enough tests on salvia. Similar to how the tobacco industry used for 60 years the ‘we don’t have proof so nothing is wrong’ mentality, the salvia followers are using the evidence that absence of evidence is evident of an absence of problems,” Weber said. “However, this just means that we don’t have proof yet, it doesn’t mean that there isn’t real danger to salvia usage.” 

*Names have been changed.

More Facts on Salvia

According to a 2006 national survey by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, an estimated 1.8 million people age 12 or older had used salvia at least once in their lifetime. However, there has not been any more recent national polling on salvia usage, so the current statistic is unknown, although usage has been projected to dramatically increase if salvia continues to be legal.

• Salvia is generally used as a dried plant material that is smoked.
• Relative strengths of salvia are designated as 1x, 5x, 10x and 20x, with 1x being the least powerful, and 20x being the most undiluted, and therefore powerful.
• The effects begin after 30 seconds, peak at 5 to 10 minutes and then leave the body after 30 minutes.
• A case study by William R. Wolowich published by Medscape.com reveals that salvia has relatively low toxicity compared with other hallucinogens like MDMA and found no evidence of physical damage.