If you or someone you know struggles with salvia use, contact 12 South Recovery for personalized treatment and support. There are, however, isolated cases of tolerance, addiction and withdrawal symptoms in individuals who used salvia regularly in increasing doses. Thus, while Salvia alone might not commonly cause overdose, its interaction with other substances raises the risk. The understanding of Salvia’s addictive potential is still evolving, and its unique impact on the brain necessitates further investigation.
General Health
Researchers continue to study the drug to better understand its effects. Millions of individuals throughout the globe have taken the popular drug, although it has been linked to suicides. Some experts are disturbed by the popularity of salvia and other legal medicines available online and in tobacco shops.
- Many countries, including some Asian countries such as China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam, have not explicitly legislated on Salvia, leading to a legal gray area.
- However, even these tests can often only detect salvia abuse shortly after consumption.
- Its effects are highly potent yet short-lived, typically lasting 5–15 minutes, though the altered state may feel much longer to the user.
- Salvia is particularly difficult to detect since many methods of consuming salvia leave very few physical traces.
- While its effects may be brief, individuals who misuse salvia often have a history of using other drugs, such as LSD, MDMA, heroin, phencyclidine, and cocaine.
Is Salvia Abuse Related to Its Psychoactive Properties?
While Salvia has a long history of ceremonial use among indigenous communities in Mexico, its increasing availability through online platforms has raised questions about its safety, legality, and potential risks. Although salvia is not known to be physically addictive, its use can lead to psychological dependence. Some individuals may repeatedly seek out the dissociative and hallucinatory experiences it offers, risking harm to their mental health and overall well-being.
Salvia: Dangerous Hallucinogen or Beneficial Herb?
Abusers generally consider the plant as having low toxicity and a low addictive potential. Unfortunately, there is scarce information about its psychoactive effects in the medical literature. A PubMed literature search yielded four reports on the psychiatric sequelae of Salvia use, with none of the four reports describing acute phase experiences. We thus report the acute phase experiences of a patient after smoking Salvia. Although the patient’s experiences were brief in duration, the experiences were terrifying and unusual compared to those previously reported.
These effects are typically divided into psychological, sensory, and physical experiences, and while they are short-lived (5–15 minutes), they can feel much longer to the user. It’s the short duration of the herb’s effects that may be what makes it more attractive to users than other hallucinogens, like LSD. After smoking or ingesting salvia, the effects are usually felt within two minutes and last for 20 minutes or less. But reports indicate that the effects of salvia, however short-lived, can be intense and even frightening.
Physical Side Effects
- It’s thought that this ingredient attaches to the nerve cells in your body to create a variety of hallucinogenic effects.
- This ambiguity has led to its availability through various channels, including online platforms.
- These effects are typically divided into psychological, sensory, and physical experiences, and while they are short-lived (5–15 minutes), they can feel much longer to the user.
- Also, it has a low addiction potential, people can easily obtain it, and they do not consider it highly toxic.
- Smoking is often easier to detect since it requires a small pipe, and the smell of smoke is quite noticeable.
Currently, salvia isn’t approved for any medical use in the United States. It’s also not controlled under Congress’s Controlled Substances Act. That means individual state laws apply to salvia but no federal ones. I think a good guideline is that you should only use salvia after you’ve spent 2 hours researching the substance and researching safe use. All rights reserved |Privacy Policy|Advertising Policy Recover HQ does not provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Furthermore, the ingestion of Salvia also stimulates M3 receptors distributed on the arterial smooth muscle, thus causing a systemic vascular contraction and therefore hypertension 18, 19, 20, 21.
Risks and Side Effects
Some have compared its effects to that of LSD due to salvia’s active ingredient, salvinorin A, which provides hallucinogenic effects comparable to the kind LSD produces. Salvia is considered a Schedule I controlled substance in many states, meaning it has a high potential abuse and no legitimate medical purpose, although it’s legal in some jurisdictions. Recently, however, substance abusers have been using this plant to achieve ‘legal’ highs, as it is readily available for purchase on the Internet and is largely unregulated.
Additionally, mixing Salvia with substances like alcohol or stimulants heightens the risk of complications, including overdose. The hallucination-inducing effects of salvia, such as loss of touch with reality, vivid colors and patterns, and depersonalization, are directly related to its psychoactive properties. Salvia addiction refers to the potential repeated use and psychological dependency on the psychoactive plant, Salvia divinorum.
In fact, because salvinorin A actually suppresses dopamine activity in the brain, it may even have anti-addictive effects, which is why it’s been researched for its ability to treat cocaine addiction. There’s some evidence that salvia divinorum has mood-enhancing, antidepressant and anxiolytic (anti-anxiety) effects. It’s said to increase feelings of relaxation and self awareness, and may work as a potential natural remedy for depression. There’s no doubt that more clinical and pharmacologic research is needed to determine the potential benefits and health risks of using salvia. When Mazatec Indians used salvia for their healing rituals, the plant provided an altered state of consciousness. They may differ from person to person and include both mental and physical effects.
Other species of salvia seeds and plants that are not hallucinogenic are commonly sold for gardening. Salvia is controlled under Schedule IV of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. Activities such as sale, possession and production of salvia are illegal unless authorized for medical, scientific or industrial purposes. Those struggling with salvia or polysubstance abuse should seek help, as many rehabilitation centers offer supportive environments and programs tailored to address such issues. Some people might feel a strong urge to use it because of how it affects their thoughts.
The Salvia that was sold as ‘plant food’ to our patient could have been adulterated or affected by processing, contributing to the psychological effects experienced by the patient. In fact, based on our patient’s experiences with the Salvia purchased, the Salvia that had differently labelled strengths could have actually been the same product labelled differently for pricing reasons. It is important to note that the actual substance smoked by the patient was not analysed in the present case. Nobody knows how salvia causes illusions and out-of-body experiences. Morphine, heroin, and other narcotics work on mu, kappa, and delta opiate receptors. LSD and PCP impact more than 50 types of receptors, comparable to salvia.
However, people do not know what the long-term effects of salvia use might be. For this reason, it is not appropriate to consider it a safe drug. Salvia’s active ingredient is salvinorin A, a kappa opioid receptor (KOR) agonist. In this article, we find out what salvia is, how it works, and explain the effects and risks of taking it as a recreational drug.
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The flowers have white petals surrounded by violet-blue appendages. Instead, new plants are grown from cuttings from the parent plant, which originally came from Mexico. When the leaves are dried and crushed, they turn a dark color from green to brown to almost black.Are you or a loved one using can salvia kill you salvia and wondering if it is harmful?