We’ve all seen the YouTube videos.They usually start with someone taking a hit from a pipe while their friend laughs behind the camera. Within seconds, the subject loses motor control and any sense of where—or who—they are. As the high peaks a minute later, they are seized by laughter or succumb to terror as their hallucinations devour reality. Perhaps they have traveled to space, struck up a conversation with the salvia gods, or experienced eternity in some ineffable psychedelic landscape. Regardless of where the high takes them, however, the journey is always a short one. Just a few minutes after dosing they’re back in reality, sober as a judge, and a little curious as to how they ended up hanging upside down off the couch.
WHY STUDY SALVIA DIVINORUM?
A structural image of the author’s brain taken in an MRI machine directly before he was dosed with salvia. Image: Johns Hopkins University/Motherboard
In 2015, a team of Spanish researchers collaborated with Johns Hopkins to produce a study on the subjective effects of salvinorin A at various doses. Among the experiences frequently reported by users were “tunnel or window-like visions…geometric patterns…other worlds of multiple colors…objects were felt as being associated with the body…and a perceived inability to interact with one’s body and surroundings.” One user reported an encounter with “magical beings…wearing garish dresses, similar to the clothes of a royal court jester.” As the researchers noted, carnival-themed imagery had also been reported in several other studies on the subjective effects of salvinorin A.“People are still consciously aware of something while they're experiencing salvia, it's just something completely different than what everyone else in the room is experiencing."
The author’s “prescription” for the salvinorin A trial. Image: Daniel Oberhaus/Motherboard
One of two “session rooms” at Johns Hopkins University, which are made to look like a living room so that subjects feel more relaxed while they’re tripping. Image: Daniel Oberhaus/Motherboard
WHAT IT’S LIKE TO SMOKE SALVIA FOR SCIENCE
The Johns Hopkins Behavioral Biology Research Center, where human trials for hallucinogenic substances are conducted. Image: Daniel Oberhaus/Motherboard
When I arrived at Johns Hopkins for the first day of my clinical trial, I was ushered into one of the two session rooms at the hospital. These rooms are furnished so that they resemble a living room to allow study participants to feel relaxed when they’re tripping. There was a couch against one wall flanked by a coffee table that held a lamp and a small mushroom statue. The walls are decorated with tasteful, vaguely psychedelic artworks and a Tibetan prayer flag hung in the corner. If it weren’t for the small camera pointed at the couch and workstation in the back of the room, one could almost believe that this was a living room rather than a laboratory.Read More: Stop Policing Psychedelic Science
The first thing I noticed was the feeling of my body dissolving. Shortly after I began feeling the physical effects, the hallucinations began. I felt as though my head had split in two and a patterned stream began flowing from both sides of my face. This stream was a “harlequin pattern” of large brown and white diamonds that flowed away from me and began to form the “boundary” of an infinite three-dimensional space. These diamonds continued to tessellate to an infinite point and I felt as though I were suspended above this expanse, hanging like a figure head hangs off the bow of a ship.Throughout the trip, I remember being overcome by the profound beauty of the scene I was witnessing. If I tried to focus, I could remember that in base reality I was in a room in Johns Hopkins, but that didn’t alleviate the feeling of being in an entirely separate reality, as though I were sitting in a container that cordoned me off from the ‘normal’ world. Overall, the experience was quite pleasant. I only had a brief moment of panic when it seemed like one of the notes in the new age soundtrack had been held for far too long. I began to worry that time was dilating and that I might be trapped in this space for eternity. When the music progressed to the next note, however, the panic quickly subsided and time resumed its normal cadence.