I was watching the following lecture, which is closed with a statement I found moderately unnerving;

Kathleen Harrison at the WPF about Salvia



Is there any online documentation of incidents in the western world of this occurring? Is this more based in campfire-speak of the Maztec peoples, or is there much potential for persisting perception disorder?

I located a single Erowid trip report in which a user who seems to have overdosed quite seriously (multiple bong rips of 80x?) due to lack of education, and was subsequently diagnosed with PTSD - but I am not seeing any extracts, case studies, any real data. I have to imagine it's simply a matter of "the research simply hasn't been done," but outside of the 2010 Hopkins Study I'm hard pressed to find any worthwhile data on testing on humans.

I suppose what strikes me as different between the two is the suggestion in the lecture the users have been left with more of a permafry / stuck outside material reality condition. Any anedotal reports of this ever occurring?

I have a feeling this is the Mazatec way of protecting this plant. They are very very secretive about Salvia. According to the Mazatec they do not even have an origin story for this plant, which if true, this would be the only case in the world where and entheogenic culture does not have an origin story for their entheogen. I think they just keep it to themselves.

The plant is also not found anywhere in nature, which makes the lack of an origin story even more confusing....

I think they are very secretive about this plant and very protective of it - Salvia does have a shy spirit after all....

They also dont make concentrated extracts or smoke the plant, so I find it hard to believe people on oral doses of this wouldnt come back.... Oral doses are so gentle and this is one of the safest plants around. Maybe instead this comes from experiences that feel like they wont come back or where time distorts? I do know people sometimes experience entire lifetimes within a single Salvia ceremony, or people experience huge time distortions or even forget that they are human for a while....

PTSD is understandable (any entheogen can cause that in bad circumstances), but I have a hunch that what this lady is claiming might be based more on them trying to protect the plant and its use.

with Salvia Ive yet to see any psychic residue / permafry last longer than usual 6-8 month post-heroic-journey that can happen with any entheogenic experience.

The classics compounds seem to knock people further out because of their strong effect on volition, which Salvia seems to only reinforce/realign not reduce or dislocate.

What are classic compounds?

.... tryptamines ....... ((but depends on the compound and dosage))

I would have to agree with travsha on this. I've used Salvia extensively for several years, far more than anyone else I know or have come across on the internet. I typically smoke the plain leaf but I do quid and sometimes juice the fresh leaf when it's harvest time.

You certainly can be taken 'out there' and it can sometimes be confusing upon returning. Feelings of derealization or depersonalization. Perhaps someone could be affected in this way over a longer period of time. It's hard to say.

But as travsha said, I feel it's the people protecting the plant. Or even the plant protecting itself. There is this shroud of mystery, this secret nature that surrounds the plant. It communicates to me all the time that I need to 'keep this to myself' and not go out and spread the knowledge that it imparts to the 'uninitiated'. This is the one aspect of Salvia that I continue to struggle with. I want to talk about these things with others, as we always have a compulsion to share our stories as the social beings we are. I have made some sort of compromise in that I'm able to write these things down, as long as I don't share them with anyone. When I talked or wrote about it publicly, I was literally chastised by the plant itself. It sounds insane to those who don't put any credence in 'plant spirits' but the fact remains the more I tried to spread knowledge, the less depth there was to the experiences. Psychological? Perhaps. I'll entertain any idea about what could be causing this.

Whatever it is, this plant deals in mystery and secret knowledge. For those of us who are curious to a fault, who cannot seem to drop that inquisitive nature no matter what the consequences, we are easily seduced by a lady like Salvia.

Not to be a reductionist, the experience is core and the metaphysics are beyond our limited understanding.... but i often consider that this common attachment one gets with high use of Salvia, is due in part to the change of prolactin.

Interesting! For the last few months, I've felt that I'm *SUPPOSED* to spread the plant itself. I purchased a couple of 8-month old plants from a local grower this summer, and found they were too big for my house once it got cold and I had to bring them in, so I gave them to a friend with an interest in Salvia who has room. I also have given away several grams of dried leaf to multiple friends and acquaintances I've recently met.

Would you consider yourself a 'sensitive' person? I am quite the opposite, yet trying to become more sensitive in general. But I have never been able to connect with a spirit of any plant so far. And everyone I've given Salvia away to has been sensitive. So maybe the plant figures I'm better suited to distribute to those it can communicate with better ;-)

As I said, I'm willing to entertain any ideas that could lead to some further understanding. I have very limited knowledge of brain chemistry/neuroscience so I will do some reading on prolactin in particular.


I would definitely consider myself a sensitive person, yes. That's very fascinating, that you feel the urge to give it away or introduce it to others who you feel are more sensitive than yourself. I've had the feeling that this plant chooses who it will communicate with, or perhaps chooses those who it is able to communicate with. I've actually had some mixed feelings on this...what can seem to be elitist sort of picking and choosing. That there are only a select few that are granted the honor of deep communication. I've wondered if it's some sort of delusion of grandeur on my own part But if I ignore it and don't listen to it, it becomes more shy and reluctant to open up.

Definitely one of the most bizarre plants on this planet

The very nature of being physically 'separate' from one another is the seed-thought that spreads through experience; colouring it with delusions of grandeur and if the subject matter is just right, can lead to feelings of literal separateness from other.
For you met, this is not the case
Being blessed with an open ended communication with the plant-of-all-plants when taken seriously for what it actually is, quickly diminishes any notion of elitism and replaces it with definite feeling of responsibility and purpose not just for ones-self, but for ever interaction one has throughout ones life. For you become a supreme intelligence officer reporting back to her about your facet of the whole thing from your unique and (possibly) pre-determined perspective.
You become her eyes and ears and hands and throat, for as long as you enjoy the liberty of those faculties.

I have read of a few anecdotal reports of permanent psychological damage done by salvia, but only at very large doses.

Even if there are no studies as of yet, I would recommend to salvia users that they watch their dosages carefully and not go overboard.

Thanks. I agree with your sentiment, but not with the reasoning or presentation of it...



Me too, very good to know I'm not alone, thank you!

Only once can I recall having it take a number of days to fully come down from the common feeling of dissociation, from this world, or dimension etc..

It took about 3 days for me to feel comfortable in the knowledge that this was my place of origin relative to the experience. I would get this very real overwhelming sense that I somehow ended up in the wrong reality and was living out days of a pretend life still stuck in the salvia trip. In fact, writing this now I can remember how disturbing it is to have that nagging in the back of your mind. Considering the subjective implications of high dose salvia, I might find it odd that one would not question the validity of they're reality.

Perhaps I still question it and the value surrounding such details has simply shifted for myself.

Who knows, maybe I did smoke salvia and never come down. None of you are real.

Oral doses of salvia can take a person very very far. It is like a prolonged smoked experience. You just have to get a large enough dose, which differs between individuals.

I have been at the level where people blank out into another reality and the physical body tries to move/run away etc with oral quids. Not even liquid extract. It does reach upon the same levels of smoked or vaporized.

When I first encountered salvia, as smoked 20X, I always got this sense of being on a ferris-wheel, spinning through similar, but objectively different realities, and being terrified it would end up stopping in the 'wrong one', but it never did...