What Are The Effects of Salvia Divinorum? Risks and Benefits of The Natural Psychodelic

By Sarah Williams

Posted 4 years agoOTHER

Salvia is a hallucinogen in that it makes its users feel or see things that are not real. It has the potential of triggering elevated mood in its users. The danger of such hallucinogens is that the users may not be able to tell the difference between things that are real and those that are not.
What Are The Effects of Salvia Divinorum risks and Benefits of This Natural Psychodelic drug

The general effects of using salvia include improved mood, uncontrollable laughter, and visual distortion of images, loquaciousness, and contact with other dimensions. Other effects are; detachment with reality, and an overall feeling of uneasiness among others. These effects are further categorized into physical and psychological effects. 

Physical Effects of Salvia Divinorum

A good number of salvia users do so for its psychological effects. Salvia is synonymous with uncontrollable laughter after use. This laughter can be so much that it may limit the mobility of the user from one place to another. Salvia also causes physical effects such as loss of coordination, feeling of nausea, dizziness, slurring of speech, decreased heart rate and body chills.

Comedown period, commonly known as hangover may follow the use of salvia. According to a 2006 study in the Journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence, some salvia users reported physical tiredness, heavy-headedness, and mental exhaustion after the initial effects had faded. 

Psychological Effects

The psychological effects can be rather unpleasant with some people feeling euphoric and others seeing vivid colors. The Drug Enforcement Administration records that others may experience strange hallucinations and even lose touch with reality. Salvia has other psychological effects such as panic, fear, anxiety, feeling of heaviness, dysphoria, feeling of spinning, frequent mood swings and detachment from your environment among others. 

Currently, the long term effects of the drug have not been fully understood yet. The National Institute on Drug Abuse shows that animal studies have demonstrated that the drug may impair learning and memory. However, it remains unclear whether the drug has similar effects on human beings.

Some studies also have shown something opposite, that Salvia divinorum results in potential danger of long-term brain damage because salvinorin (especially when consumed pure).

Luckily, salvia drug abuse has not demonstrated cases of drug addiction. Other hallucinogens cause visual impairment, flashbacks to drug experiences, vivid dreams and hallucinogen persisting perception disorder. Such long-term effects have not been shown in the use of salvia, yet. 

If you are vulnerable to mood swings, depression, anxieties and other psychological conditions you should stay especially cautious about using psychedelics as they may have an unpredictable impact on your mental health.

If you feel a need to try them anyway, always stay in a safe environment, with people you fully trust, also a few days after the experience and NEVER combine psychedelics with other substances or alcohol. Treat psychedelic experiences with full respect and caution as they deserve.

How Long Is Salvia Divinorum Trip and How Do You Take It?

Abuse of a hallucinogen normally results in psychological effects that can last for several hours. Salvia’s effects last for less than half an hour. The method of use determines how long it takes to start feeling the effects and how long they will last.

The most common intake method of salvia is smoking. When smoked, salvia effects are experienced almost instantly, rising to the peak as fast as within a single minute.

These effects usually last for about five minutes. Other intake approaches such as taking it sublingually, that is, under the tongue, causes effects that last slightly longer. They fade within fifteen minutes and do not usually last for more than half an hour.

Another intake method is the one where users crush the salvia then proceed to swallow it. This usually results in longer-lasting effects, though milder, as compared to other ingestion methods. With this method, the effects may last for about an hour as observed by the Pharmacology and Therapeutics journal. 

Salvia generally causes effects that last for a short period. It is deemed legal in many states, especially since the effects do not result in deadly overdoses which could pose a serious health risk to users. However, salvia users have an elevated risk of exposure to injuries. Although not conclusive, existing data indicate that salvia is not an addictive drug. 

Risks of Salvia Divinorum

The use of salvia is accompanied by side effects such as the feeling of nausea, dizziness and having trouble focusing. Others include lack of coordination, slurred speech, the feeling of confusion, a general feeling of tiredness, memory loss, and Spatio-temporal dislocation among others. Spatio-temporal dislocation is where a salvia user feels like they exist in an alternate place and time or feels like they are in several places at the same time.

This feeling can be very disturbing. This disruption of time and space is a rather frightening experience and can result in psychotic disturbances, especially in people who feel vulnerable.

Currently, there have not been any reports of salvia hangover effects once it has worn off of the user. In the same vein, salvia has had no reported overdoses among users, thanks to its low addiction potential. However, because its long-term effects remain widely unknown, it is not proper to consider salvia a safe drug

Possible Medical Uses of Salvia Divinorum

Currently, salvia does not have any use in the medical field but scientists and researchers are still working on it to determine its potential benefits to the human race. As a result of how salvia affects the brain, several scientists think that salvia may lead to developing a therapy such as a case for Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

Health Benefits of Salvia

Over the past few years, some of the claimed health benefits attributed to salvia have received scientific backing. Discussed below are some of the research done on the possible medicinal benefits of this healing herb. 

Memory enhancement

According to British folk medicine, salvia remains an excellent remedy for Alzheimer’s disease and impaired memory. This prompted some British scientists to investigate the effects of acutely administering salvia on memory. The study was conducted on young adult volunteers. They set up two experiments using a placebo-controlled, balanced, double-blind crossover approach. 

The first experiment involved giving fifty, one hundred and a hundred and fifty microliters of essential salvia oil extract together with placebo. The second experiment involved giving twenty-four participants twenty-five and fifty microliters of salvia oil extract and placebo. In both experiments, the fifty microliter dose resulted in improved world recall immediately in the study participants. This study suggests that the claim that salvia use enhances memory may just be a scientific fact. 

Improves Mood and Brain Performance

Salvia tea is renowned for its ability to lift a person’s spirits, and now this claim has been coupled with some proof. A double-blind crossover study conducted with thirty healthy participants had them receiving different treatments. The dosage consisted of three hundred milligrams of placebo and six hundred milligrams of salvia officinalis leaf on three different days spread out with seven days in between each dosage. 

The mood was assessed before the dose, one hour after the dose, and four hours after each treatment. In each case, salvia dosage resulted in improved mood among participants using Bond-Lader mood scales. The lower dose tended to reduce anxiety and the higher dose demonstrated increased alertness, calm and contentedness. 

Anti-Inflammatory Properties

People with inflammatory conditions such as asthma, inflammatory acne, and arthritis can benefit from using salvia. Salvia contains luteolin and rosmarinic acid, anti-inflammatory compounds that help reduce inflammations. Luteolin inhibits the TBK1 enzyme that is responsible for causing inflammations in the body.

A Biochemical Pharmacology study of 2009 postulates that luteolin demonstrated the strongest inhibition characteristics against TBK1 among the six anti-inflammatory natural compounds under test. Rosmarinic acid also inhibits inflammatory enzymes in humans. 

Reducing hot flashes in women

Salvia reduces hot flashes and sweating in menopausal women. It can be used as a natural remedy for hot flashes and excessive sweating as is rooted in traditional folk medicine. In recent years, scientists have begun investigating the potential benefits salvia offers to both men and women dealing with hot flushes and sweat. In the study, menopausal women having at least five daily hot flushes were put on treatment, receiving a daily tablet with salvia leave for two months. The experiment resulted in a significant decrease in both the total number and the severity of hot flushes. 

Proved Cough Suppression

Salvia tea is a proven ancient remedy for sore throat, coughs and other mouth and throat ailments such as halitosis, pharyngitis, throat ulceration, and tonsillitis. Researchers set out to validate the claimed benefits salvia has on the throat and mouth in general. In one of the studies, a group of German researchers investigated how salvia affects acute viral pharyngitis (a viral pharynx inflammation resulting in a sore throat).

The researchers found out that mouth sprays with salvia extracts against a placebo that contained one hundred and forty microliters of salvia extract promptly alleviated sore throat and thereby throat pain in the patients with pharyngitis that were enrolled in that study. 

Conclusion

Salvia is a major hallucinogen drug that has both physical and psychological effects such as dizziness, slurred speech, decreased heart rate, dysphoria, feeling of spinning and frequent mood swings among many others. Continued use may lead to memory loss and Spatio-temporal dislocation among other adverse risks.

Luckily, salvia is not an addictive drug, at least according to existing data. The drug has proved health benefits such as improved mood and cognitive performance, anti-inflammatory properties, and its ability to reduce hot flashes and sweating in women.

About the author Sarah Williams

Sarah Williams is an avid blogger who specializes in dating advice. Her interests include gender relations and the underlying mechanisms that drive human interactions. You can check out her thoughts on men, sex, dating and love at Wingman Magazine .