Salvia Experience #3
Dose: 1 halfway lungful of Salvia 15x standardized (I didn't get it hot enough to get the full effect because the wind kept on putting the flame out on my lighter).
As I get ready to light the Salvia, I have two friends sitting on my left in comfortable wooden lawn chairs. Ahead of me and across to my right is a vista of college dorm buildings (off about a hundred feet away), with the windows of many a room sparkling light out into the night.
I am sitting "Indian-style" on the grass with my shoes and glasses off. There is a cool breeze in the pleasant September evening air.
As I light the Salvia, a gust of wind comes along, and I have a hard time keeping a flame on the Salvia. I finally get a little bit of it hot enough and suck it in and hold it for 20 seconds. It probably wasn't a full hit, though.
About 10 seconds after exhaling, I noticed that familiar effect of my vision beginning to double. Points of light seem to drift apart, or sort of, I guess, like many others describe the effect, "vibrate."
Then I feel a familiar "logarhythmic narrowing of awareness," as I've now come to think of it. I'll sketch out a general scheme of this, and then point out how far I got this time on this logarhythmic scale of awareness.
I also want to point out that, as I was experiencing the effects of this scale during this last time, there seemed to be nothing necessarily profound about it. In fact, its impression on me was so straightforward and seemingly without ambiguity, that it was almost appalling, as if I were to say to myself, "This is IT??? This is the secret to Salvia spacetime, that these tufts of grass and all other physical things are correlated with these proportional square-meter time-slice sandwiches??? This is too simple!!!" In fact, I think I did say similar things to my friend during the experience. So, the point is, even if the subsequent passages seemed profound or complicated or otherworldly or whatnot, in fact that was not at all how I experienced it. As I experienced it, it all was appallingly intuitive and almost prosaic, as if I didn't have to think about it at all, but could just look at the grass and self-evidently see that our awareness of physical dimensions scales proportionally to the size of the time-slice sandwich moments that we work with in order to process time and experience it.
The first scale, at 1 meter, would be the awareness one has of the world in one's ordinary, baseline state. That certain level of capabilities for thinking of things not immediately present, for thinking of things in the past and future, and for thinking in abstractions (like, thinking in terms of concepts like, "homogeneous," "liberalism," "nutrition," etc.) that one ordinarily has.
I say that this level of awareness coincides with "1 meter" because there really is a ridiculously simple physical correspondence, when I am on Salvia, between the scale of one's visual field of view/sense of one's self in terms of physical dimensions, and the scale of awareness and abstract capabilities (how general and broad you can think in terms of).
Time also has a very strict, almost mechanical correspondance with the aforementioned scales. At the normal 1 meter scale, 1 subjectively-experienced second = 1 second.
At the 0.1 meter level, one's sense of awareness zooms down into the individual moment. Not only does one feel about 1/10th the size as previously, but one can also only think about 1/10th as broadly as before. Concepts like "world peace," "liberalism," "the carbon cycle," etc. recede into an unreachable higher dimension). One's awareness is confined to that invdividual moment, and what is immediately present around one's self.
Sometimes this moment can become symbolized by some physical object. For me during this last time, the moment became symbolized by a sort of yellow Las Vegas neon sign, shaped only into the letter "A." It was not so much a neon sign, as it was a wire frame of the letter A, about literally 10 cm wide at the base, sitting there on the grass, and glowing yellow. When I say, "right there on the grass," I don't mean to say that I "saw" the letter sitting there. Rather, this idea of the letter made its presence known to me right there physically on the grass, through a sort of 6th sense for sensing physical objects without seeing them, but instead feeling them (but not feeling from contact with them, but *feeling* the light coming off of it with physical force on my body, rather than just seeing the light). It was glowing eagerly and in somewhat amusingly sleazy pawn-shop-type of fashion. Perhaps its sleazy self-promotion was an apt metaphor for the culture of self-promotion here at Harvard, which may have occurred to me as I sat and looked at the dorm buildings with their sparklingly lighted windows, indicating students hard at work on the inside, polishing their careers and their marketable image.
Like I said, this "letter A" arrested my attention onto it such that in no way did I have the sense that I might have been imagining it or that I could have ignored its presence. It was, as far as I can tell, an unbidden returning idea from my last Salvia trip, and it simply ordered my attention onto itself, come hell or high water).
Concomitant with this zooming in of awareness is a shrinking of the passage of time. At the 0.1 meter level, 1 subjectively-experienced second lasts only 0.1 seconds in the "real world." So one must pass through about 10 seconds to pass through 1 second in the real world. This, however, is only an approximation because how much time one gets through and how soon one is able to zoom out into the broader 1 meter level of awareness depends upon how soon one is able to grasp the totality of essential detail at the 0.1 meter level. And while one is looking at a smaller objective area, one also sees the detail of this area magnified by 10 times. So there is just as much "going on" at this level as at previous levels, and just as much subjective time at one's disposal to investigate what's going on.
You can see how neatly the time and distance scale together. At the 1 meter level, if one's investigation of reality can be symbolized by a strip of grass, then in 1 subjective-second of reality (1 second in the outside world), one might be able to investigate the essential details of 1 subjective-meter (1 objective meter) of the strip of grass.
At 0.1 meters: in 1 subjective-second of reality (0.1 seconds in the outside world), one might be able to investigate the essential details of 1 subjective-meter (0.1 objective meters) of the strip of grass. Hence, in 10 subjective seconds (1 second), one could investigate the essential details of 10 subjective-meters (1 objective meter). The same real-world time/area ratio as when one is normal. It just seems to take longer when one is on Salvia, and one gets to analyze that 1 meter strip of grass in more detail. Unfortunately, this intensified investigation of reality can only be used in conjunction with progressively narrower levels of awareness. It would be nice if one could analyze the concepts of "liberalism," or "photosynthesis" or whatnot with this intensified subjective duration and level of detail, but the more you intensify the level of detail and shrink the passage of time, the narrower the realm of awareness that one can access, by mechanical necessity, as it were. There seems to be a constant "rate" of experience that humans can access. If we could step outwards from our usual selves, where 1 subjective meter = 10 meters, where we are larger entities and looking out over the world with a broader perspective (and even greater ability for abstraction), by necessity we would only have 1/10th of the time to analyze things, and the details that we would be able to investigate would only be 1/10th as fine-grained.
At the 0.01 meter level, one's sense of awareness zooms down to the level of an ant crawling along the wire frame of the letter A. (The object could be different in each case, but the level of scale, I think, is consistent). Time effectively passes yet another 10 times more slowly, and one can notice 10 times the amount of detail on the wire frame (while losing awareness of the lawn and only being vaguely aware that this wire frame that one is investigating is part of a larger letter "A.") The sense of revelation that I often get from Salvia stems from me investigating, for example, this wire-frame level in enough of its essential details that I suddenly notice that its curves and twists form a larger letter "A." Suddenly I zoom out in quite literal physical terms, and my awareness likewise zooms out. I can then analyze the letter "A" and its immediate environs, and after a moment I'll discover that the letter "A" is just symbolizing one moment in a larger world that also includes much larger, broader things like college dorm buildings, lawns, world peace, liberalism, and other larger physical objects and abstract concepts. This is the experience I often get when coming down from the peak of Salvia. Whereas going up to the peak is like zooming in and in into a fractal, coming down from the peak is like zooming out and suddenly becoming aware of broader (but less detailed) levels of awareness. The physical substances/symbolisms can change (a letter "A," a "wheel," etc.), but the scale and traversing of this logarhythmic scale (and the resulting revelations upon zooming out to each next logarhythmic level) remain the same.
I found some fractal videos on youtube that sort of show what it's like. But it doesn't happen in the context of a made-up landscape of pretty colors, but rather with usually very ordinary and laughably prosaic objects, the idea for which one senses or appropriates from one's environment. And the effect of the zooming in and out does not apply to the visual sense alone, as in these videos, but rather to one's order of magnitude of conceptual awareness (breadth and detail being in inverse proportion):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuyRCfhCZT0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tRdLD6vh3g
Another good example would be the tidal pool stage of Spore:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGHi0RqhOno
Whenever you eat food and grow bigger, and the camera zooms out, and the really big squid that seemed vague and murky in the background suddenly comes into your level of detail and awareness, that's what coming down off of Salvia is like, I guess.
What might a 0.001 meter level be like? I don't know, maybe a flea crawling around on the ant that's crawling around on the wire frame letter "A." At this level, you'd effectively be forced to spend 1000 times the amount of time to study stuff in 1000 times as much detail as normally. You would not be aware of the larger world, the letter "A," or even the texture and curves of the wire frame that made up the letter "A." One would only be aware of the geography of the ant that one was crawling around on.
One could easily imagine further levels. Being a bacterium on the flea. Being a molecule in the bacterium. Being an electron orbiting in a molecule. Imagine having to sepnd 1 million subjective seconds (just 1 second in the outside world) figuring out that this molecule of which one is aware is part of a larger assemblage of molecules in an organism. And imagine spending 100,000 subjective seconds at this level (1 second in real life) in order to figure out that this organism is feeding off a larger organism. And so on. One can see how mentally exhausting it could become, the constant revelations, the farther in you go. The real question is, is there a limit to how deep and narrow one's awareness can plunge???
Anyways, in terms of this night's experience, I didn't even make it fully down to the level of the letter "A." I was still aware of the letter "A" within the larger context of the lawn and the college dorm buildings and such. In a way, I think it was worthwhile to have a less powerful trip this time in order to not get so wrapped up in these deeper layers, so that I could get more of an eagle-eye view of things and verbalize it all in real time as I was witnessing it and figuring it all out (this time, I did not at any point lose my language capabilities, which shows that my awareness was still at a broad enough of a level to be aware of things like "time" and "distance" so that I could discuss them.) At one point I felt myself swooping down, or sort of getting my awareness sucked down to the level of the letter "A," but before I got there I gently drifted back up, and it was then that I knew for sure that I had just past the peak and that I could feel some relief that the experience was not going to be too intense this time.
Compare to: the last time, where I really did, at one point, get down to that ant-on-a-wire-frame level (although last time the objects were a smiling sun and a big 50ft. tall wall/box (or at least it momentarily seemed 50ft. tall, for the reasons I've just explained).
Now that I have some understanding of the general mechanics of my own Salvia trips, I do not have quite as much trepidation about doing it again. I just know that I have to be prepared for spending a million mental seconds investigating essential details of the universe at a much lower level of awareness (because, like I said, I get the (somewhat alarming) feeling when I am locked into the drug that zooming out back to the broader levels of awareness is contingent not just on the passive passage of time, but on me actively using that (dilated) time in order to *discover* each level's situatedness within a larger level, so that, for example, if I didn't bother to analyze whether the wire frame might be part of something bigger like a letter, I might never regain awareness of the wider world beyond that wire frame!)
When I do it next time, I'll also need to be prepared for possibly multiple revelations, depending on how far I go in and how many times I'll undergo that logarhythmic zooming-out as I discover how each successive layer of conceptual reality is nested within the one(s) beyond it.
I wish myself and all others goodluck in probing these deeper depths of awareness. And perhaps there is a way to break through, to achieve such a deep awareness that one senses one's self as simultaneously vanishingly miniscule/nothing, and yet the totality of all there is in the universe all at the same time, and suddenly perhaps one can gain a much braoder awareness when one punches through this threshhold. Perhaps we'll see....
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Salvia Tron-scape
I wrote this about 20 minutes after the trip.
Dose: 1 full breath of 15x standardized.
==========
So, I'm just coming off of it right now (did it about 20 minutes ago and still feel a little of that weird woosiness). But I want to get this down as quickly as possible.
So, my friends and I were down by the river. I was sitting on a park bench, looking at the moonlight. Before I even got to exhaling the smoke, I started seeing double of the moon. Then I got a slight swirling in my head/vision, like when one wakes up drunk with a really bad hangover (but I was not nauseous). As I put the pipe down, I became very very very small. Like, 2 cm vs. my friend who was sitting next to me as like 50ft tall. At first I couldn't recognize what this big square black wall thing was (and it was outlined in yellow (perhaps from being silhouetted by passing car lights)). The wall had a cartoonish sun/yellow-brown happy face in the corner smiling at me (I have since figured out that this might have stemmed from me looking at the pipe that I was setting down (the happy-face sun), next to my friend's thighs and back (which would have formed the square wall) as he was sitting there). I could feel myself returning to a familiar physical reality, similar to the last Salvia experience, and I had a whole conversation with myself about ("Oh, this is exactly the same place as last time! Now I understand what some of these accounts on the Internet that I read are talking about, with yourself returning to your own particular special place on some subsequent occasions." I also started noticing the time-distortion, and I started saying to myself, "Whoa, man, this is gonna take a long time, good thing I don't have to take anymore...I know it's gotta wear off soon..." But my friend is telling me that I need to take another hit, and I'm thinking, "Whoa, no way, man, the time-dilation would be so bad in that case, I'd go through a whole mental lifetime, grow old, and die psychologically, before I got to come back..." Then the phone rang (in reality, about 5 seconds after I had set the pipe down--notice this whole conversation with myself and then with my friend had taken place in that span of time), and I remember feeling a fear just on the edge of myself that my arm was going to reach down against my will, open the phone, and that whoever was on the phone would convince me to do another hit, thus banishing me to this realm forever (psychologically speaking)," so I said to my friends, "Don't answer it! Just let it go! Just let it go!" Then my friends suggested that I stand up and walk around a bit. That I found not difficult at all physically, and I was finding it to be a trivial, pointless exercise, a diversion of my attention from more interesting matters. Because what I was now seeing was vast 3-d solar planar surface strobing of objects in 3 dimensions, like this:
http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/thumb_218/1197672403qluBQP.jpg
But imagine the forwards/backwards dimension stretched to infinity with a continued solid surface. These 3-d solid planar strobings to infinity were not just shooting out of one forwards/backwards plane, but would shoot out of anything that I focused my attention onto, and would sometimes overlap (the strobings from the more forefront objects would strobe back onto and cover up the objects more in the background). The strobing was all headed off in the same direction---to my right, along the way the bench was sitting. My friends suggested walking in that direction, just to see if I could do it, which I found halfway annoying, and halfway bemusing because it was such a trivial thing to do (and I told them this much), because out that direction was just more of the solid-color planar strobing, whereas what I really wanted to pay attention to and contemplate was the interface of the 3 dimensions on the objects themselves. I was bemused because I realized how I was going to be able to explain none of this to my friends right then, and how they would have no idea of how trivial their recommendations and expectations were compared to the astoundingness of my reality and my inquiries at that moment. I felt a tad bit of pride at that moment from this. Nevertheless, just to prove to them that I could walk and whatnot, I hopped around and talked about how I felt ready to run a marathon or something, if need be, just to show off. Just about then the strobing was going away (the time dilation had started to wear off as I was getting up, although as I was getting up it was still with me, and it became very clear to me how the mechanics of walking were possible on Salvia. True, one had no coordination, as if one were drunk. But the time-dilation was such that if one started to lose one's balance, one had like 5 mental seconds to realize what was going on and correct one's body consciously, as if in slow motion, before one had stumbled any). I sat back down and tried to explain everything, with mainly just the weird woosiness now persisting...but also with many fake-come-downs interspersed (which sort of felt like fake-wake-ups from dreams). What I mean is, a sudden ratching "down" back into normal consciousness, except one discovers that one isn't *really* totally back until one feels the next ratcheting down, and so on, for many times, with a much smaller magnitude each, this time (whereas last time, there were 4 or so of these ratchetings, each one corresponding to some searing burst of monumental revelation and a rotation of the then-circle geometry (this time, a huge square was the center of my attention at first, and it did not rotate periodically like the wheel from last time).
This time was definitely less extreme than last time. I did not forget who I was. I only forgot where I was for a moment (when I was first looking at the 50ft. black wall, outlined in yellow (that I would later see in 3-d strobe planes at a different angle and shrunken scale)), and throughout I was able to keep thoughts together in language in my own head (but trying to say them at first seemed to take forever physically, like swimming through molasses, and just didn't seem worth it to divert my attention to that, rather than observing what was going on). In the beginning of this time, I was even able to think back to last time on Salvia and notice that things were really quite similar (and I even think now that there was that smiling sun on the first time, of which I got reminded in this time, but that may have been just a memory manufactured in the moment during my 2nd time, by extrapolating from what else was similar with last time (the time distortion). But this still felt fuckin' extreme...like a clear reminder that my goal would be to maximize the ratio of "mental replay potential"/"Salvia-state mentally-experienced time." Feeling like things are lasting an eternity is certainly not a good feeling. But it's necessary to achieve the vision, which one can visually replay in one's mind, at a safe distance from it, and then later solidify into words the experience to allow your imagination to decode it later when your mind has lost the hi-fidelity image of it...which is what I am doing now, in fact!
Dose: 1 full breath of 15x standardized.
==========
So, I'm just coming off of it right now (did it about 20 minutes ago and still feel a little of that weird woosiness). But I want to get this down as quickly as possible.
So, my friends and I were down by the river. I was sitting on a park bench, looking at the moonlight. Before I even got to exhaling the smoke, I started seeing double of the moon. Then I got a slight swirling in my head/vision, like when one wakes up drunk with a really bad hangover (but I was not nauseous). As I put the pipe down, I became very very very small. Like, 2 cm vs. my friend who was sitting next to me as like 50ft tall. At first I couldn't recognize what this big square black wall thing was (and it was outlined in yellow (perhaps from being silhouetted by passing car lights)). The wall had a cartoonish sun/yellow-brown happy face in the corner smiling at me (I have since figured out that this might have stemmed from me looking at the pipe that I was setting down (the happy-face sun), next to my friend's thighs and back (which would have formed the square wall) as he was sitting there). I could feel myself returning to a familiar physical reality, similar to the last Salvia experience, and I had a whole conversation with myself about ("Oh, this is exactly the same place as last time! Now I understand what some of these accounts on the Internet that I read are talking about, with yourself returning to your own particular special place on some subsequent occasions." I also started noticing the time-distortion, and I started saying to myself, "Whoa, man, this is gonna take a long time, good thing I don't have to take anymore...I know it's gotta wear off soon..." But my friend is telling me that I need to take another hit, and I'm thinking, "Whoa, no way, man, the time-dilation would be so bad in that case, I'd go through a whole mental lifetime, grow old, and die psychologically, before I got to come back..." Then the phone rang (in reality, about 5 seconds after I had set the pipe down--notice this whole conversation with myself and then with my friend had taken place in that span of time), and I remember feeling a fear just on the edge of myself that my arm was going to reach down against my will, open the phone, and that whoever was on the phone would convince me to do another hit, thus banishing me to this realm forever (psychologically speaking)," so I said to my friends, "Don't answer it! Just let it go! Just let it go!" Then my friends suggested that I stand up and walk around a bit. That I found not difficult at all physically, and I was finding it to be a trivial, pointless exercise, a diversion of my attention from more interesting matters. Because what I was now seeing was vast 3-d solar planar surface strobing of objects in 3 dimensions, like this:
http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/thumb_218/1197672403qluBQP.jpg
But imagine the forwards/backwards dimension stretched to infinity with a continued solid surface. These 3-d solid planar strobings to infinity were not just shooting out of one forwards/backwards plane, but would shoot out of anything that I focused my attention onto, and would sometimes overlap (the strobings from the more forefront objects would strobe back onto and cover up the objects more in the background). The strobing was all headed off in the same direction---to my right, along the way the bench was sitting. My friends suggested walking in that direction, just to see if I could do it, which I found halfway annoying, and halfway bemusing because it was such a trivial thing to do (and I told them this much), because out that direction was just more of the solid-color planar strobing, whereas what I really wanted to pay attention to and contemplate was the interface of the 3 dimensions on the objects themselves. I was bemused because I realized how I was going to be able to explain none of this to my friends right then, and how they would have no idea of how trivial their recommendations and expectations were compared to the astoundingness of my reality and my inquiries at that moment. I felt a tad bit of pride at that moment from this. Nevertheless, just to prove to them that I could walk and whatnot, I hopped around and talked about how I felt ready to run a marathon or something, if need be, just to show off. Just about then the strobing was going away (the time dilation had started to wear off as I was getting up, although as I was getting up it was still with me, and it became very clear to me how the mechanics of walking were possible on Salvia. True, one had no coordination, as if one were drunk. But the time-dilation was such that if one started to lose one's balance, one had like 5 mental seconds to realize what was going on and correct one's body consciously, as if in slow motion, before one had stumbled any). I sat back down and tried to explain everything, with mainly just the weird woosiness now persisting...but also with many fake-come-downs interspersed (which sort of felt like fake-wake-ups from dreams). What I mean is, a sudden ratching "down" back into normal consciousness, except one discovers that one isn't *really* totally back until one feels the next ratcheting down, and so on, for many times, with a much smaller magnitude each, this time (whereas last time, there were 4 or so of these ratchetings, each one corresponding to some searing burst of monumental revelation and a rotation of the then-circle geometry (this time, a huge square was the center of my attention at first, and it did not rotate periodically like the wheel from last time).
This time was definitely less extreme than last time. I did not forget who I was. I only forgot where I was for a moment (when I was first looking at the 50ft. black wall, outlined in yellow (that I would later see in 3-d strobe planes at a different angle and shrunken scale)), and throughout I was able to keep thoughts together in language in my own head (but trying to say them at first seemed to take forever physically, like swimming through molasses, and just didn't seem worth it to divert my attention to that, rather than observing what was going on). In the beginning of this time, I was even able to think back to last time on Salvia and notice that things were really quite similar (and I even think now that there was that smiling sun on the first time, of which I got reminded in this time, but that may have been just a memory manufactured in the moment during my 2nd time, by extrapolating from what else was similar with last time (the time distortion). But this still felt fuckin' extreme...like a clear reminder that my goal would be to maximize the ratio of "mental replay potential"/"Salvia-state mentally-experienced time." Feeling like things are lasting an eternity is certainly not a good feeling. But it's necessary to achieve the vision, which one can visually replay in one's mind, at a safe distance from it, and then later solidify into words the experience to allow your imagination to decode it later when your mind has lost the hi-fidelity image of it...which is what I am doing now, in fact!
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Aspects of Salvia media coverage that make me laugh and cry
1. "Salvia, sometimes known on the street as Sally-D, Magic Mint, or Maria Pastora..."
This misdirection is quite subtle, and thus possibly one of the more pernicious of scare tactics directed against Salvia. I would not dispute that, in theory, some people refer to Salvia Divinorum by these names. Where such allusions are misleading is by implying that Salvia is some shady drug that teens are buying on the street. No, thankfully, because Salvia is still legal, pretty much all Salvia users buy it from reputable online sellers such as bouncingbearbotanicals.com, or from local head shops, and when referring to Salvia, people generally refer to it by its official species name, Salvia Divinorum. I have certainly never heard of someone buying Salvia "off the street" when such a measure would be completely unnecessary and counter-productive. Because it is still legal in most places, such measures are unnecessary. Let's keep it that way.
2. "The effects last up to 30 minutes, with some lingering effects lasting up to several days."
No, this is just flat wrong. Laughably wrong. 3-5 minutes for the peak experience, with a little funkiness up to 10-15 minutes after that. That's all. Guaranteed. (Assuming one is using the smoking method, of course!...but even when ingesting Salvia, I would expects lasting a few hours at most. In any case, this is clearly not what media sources are alluding to in their scare stories).
3. "Salvia, a drug that produces a legal high similar to LSD..."
No, sorry, Salvia trips are nothing like those from LSD. The time-scale is completely different, the emotional aspect is completely different, and even the "visual" "hallucinations" are completely different (for example, with Salvia it is rare to have simply a visual hallucination. Usually the visual aspect is fundamentally integrated with some ego-aspect or some feeling of being pushed or pulled by various geometric forces and whatnot. This is, qualitatively, very different from LSD, from what I understand. Are the two drugs even on the same level of intensity? No, I'd say, if anything, Salvia must be judged to be the stronger of the two because during the Salvia peak one cannot remotely even contemplate interacting with the outside world or even comprehending what an outside world would be. From what I understand, only DMT approaches this similar level of disconnection from the normal world. Which brings me to...
4. "Law enforcement officers worry what effect Salvia could have on teens behind the wheel..."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnwS5sPOzb0
http://www.comedycentral.com/videos/index.jhtml?videoId=241125&title=celebrity-video-tommy-chong-vs.
'Nuff said.
Besides, people injure and kill themselves all the time from the motor discoordination wrought by alcohol. Why, then, is not alcohol illegal across the board? Likewise, water can kill you if you abuse it (drink too much of it). Too much sugar can kill you. Oxygen can kill you (if you hyperventilate). Just because there is the potential to abuse something does not mean that it makes sense to legislate around the assumption that it will always be abused. For the people who abuse a substance, we punish and/or treat with medical help. For the others who go around drinking alcohol, eating sugar, and breathing oxygen in non-abusive manners, we let them live their lives freely without the nanny-State interfering.
5. "Parents and substance abuse counselors worry that Salvia addiction could derail teens' lives..."
Addiction? Whaaat? Salvia is a kappa opiod receptor agonist, which means it has a tendency to produce dysphoria which, when combined with the startling changes in reality, means that there is practically no chance of getting addicted. The main reason why people generally choose to return to Salvia is simply because of the curiosity and/or mystical/intellectual/perceptual revelations sparked by each bizarre encounter with it.
6. "Brett Chidester, who committed suicide after taking Salvia, has served as a warning to parents and lawmakers of what potential dangers lurk within this legal plant..."
Not only is this, as far as I know, the only death to be even remotely associated with Salvia Divinorum in the history of the drug so far, but the connection between Brett Chidester's consumption of Salvia and his suicide has not been persuasively demonstrated. I would wager that Brett also watched TV at some point in his life before committing suicide. Is TV equally to blame? I imagine Brett must have faced at least one problem at school or had at least one disagreement with his parents at some point in his life before he committed suicide. There are a host of factors that could account for his decision to commit suicide. More examples of correlation between Salvia use and suicide would need to exist before we could even speculate about Salvia's tendency to induce suicidal behavior (and that would still be only correlation, which, without then identifying a causative relationship between Salvia and suicide, would be rather shaky ground for pronouncing any medical or legal judgment). There is, of course, that suicide note in which Brett claims that Salvia convinced him to take his life, but there is the obvious possibility that he is simply grasping for a dramatic rationalization for his decision. There is, of course, also the possibility that the suicide note is not authentic. And even if Brett's death could be definitely tied to Salvia, that is still just one death, compared to thousands of deaths from alcohol (legal), and hundreds of thousands of deaths from tobacco (legal), every year. If Salvia were restricted to over-18 year-olds and included a surgeon general's warning: "May cause suicide," would that satisfy frightened parents, as it seems to do for tobacco and alcohol?
7. "If you encounter someone who is under the effects of Salvia Divinorum, call 911..."
No, just chill the fuck out...jesus...all you need to do is give the person some gentle general support for about 5 minutes, and everything will be fine.
8. "Signs of Salvia exposure include dilated pupils, decreased heart rate..."
No, signs of Salvia exposure include noticing that the person is in the process of tripping the fuck out. Seriously, it is as if these news articles on Salvia have done no research or first-hand investigation on the topic, and have simply copied and pasted generic information from WebMD or something. This sort of claim is also misleading because it obscures the fact that, 15 minutes after initial inhalation, Salvia "exposure" (as news stories often put it) would be virtually undetectable.
This misdirection is quite subtle, and thus possibly one of the more pernicious of scare tactics directed against Salvia. I would not dispute that, in theory, some people refer to Salvia Divinorum by these names. Where such allusions are misleading is by implying that Salvia is some shady drug that teens are buying on the street. No, thankfully, because Salvia is still legal, pretty much all Salvia users buy it from reputable online sellers such as bouncingbearbotanicals.com, or from local head shops, and when referring to Salvia, people generally refer to it by its official species name, Salvia Divinorum. I have certainly never heard of someone buying Salvia "off the street" when such a measure would be completely unnecessary and counter-productive. Because it is still legal in most places, such measures are unnecessary. Let's keep it that way.
2. "The effects last up to 30 minutes, with some lingering effects lasting up to several days."
No, this is just flat wrong. Laughably wrong. 3-5 minutes for the peak experience, with a little funkiness up to 10-15 minutes after that. That's all. Guaranteed. (Assuming one is using the smoking method, of course!...but even when ingesting Salvia, I would expects lasting a few hours at most. In any case, this is clearly not what media sources are alluding to in their scare stories).
3. "Salvia, a drug that produces a legal high similar to LSD..."
No, sorry, Salvia trips are nothing like those from LSD. The time-scale is completely different, the emotional aspect is completely different, and even the "visual" "hallucinations" are completely different (for example, with Salvia it is rare to have simply a visual hallucination. Usually the visual aspect is fundamentally integrated with some ego-aspect or some feeling of being pushed or pulled by various geometric forces and whatnot. This is, qualitatively, very different from LSD, from what I understand. Are the two drugs even on the same level of intensity? No, I'd say, if anything, Salvia must be judged to be the stronger of the two because during the Salvia peak one cannot remotely even contemplate interacting with the outside world or even comprehending what an outside world would be. From what I understand, only DMT approaches this similar level of disconnection from the normal world. Which brings me to...
4. "Law enforcement officers worry what effect Salvia could have on teens behind the wheel..."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnwS5sPOzb0
http://www.comedycentral.com/videos/index.jhtml?videoId=241125&title=celebrity-video-tommy-chong-vs.
'Nuff said.
Besides, people injure and kill themselves all the time from the motor discoordination wrought by alcohol. Why, then, is not alcohol illegal across the board? Likewise, water can kill you if you abuse it (drink too much of it). Too much sugar can kill you. Oxygen can kill you (if you hyperventilate). Just because there is the potential to abuse something does not mean that it makes sense to legislate around the assumption that it will always be abused. For the people who abuse a substance, we punish and/or treat with medical help. For the others who go around drinking alcohol, eating sugar, and breathing oxygen in non-abusive manners, we let them live their lives freely without the nanny-State interfering.
5. "Parents and substance abuse counselors worry that Salvia addiction could derail teens' lives..."
Addiction? Whaaat? Salvia is a kappa opiod receptor agonist, which means it has a tendency to produce dysphoria which, when combined with the startling changes in reality, means that there is practically no chance of getting addicted. The main reason why people generally choose to return to Salvia is simply because of the curiosity and/or mystical/intellectual/perceptual revelations sparked by each bizarre encounter with it.
6. "Brett Chidester, who committed suicide after taking Salvia, has served as a warning to parents and lawmakers of what potential dangers lurk within this legal plant..."
Not only is this, as far as I know, the only death to be even remotely associated with Salvia Divinorum in the history of the drug so far, but the connection between Brett Chidester's consumption of Salvia and his suicide has not been persuasively demonstrated. I would wager that Brett also watched TV at some point in his life before committing suicide. Is TV equally to blame? I imagine Brett must have faced at least one problem at school or had at least one disagreement with his parents at some point in his life before he committed suicide. There are a host of factors that could account for his decision to commit suicide. More examples of correlation between Salvia use and suicide would need to exist before we could even speculate about Salvia's tendency to induce suicidal behavior (and that would still be only correlation, which, without then identifying a causative relationship between Salvia and suicide, would be rather shaky ground for pronouncing any medical or legal judgment). There is, of course, that suicide note in which Brett claims that Salvia convinced him to take his life, but there is the obvious possibility that he is simply grasping for a dramatic rationalization for his decision. There is, of course, also the possibility that the suicide note is not authentic. And even if Brett's death could be definitely tied to Salvia, that is still just one death, compared to thousands of deaths from alcohol (legal), and hundreds of thousands of deaths from tobacco (legal), every year. If Salvia were restricted to over-18 year-olds and included a surgeon general's warning: "May cause suicide," would that satisfy frightened parents, as it seems to do for tobacco and alcohol?
7. "If you encounter someone who is under the effects of Salvia Divinorum, call 911..."
No, just chill the fuck out...jesus...all you need to do is give the person some gentle general support for about 5 minutes, and everything will be fine.
8. "Signs of Salvia exposure include dilated pupils, decreased heart rate..."
No, signs of Salvia exposure include noticing that the person is in the process of tripping the fuck out. Seriously, it is as if these news articles on Salvia have done no research or first-hand investigation on the topic, and have simply copied and pasted generic information from WebMD or something. This sort of claim is also misleading because it obscures the fact that, 15 minutes after initial inhalation, Salvia "exposure" (as news stories often put it) would be virtually undetectable.
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