An Activist’s Unlikely Romance With Salvia Divinorum

A Story --   By Salim Muwakkil

In the summer of 2001, I read an article by R.L. Jones in the New York Times detailing the growing popularity of an exotic psychedelic herb.  The headline referred to it as “a plant with a buzz.”   The article said the plant was a Mexican relative of the common sage called Salvia Divinorum.  It was said to cause “intense hallucinations, out-of-body experiences “and, “sensations of traveling through time and space, assuming the identities of other people and even merging with inanimate objects.”

I was intrigued and a bit surprised at my ignorance about this plant.   As a veteran of the “Sixties,” I was familiar with the psychedelic triumvirate -- LSD, mescaline and psilocybin -- that reigned during those turbulent times and, quite frankly, I was indelibly altered by the insights they enabled.  They turned me toward the mystical traditions of the East: Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Sufism and all that stuff.  Until the intervention of psychedelic drugs into my life, I had been living a life largely oblivious, even contemptuous of the religious impulse.  Like many black baby boomers nurtured in an atmosphere of Black Nationalism, I was disaffected with the beliefs of my forbearers.   I was alienated from the kind of Christian piety that characterized much of black American culture, and not particularly attracted to alternative religious expressions or to the spiritual realm at large; psychedelics changed all of that.

   But since the 60’s I avoided these substances.  As time passed and responsibilities increased, my concern for self-transcendence increasingly clashed with day-to-day demands.  My spiritual pursuits were further detoured by a growing attraction to left-wing politics.  I began seeing mysticism as a trivial pursuit.

But salvia divinorum was legal, according to the Times’ piece.   I researched the herb and found it even more intriguing.  It was reputed to be even more powerful than LSD, although the trip lasted no more than 10 minutes.  I ordered four ounces from an internet site and it arrived laden with literature outlining its fame in an indigenous Mesoamerican culture for providing access to rarefied realms.  It explained the scope of the herb’s traditional use but no explanation could possibly have prepared me for the dramatic disorientation of a Salvia trip. I read that:  “Salvia divinorum transforms the fundamental perceptual material from which our experience of reality is woven.  Its effects range from the subtlest of perceptual changes, to experiences that are so utterly bizarre that they transcend the ordinary limits of imagination.” Here This description actually is pretty accurate but an intellectual understanding of those words does little to describe the actual experience.

The instructions cautioned against soloing on the maiden voyage because of the trip’s intensity. First time users are urged to use an experienced “sitter” to help guide neophytes through Salvia’s bizarre mindscape.   But since experienced sitters were hard to find (indeed, no one I knew had even heard of the substance), I decided to go solo.

I stuffed salvia leaves into a corncob pipe I purchased just for this purpose, fired up a butane lighter, lit the bowl and inhaled deeply.  I resisted the impulse to cough, instructed by experts to retain the smoke for at least 20 seconds. Within seconds, I was thrust into a completely alien mindscape.  Every thought I had was raw data that produced a vibrational echo that instantly merged with other echoes throbbing in an infinitely echoing universe.  I couldn’t distinguish the thoughts that defined me from the infinite number of vibrations interpenetrating each other in a kind of motif common to Aztec art. 

I could not “find” myself in all of this.  My thoughts were actually real, but reality was only what thoughts were and they were just passing datum, ephemeral and insubstantial, like clouds or shadows.  At first, all of this was terrifying.  However, the fear disappeared when it became clear that the ever echoing vibrations were all part of the same One All-ness, operating for infinite harmony.

Unable to situate myself with habitual cognitive signposts, I was free to be anything conceivable. Temporarily I became a leaf on a small tree.  But on a salvia voyage that state seemed eternal and “I” began to fear my ‘leafness’ was forever.  Terror consumed me for a minute and vanished again.

Mental concepts appeared and dissipated into nothingness, well not exactly nothingness but irrelevance.   I mysteriously appeared wherever my “thoughts” wandered.  I understood that true reality was absolutely spontaneous and improvisational; the reason that I (and most of humanity) usually fail to perceive this utter spontaneity is because human memory constrains the contours of our “thoughts” and provides a conceptual template for consensus reality.

The pattern on a butterfly’s wing occurred to me and I became it.  I was whatever thought appeared.  Fear returned when I considered the scope of that power and how little control I actually had of what I thought. Fear left and bliss appeared when I realized it didn’t matter.

This is what I wrote about my first experience on salvia divinorum: “I suddenly knew God’s identity – although “knew” is the wrong word because my “knowledge” was beyond or aside from cognition. It was absolutely obvious that we all are one Being, playing a game of multiplicity.  All religions teach this but humanity gets stuck in the cultural translations.  Our essential self is identical to the ultimate Self that some call God.  We have been hypnotized by phenomena to confuse our Self with our ego.  All is One. God is All. I am That.”

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Similar to the psychedelic triumvirate I spoke of earlier, the effects of salvia divinorum produced insights that seemed to affirm the wisdom of the East.  But the salvia trip (or “besagement”) was much more intense than those better-known 60s drugs and it delivered its revelations in less than 10 minutes -- like a psychedelic express.  I initially was an ardent advocate, an exuberant convert touting this “newfound” ancient herb to anyone who would listen.   I thought salvia could provide a surefire way to reach that state of unitary consciousness that is heralded and hallowed by mystics of all faiths.

I soon discovered that salvia is not as friendly to others as it was to me.   The rapid onset of dramatic perceptual distortions triggers terrifying reactions in some users.  Many insist never again.   In that sense, perhaps salvia self-selects those who can best benefit from it.  I am convinced that with appropriate instruction and preparation, most adults would find salvia divinorum an invaluable aid to meditation or any other contemplative disciplines.

Salvia divinorum, also known as Ska Maria Pastore, the Shepherdess and Magic Mint, is indigenous to the Sierra Mazateca in the Oaxaca region of Mexico.  The plant reportedly has been used for centuries by the Mazatec people and as its name connotes, salvia divinorum (which means, Diviners Sage or Sage of Seers), is used by shamans or curanderos (medicine men) in a variety of divination and spiritual ceremonies.  They say it “allows them to travel to heaven and talk to God and the Saints about divination, diagnosis and healing,” as quoted in a 1998 article for The McNair Scholarly Review Volume 3 by S.A. Rovinsky and G.R. Cizadlo, one of the few scholarly reports on the substance.

Western, ethno botanists have known about the plant since about 1962, when it was first introduced in the U.S. by Harvard botanist R. G. Wasson.  In the early 1990s, an independent ethno botanist and researcher named Daniel Siebert became obsessed with the unique substance – a cultigen, propagated by human cultivation not by seeds -- and was the first person to clearly identify Salvinorin A as the psychoactive principal of the plant. Today Siebert is sometimes called the “guru of salvia,” and his web site, the Salvia Divinorum Research and Information Center -- is the most comprehensive compendium of information on the plant. 

However, there was little public knowledge of this powerful and uniquely psychedelic substance until that same 2001 New York Times that I read sparked widespread interest. Web sites began popping up featuring the herb.  Most of these sites focused on salvia’s mystical properties.  Devotees of the herb found similarities between the insights gained during besagement and the writings of authors like Carolos Castaneda who popularized aspects of Mesoamerican shamanism, as well as the writings of Indian sages like Sri Ramana Maharshi and Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, both of whom teach an esoteric school of Hinduism, called Advaita (or Non-dual) Vedanta. 

The herb has become increasingly popular among those attracted to indigenous approaches to spirituality.  In fact, it’s part of a larger movement to reevaluate the wisdom of indigenous spiritual practitioners and investigate the psychotropic substances often associated with those practices.  A number of these substances, including salvia divinorum, phalaris grass, ibogaine, ayahuasca/yage, etc., have ancient uses as spiritual aids.  Advocates refer to these rediscovered drugs as entheogens (i.e., evoking a recognition of the divine within) to distance them from the controversial “psychedelics” of the 60s.   Of those new substances, salvia has had the most popular breakthrough (although ayahuasca also is gaining popular notice).

Unfortunately, much of that popularity has been perverse.  Salvia has been portrayed as the new “goof” drug of contemporary youth. Just one tour through YouTube, where videos proliferate of young people blitzed on Salvia, will make that clear.  These sensationalized videos probably helped launch the bandwagon to criminalize Salvia and produce even more collateral damage in the disastrous war on drugs.

The drug war is portrayed as an important component in the overall campaign against crime, but it has failed even on its own terms.  Illicit drugs are more available and less expensive now than before the war’s declaration in 1971 during the Nixon administration.  It seems quite clear that the government’s paramilitary prohibitionist policies have not been victorious.   Not only have they failed to produced a drug-free society, these policies instead have endangered civil liberties, nourished a bullet-riddled underground economy and earned the US the title of the world’s largest jailer.  What’s more, these policies have helped generate global cartels of ruthless drug dealers (presently on display in Mexico), exacerbated racial disparities at home and diverted untold resources from productive social investments.

The failure of this war is so spectacular, irrational motives must be driving it.  Some advocates of drug decriminalization trace this hostility to psychotropic agents to ideas likely born during the days of colonialism, when Western nations began exploring the world, invading others’ territories and colonizing the indigenous people of the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceana.  As a process of conquest, Western invaders first deposed the deities of the natives. Indigenous forms of worship and spiritual expression were ridiculed, sometimes demonized and often outlawed.  The colonizing nations of the Christian West decreed there was but one way to access divinity and that was through the intervention of their clerical intermediaries.  

The development of the Americas provides a clear example of how the process plays out.  The continents’ many indigenous cultures had evolved a rich variety of complex belief systems in the centuries preceding the assorted invasions of evangelical Europeans.  These cultures differed widely but according to most anthropologists, the use of visionary plants was a common thread.  Many of these aboriginal cultures believed the plant kingdom provided direct access to sacred experiences.  These beliefs were incompatible with concepts of ecclesiastical hierarchy held by their Western conquerors.   Direct access to divinity threatened the theological monopoly of the priests, prelates and pastors who operated in the name of colonial authority.  

So the conquering forces did all they could to discredit, demonize and criminalize entheogens—part of a larger project of cultural imperialism that transformed the indigenous complexity of our southern hemisphere into one enormous diocese of the Catholic Church.  Colonialist motives still fuel our Western antipathy for plant substances that alter consciousness.   Perhaps these irrational cultural biases best explain why America’s drug warriors fail to heed the overwhelming evidence that their prohibitionist crusade is failing.

This dynamic is playing out with contemporary vigor in various states where politicians have targeted salvia divinorum for scheduling – that is, making it illegal.  At this writing, 13 states already have laws against salvia on the book.  Of those 13, 10 (Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Virginia) classify it as a Schedule 1 drug, which puts it on the same legal footing as ecstasy and LSD.  In Tennessee, ingesting salvia is a Class A misdemeanor, but possessing it is legal.  In California and Maine, possession is legal but sale to a minor is prohibited.  Legislation to criminalize salvia is pending in at least 13 more states. Of course, these politicians have little to lose by assuming the worst about the plant and much to gain by bolstering their images as politicians who are tough on drugs.  They are perpetuating a role long ago seized by Western powers that required all states of consciousness must be sanctioned by the state.

Salvia became illegal in Illinois in January 2008.   Illinois State Rep. Dennis Reboletti (R-Elmhurst) drafted the bill that classified the plant as a Schedule I drug, with legal consequences as severe as those for possession of heroin or LSD.  Incidentally, Reboletti, like Salvia-phobic politicians in other states (Rep. John Lim in Oregon, Sen. Karen Peterson in Delaware, Sen. Tim Burchett in Tennessee and Rep. Paul Ray in Utah)  has received large campaign donations from the Beer, Wine & Liquor industries.  Apparently, the alcohol lobby believes salvia has enough potential as a recreational drug to threaten their hold on the dollars of drinkers.

According to experts, however, they need not fret; Salvia has very little potential for abuse and most assuredly is not a party drug.  However, politicians can easily boost their tough-on-crime credentials by criminalizing this powerful, new drug – a political maneuver strongly abetted by our deep cultural hostility to such substances.  And although there is no record of lethality associated with salvia divinorum, Reboletti said, “We decided to move forward rather than waiting for someone to be killed because of it.”

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“I’ve used Salvia for about four years now and I use it primarily as an aide to meditation,” explained a user on a web site devoted to salvia’s spiritual exploration.  He thought it was best to remain anonymous since its use is now illegal in Illinois.  I’ll just call him Peter. “It has provoked the most enlightening experience I’ve ever had.  It provided access to states of consciousness that the mystics talk about but I could never have experienced without decades of meditation.  I think it’s a miraculous substance,” Peter said.

This rather rhapsodic view of Salvia Divinorum is a common one among regular users.  But remember, regular users are a highly selective group.  I often visit a web site (one of many) devoted to salvia-inspired spiritual exploration, so I am in frequent contact with “salvianaunts,” as regular users sometimes call themselves.    Salvianaunts are rare.  “It’s a very intense experience. You can loose all sense of your identity, even to the point of forgetting you are a human being.  It can be very disorienting and terrifying,” Peter explained.  He could easily understand why most who try Salvia seldom do it again.  Because of its extraordinary intensity, salvia and recreation do not mix.  This unique plant is a mystery even in other Mesoamerican cultures where the spiritual use of psychotropic plants is widespread.

Some advocates who celebrate salvia’s power to facilitate spiritual insights increasingly are opposed to governmental encroachment on their spiritual explorations.   Their ideas have launched new angle of challenge to this nation’s prohibitionist drug laws.

Their basic argument is that psychoactive drugs offer access to varied states of consciousness and that restriction of this access may be the most fundamental form of repression.  In their view, the “war on drugs” is not just a campaign against the use of certain illicit substances; it is also an attack on “cognitive liberty,” or the right to control one’s own consciousness.

“The so-called war on drugs is not a war on pills, powder, plans and potions,” argues Richard Glen Boire, founder and executive director of the Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics (CCLE) in the Summer 2000 edition of he groups Journal of Cognitive Liberties, in what amounted to a manifesto for the group.  Instead, he writes, “it is a war on mental states – a war on consciousness itself – how much, what sort we are permitted to experience, and who gets to control it.”

Boire’s CCLE, established in 2000, was in the forefront of this growing movement. It was formed to advance the libertarian argument that true intellectual freedom includes control of one’s own awareness.  The group defines cognitive liberty as “the right of each individual to think independently and autonomously, to use the full spectrum of his or her mind, and to engage in multiple modes of thought.”

The government’s war on drugs is a ground zero assault on fundamental civil liberties which insure each individual’s fundamental right to control his or her own consciousness.”  This role is directly derived from colonial restrictions on access to divinity and holds a special animus for those substances thought to facilitate sacred experiences.  Salvia’s properties place the plant directly in the crosshairs of many cultural prohibitions.

Despite the plant’s new infamy, there have been no reports of emergency room freak-outs or any kind of mindless mayhem attributed to salvia divinorum abuse. There was one case in Delaware in which a young salvia user, already suffering from depression, committed suicide. His mother attributed his death to salvia use and, just like sensationalized tales of LSD from decades past; the case became a cause célèbre for prohibitionists.

Mostly, though, stories of salvia casualties are rare, despite a palpable media hunger for stories that fit the alarmist narrative.  Siebert, like many other experts, says salvia has no lingering effects; no hangovers, lethargy, or nausea.  Moreover, no one, the DEA included, has reported incidents of fatal overdoses or of any one suffering long-term consequences.  Toxicity studies have come up negative even for pure Salvinorin A, the active component.  Still, anecdotal scare stories still proliferate, fed in large part by those irresponsible YouTube videos.

As I suggested, many of these stories are remarkably similar to the exaggerated reports of drug casualties during the 1960s, when tales of LSD-launched suicide leaps were widespread.  Even in those panicky days, many researchers noted that psychedelics held genuine promise for the study of consciousness and other general research on the human psyche.

Today, many researchers believe that salvia offers promise on the treatment of addiction, depression and pain.  Dr. Bryan Roth of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, discovered in 2002 that Salvinorin A stimulates a single receptor in the brain, the kappa opioid receptor, according to a piece in the September 8, 2008 edition of he New York Times.   Roth said that LSD, by comparison, stimulates about 50 receptors.  He told the Times there is good evidence that drugs derived from Salvinorin A “could treat brain disorders including depression, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s, maybe even HIV.”  Dr. John Mendelson. a pharmacologist at the California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute is studying salvia’s impact on humans and believes it has enormous potential.  “We have this incredible new compound, the first in its class; it absolutely has potential medical use, and here we’re talking about throttling it because some people get intoxicated on it,” Mendelson told the Times.

I bumped into salvia divinorum by accident, and I now list it as one of the most fortuitous accidents of my life. The substance helped map a surer road to the fruits of meditation, revived my waning impulse for spiritual exploration, helped me gain a deeper understanding of religious belief and sparked a reconnection to the natural world that sustains us all.  I believe salvia has helped me become more compassionate.  I marvel at the wisdom of the earth’s indigenous people who long have cultivated spiritual relationships with teacher plants.

 I fear for this culture, so insecure and defensive, it forbids and represses instead of reasoning and assessing. There are ways of knowing other than through the intellect and its associated senses. Mystical traditions, from Sufi Islam to Xian Buddhism, try to confound the intellect to gain enlightenment.   Jack Kerouac’s “Dharma Bums” , Alan Watts’  “This is It” and his many other books, Aldous Huxley’s “Doors of Perception,” and other assorted writings offered tantalizing tales of possible transcendence by a combination of mind-exploring drugs (like Huxley’s mescaline) and the “Eastern vehicle.”

In the psychedelic 60s, many mounted that vehicle and some found a route to transcendence.  Some fell off, with severe injuries. Many found only frustration and even jail. Carlos Castaneda’s “The Teachings of Don Juan,” while of dubious pedigree, still inserted the “Indigenous vehicle,” into the mix and provided spiritual seekers alternatives to the Vedantic bias of the Eastern vehicle.  Researchers began re-evaluating the insights of various shamanistic cultures and soon books like 2002’s “Breaking Open The Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism” by Daniel Pinchbeck begin appearing.

And here we are.  Use of salvia divinorum is now illicit in Illinois and I must travel out of state to gain its benefits legally.  State politicians have decided to criminalize my spiritual explorations and seize my cognitive liberty under the guise of the war on drugs.   Luckily the public finally may be fed up with prohibitionist attitudes about some drugs targeted in this ludicrous war – cannabis, another substance with an ancient history as a spiritual aid, seems to be gaining public favor in increasing number of states, especially for medical use.

Despite this slight bow to reality, the underlying problem remains undiagnosed. US politicians continue to operate according to the colonialist script where only the sanctioned Gods are tax exempt.  Illegalizing salvia divinorum is a moneymaker for law enforcement (i.e., another illegal substance means another arrest means more jails, courts and cops), but it is much more than that. The goof drug of YouTube may seem like the latest target, but the real target is access to divinity. In that framework, the true insurgency is the fight for cognitive liberty.

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