Drug users who want to alter their consciousness but remain law-abiding have discovered a popular option: Salvia divinorum, an herb that contains the strongest known natural hallucinogen in the world.
Many nations have outlawed salvia, while others are considering such a ban. But the herb is legal, cheap and widely available in Ukraine. Moreover, the Interior Ministry’s drug enforcers don’t even seem to be aware of the salvia phenomenon – or its “mind-exploding” health risks.
Medical experts say that, even though salvia users don’t overdose or become addicted to the substance, hallucinations can be strong enough to produce deadly consequences.
Yuriy Pakin, head of the ATOS narcological center in Kyiv, said salvia can prompt live-threatening behavior. For example, those intoxicated by salvia can “easily take a window for the kitchen door and step out,” Pakin said. He also said salvia use could lead to suicide or abuse of stronger drugs.
Salvia smokers testified to the herb’s effects, although they didn’t want to be identified for this article because of the stigma of drug use.
“First it was complete darkness. Then I saw a monster, standing on the top of some gigantic meat grinder and mincing all people on earth through it,” said Daria, 19, a university student. “Only two more people were ahead of me to be grinded. And then when my turn came, I made an effort to run away, but my body was numb. Then I came to senses.”
Her friend, Inna, watched it all happen. Daria suddenly fell on the floor, crawled under the kitchen table and started pulling her hair, the friend said. “Even when the hallucinations stopped, we couldn’t approach Daria,” she said. “She was too afraid of everything.”
Salvia divinorum is part of the mint herb family. Translated from Latin, it means “sage of the seers.” It is grown in moist plots in Oaxaca, Mexico, and was used by shamans from the Mazatec Indian tribe to induce ritual trances.
Salvinorin A, its active ingredient, has been scientifically found to be the world’s strongest naturally-occurring hallucinogen because of its strength and effectiveness in miniscule doses. Smoking salvia causes short-term, but extremely intense and profoundly altered states of consciousness.
The effect also differs individually. For some, smoking salvia is like an amusement park ride offering escape, pleasant sensations and revelations. For others, such as Daria, the psychoactive herb creates a mental house of horrors. “Salvia pulls out your most ominous and horrific fears, those you had never realized or even imagined, fears hiding on the bottom of your consciousness,” she said.
Volodymyr, another 19-year-old university student, said salvia is used as a stepping stone to more sinister drugs. “Sometimes people try salvia as a preparation step to LSD,” Volodymyr said. “If they can handle it pretty well, then they move over to LSD.” When he smoked salvia, he saw himself sitting on the top of a nine-story building and leaning against another building with his hand. ‘I knew if I took my hand away, I would have fallen into an abyss,” he said.
Salvia appears to have become a sensation among young people. A Google search of “salvia” in Russian or Ukrainian generates numerous hot links from dealers offering to sell “minutes of a profoundly altered state.”
Prices range from Hr 80 to Hr 300 for one gram of Salvinorin A extract, depending on the concentration. “One gram of the weakest Salvinorin A extract for Hr 80 is enough to affect 6 to 8 people,” one salvia dealer said. “The effect it creates is a complete loss of personality and one’s own ‘I.’ It’s so incredibly strong that even able to make some reprioritize their lives and never go back to salvia or any other drugs.”
But others are attracted to the herb. Its popularity is evident from the more than 150 salvia-related support groups on the popular Internet social networking site, “vkontakte,” as well as videos and hundreds of Internet blogs. They show that the obscure Mexican shaman’s herb has attracted a broad and eclectic audience.
“If you want to experience fear as you never have felt in life, try salvia,” says one salvia-touting website. Another message from an Internet forum: “First time I did, I thought I would lose my mind. Never ever try salvia alone. In these few minutes you can do something irreversible to yourself.”
The herb and its active component, Salvinorin A, are banned as controlled substances in Australia, Italy, Denmark and South Korea. Some restrictions are in place in Belgium, Finland, Norway, Japan, Germany, Estonia and other countries. Several U.S. states have outlawed salvia and others are considering it..
Americans are studying the issue more closely after the 2006 suicide of a Delaware teenager, Brett Chidester. In his suicide note, the 17-year-old said salvia made him realize the pointlessness of life. An autopsy listed “salvia divinorum use” as a contributing factor to his death, caused when Chidester was killed by carbon-monoxide poisoning after enclosing himself in a tent and lighting a charcoal grill, according to the New Journal in Wilmington, Delaware.
“After many, many, many hours of research on websites, [we] came to the conclusion that this is a substance we should try to work ahead of,” the newspaper quoted Dave Stancliff, a legislative assistant to Alaska state Sen. Gene Therriault, as saying.
But Ukrainian authorities don’t consider salvia to be a problem at all. A drug-enforcement official with the Interior Ministry said investigators haven’t encountered abuse of the substance.
“I hear about salvia mostly from journalists,” said Oleh Shutyak, first deputy chief of the Interior Ministry’s department of illegal drug trafficking. “None of my workers has reported a single case of somebody switching from heroin to salvia. Nor have I heard concerns from narcological centers. We don’t have any official facts proving salvia abuse. As to Internet advertisements … [maybe] some healer collected the herb in the mountains to cure tooth pain and now wants to sell it through the Internet.”
Meanwhile, decisions about whether to include substances on prohibited lists of drugs are made by the Health Ministry. The ministry, in a statement to the Kyiv Post, said: “A request to study salvia abuse … in the shortest time and to consider the possibility of including Salvinorin A and salvia divinorum to the list of narcotic remedies was discussed at the Dec. 29 meeting of the working group” of the ministry’s drug-control committee.
So, while the ministry talks about salvia, Ukrainians are free to seize the moment, light up and enjoy – or suffer – the consequences of this “legal pot” for quite awhile.
