It’s been a busy week here at Coffeesh0p Studios (my bedroom). First off, we’ve been battling with hosting issues since the weekend. Turns out we’d exceeded our bandwidth limit for February, taking both Coffeesh0p and this blog down until I forked over more money. It’s kind of like the internet equivalent of being kidnapped and held to ransom. I’ve also been taking pictures for some of the new products I mentioned a while ago, so I thought I’d share some here. At the moment, the product images on Coffeesh0p are pretty small, most of them being around 200 px wide, so I’ve picked a few of my favourite full size pics and displayed them below. Click on each for the full resolution version.

	We’ll finally be stocking plain ol’ Fly Agaric caps in the next few days. Up until now, the only Amanita muscaria we’ve sold has been prepackaged, so it’s hard to display them in their full glory. This single cap will be turned into a thumbnail image only 50 x 50 px. Seems such a shame.
This picture of Salvia divinorum leaf has been desperately needed for quite some time. Although we’ve always sold salvia leaf, the picture was terrible.
	Since most extracts look pretty unappealing, this chunky Damiana 4x extract really stood out.
This is one of our new smoking mixtures, Blaze. Looks as delicious as it smells!

Buying Your Plant

The most expensive part of growing Salvia Divinorum on a organic/semi-organic basis is actually buying a cutting or whole plant. I managed to get my plant for £12 including postage and packaging. After this follows compost and a suitable size pot.

There are many places to find salvia plants/cuttings, not only at local plant nurseries, but all over the internet; there’s at least one salvia plant on ebay at any one time. It’s worth noting that prices can vary significantly with little variation in quality, so make sure you shop around.

Try and buy a plant locally if you can. If not, definitely buy from a website based in your home country to minimise the time it spends in an envelope.

Growing A Cutting

When your cutting arrives, remove it from it’s packaging extremely carefully and let it sit in luke warm water. Assuming your cutting already has roots, leave it in the water for a couple of hours. If no roots are present, leave it in the water for a week or so until there’s enough root growth present to allow for potting.

After it’s sat in water for a while, it’s time to plant it. You’ll need a pot at least 20-30cm wide to allow your cutting to grow without having to be repotted every couple of months. The first thing to do is place some gravel or broken crockery into your pot up to about 5cm from the bottom. This thin layer allows for superior drainage after watering. After that, fill the pot up with your loam based compost available from any gardening store and dig a little hole in the centre where your plant will sit. Next, take your cutting, splay out the roots gently with your fingers and place the cutting into the hole you provided. Backfill the hole with more compost and compress down lightly around the stem of your plant.

Travelling through the mysteries of the postal service and being stuck in some soil is thirsty work for a plant. Imagine you have been slaving away all day in the blistering sun, doing vast quantities of manual labour. How badly are you gagging for a pint at your local? This is how your plant is feeling right now. Although your plant needs a drink, don’t feel obliged to buy it any peanuts. Now your plant is potted, give it enough water so that excess water will drip from the bottom of the pot.

From here, I advise you to put the plant in a humid environment, at least at first, to promote healthy growth. Just like a fat kid loves cake, Salvia Divinorum loves indirect sunlight. This can be anywhere such as a light room with no direct sun blazing down on it all day, or even directly in the sun, but behind a net curtain. Provided your plant is not exposed to too much direct sunlight, it will do all right.

Leave it a few weeks and your cutting will start turning into a fully-fledged plant. Keep an eye on the compost, making sure it doesn’t dry up. Water once a week in summer and once every two weeks in winter. Just be careful to never over water your plant, or root rot could set in.

Growing & Maintaining A Plant

Growing an established plant is almost the same as growing a cutting. Salvia Divinorum can be very flexible about its growing conditions, but a quick change in conditions will most likely piss your plant right off. You have to consider that your plant has already been growing for probably quite some time in certain conditions, which it is now used to. These includes, but is not limited to, different light levels, compost, humidity, etc so it is very important to find out as much as you can about these conditions from the plant’s previous owner, then try to match those conditions as best you can. Once the plant has been repotted and is beginning to settle into it’s new environment, then you can slightly alter it’s environment a little each day until you have it growing in conditions easy for you to maintain.

The growth of the plant at first will be slow. Remember, it’s been shoved in an envelope for a few days with no light, so it’ll need to recover from that traumatic experience before it will even think about new growth. This can take up to around 2 weeks before any progress can be seen.

Look out for the leaves and edges of the plant turning brown, this means it is NOT in the right conditions. There are many things it could want, but chances are it’s something to do with humidity. Try misting the leaves if your environment is not very humid, or consider building a humidity tent or moving the plant into the bathroom, where people use the shower frequently. The stem, and possibly the leaves should return to normal in a couple of weeks. If not, cut the leaves off at the stem to facilitate new growth.

Sometimes the leaves might turn a yellowish colour. Never fear, it just means your plant could do with some more sun. This could be because other leaves on the plant are blocking out light, in which case, feel free to remove those other leaves and do with them what you will.

If your plant is wilting, it simply means it could do with more water. And if it’s bent, try rotating the pot 180 degrees. Plants will grow towards the sun, which could be causing the bowing in the stem.

Miscellaneous Tips

Automatic Watering – One method for ensuring your plant always has enough water is by setting up a low maintenance automatic watering system. You’ll need some organic rope (NOT plastic), a drill and a tray. Firstly drill two holes near the base of your pot in the side and push your rope into one side and out the other. Make sure there is plenty of slack inside the pot. The next step is to pot your plant or cutting as described above, only this time, wrap the slack from the rope around the root system of your plant before you pack it out with soil. You should now have one plant in its pot with two bits of rope hanging down from either side. Finally, place a couple of bricks, a lump of wood, or some other object into your tray and fill the tray up with water. Place your pot onto the bricks, wood, or whatever and allow the two pieces of rope to dangle into the water. This will automatically deliver enough water to the plant all the time.

Pinching – Pinching is a method to promote bushiness and outward growth in your plants instead of growing too tall. At the tip of each branch, there is a section called the apical meristem. This is where all the new growth comes from and is responsible for regulating a plant hormone called indole-3-acetic acid (IAA). This hormone promotes the growth of the main stem and inhibits sideways growth from nodes along the stem. If this hormone weren’t present in the plant, it would grow outwards instead of upwards, so it follows that if you remove the apical meristem, this hormone will no longer be produced and your plant will bush out instead of grow tall.

When your plant has reached the desired height, cutting off the top of the main stem with a clean sharp pair of scissors will safely stop the plant from growing taller, while maximising leaf output.

Have you ever tried making your own crude Salvia divinorum extract at home, and wondered why it looks like a black sticky mess that smokes harsher than a porcupine eating competition? Well, fear not, for this guide will ensure a quality finished product rivalling that of store-bought extracts.

This extract will make approximately 10g of unstandardised 10x extract. Provided you can use a calculator, the quantities detailed below can be jiggled around to make any strength extract you want.

Equipment

100g Salvia divinorum Leaf

You can get Salvia divinorum Leaf all over the Internet.

1x Large Saucepan

Just a regular large saucepan. Make sure it’s clean. No one wants to find the remains of burnt on spaghetti in their pipe.

1x Pyrex Tray

A large, wide, glass dish essentially. You might find a casserole dish fits the bill.

1x Small Glass Container

Anything will do, even a jam jar.

1x Tall, Narrow Glass Container

The perfect tool for the job is a boiling tube, but anything remotely similar will do.

1x Pipette

Not everyone has access to calibrated volumetric pipettes so anything that looks like an eye dropper will do. That means, a thin tube with a rubber bit on the end which you can squeeze.

2lt Propane Based Solvent

No not propane, but either propan-2-ol (AKA Isopropanol, Isopropyl Alcohol, Rubbing Alcohol) or propanone (AKA Acetone). They need to be 99% pure at least. Don’t even think about using nail varnish remover.

300ml Naphtha

The best source of commercially available naphtha in the UK is lighter fluid.

Step 1 – Powder Your Leaf

The first thing to do is weigh out your 100g of Salvia divinorum Leaf. Remove 10g of the best leaves from your stash and set them aside for later. The remaining 90g needs to be powdered using your trusty coffee grinder. It’s high RPM motor and stainless steel blades are no match for your dried salvia leaf. It’s worth pointing out that although the leaves may not instantly grind, you’ll have to give them a few minutes, but they WILL powder eventually. Use the grinder in 1 minute bursts, allowing the motor to cool in between. When you remove the lid from the grinder, unless you want to look like Shrek, do it in a fume cupboard. The coffee grinder will reduce the leaf to a flour like consistency which will billow out as soon as you remove the lid, turning everything in the immediate vicinity a sexy shade of green.

Step 2 – Extract The Salvinorin-A

Now you have 90g of powdered leaf, get it in your saucepan and pour in enough solvent to comfortably cover your leaf. Stir it constantly for 5 minutes and then let it sit for 8 hours or so. After that time, enough of the salvinorin should have dissolved in your solvent, so you can now carefully pour off the liquid in your saucepan into your Pyrex tray, being careful enough to leave all the solids behind.

If you’d like to make sure you extract as much salvinorin-a as possible, you may repeat this step once more.

Step 3 – The Waiting Game

As simple as it sounds, you have about 16 hours in which to twiddle your thumbs, watch some paint dry, or whatever you feel like. During this time, don’t even think about touching your extraction, and make sure it’s in a dark place. Light has a nasty habit of destroying salvinorin-a in solution. The purpose of this step is to let any sediment such as tannins fall out of the leaf which are hard to extract later on.

After the 16 or so hours are up, you may pour off the remaining liquid into the original saucepan, provided you emptied out the powdered leaf earlier.

Step 4 – Evaporating The Solvent

This takes forever, is incredibly boring and will give you terrible stomach ache if you don’t do it somewhere well ventilated. The best, safest and longest method of evaporating the solvent is in the dark, in the absence of heat. Remember, the solvent is flammable, so applying heat to it should be avoided. Blowing air across the solvent will speed things up substantially, so if you have a fan, use it, but again, only somewhere well ventilated. If the fan produces a spark, it could ignite the vapour, blowing up both you and your extraction.

When the evaporation is complete, you should be left with a load of black gunk on the inside of your container. This is as far as most people get with their extractions and is the reason why the end result is a black sticky mess. That’s ok for about 5x or 6x extracts, but any stronger than that and it becomes unsmokable.

Step 5 – Purification

When your black gunk is completely dry, you can scrape it out of your container and place it into a tall, narrow container. To this, add 50ml or so of naphtha. The naphtha dissolves the green/black waxes but leaves behind the salvinorin-a. After you add the first lot of naphtha, allow the container 30 minutes or so to settle, then pipette off two thirds of the naphtha and discard it. Repeat this process at LEAST 5 more times until your salvinorin-a is no longer a black colour. If you keep washing with naphtha, it will eventually turn white, however that kind of purity isn’t necessary for making 10x extract. If you were making something like 40x or 60x (not recommended), then the higher the purity, the better.

After the last naphtha wash, remove two thirds one last time and this time, allow the naphtha to evaporate off, leaving you with relatively pure salvinorin-a. DO NOT try and smoke/ingest this, as even a tenth of a milligram can be too much for some people.

Step 6 – Fortification

Now we have the salvinorin-a from 90g of leaf, we shall add it back to the 10g of quality leaf you set aside in Step 1. Although not completely accurate, you can see this is why it’s called 10x extract, as there’s 10x the amount of salvinorin-a in the finished product.

To do this, we place the salvinorin-a we produced in the previous step into the saucepan and add to it the same amount of solvent we used in step 1. Stir it round for a few minutes to ensure it has all dissolved. Next, add the 10g of leaf to your small container and pour the contents of the saucepan over it.

You can now evaporate off all of this solvent as before, until all of the solvent has evaporated.

The finished product is approximately 10g of leaf, looking a little darker than normal, 10 times as strong.

Introduction

This guide is by no means a complete reference for any would-be Salvia divinorum user. It simply describes, compares and contrasts the different methods by which one can experience the effects of Salvia Divinorum. There are other factors which must first be taken into consideration before you should embark on your journey with salvia: don’t take too much. Start off with smaller doses first and get comfortable with the experience, then maybe later, increase that dose slightly. Never jump in at the deep end – it could put you off salvia for a long time. Also, especially if it’s your first time with salvia, or the first time you’ve increased your dose, make sure you have someone sober nearby making sure nothing bad happens. With that warning out of the way, here we go!

The “Mazatec Oldskool” Method

Traditionally, the Mazatec people, indigenous to the Oaxaca region of Mexico where Salvia divinorum was first found, used to use salvia as part of their shamanic practices. It is believed they used to grind up large quantities of Salvia divinorum leaf, which was then added to water and drank. This method leaves a lot to be desired. We know now that salvinorin-a, the active chemical in Salvia divinorum is not very readily absorbed through the stomach, so large quantities of leaf must be used. It also doesn’t taste particularly fantastic. These drawbacks are countered by the fact that the effects from the salvia last much longer than any other method outlined here. The Mazatecs also used to chew fresh leaf for long periods of time, which is still quite popular today. See the Quid method for more details.

Pros:

• Safe
• Doesn’t harm the lungs
• Longer lasting effects

Cons:

• Inefficient – lots of leaves required for desired effect
• Tastes horrible

Smoking Leaf

Smoking salvia leaf can be effective, but it’s not ideal for non-smokers. The active chemical in Salvia divinorum, salvinorin-a, requires a high temperature to vaporise, so the leaf should be smoked through a pipe or bong rather than rolled as a cigarette. When smoking the leaf through a pipe or bong, you should try and use a torch lighter if possible. The extra heat generated by the torch flame will vaporise more of the salvinorin-a per hit compared with a regular lighter. That said, many users have reported a more relaxed mood shift when smoked as a cigarette, and a more “trippy” high when using it to replace tobacco in a cannabis joint. It’s generally considered harder to achieve the full effects of Salvia divinorum when smoking only leaf, compared with the stronger extracts. This is because the salvinorin-a from the leaf is metabolised by the body rather quickly, so smoking more over a longer duration will only maintain the level of trip, rather than enhancing it. To get the most from this method, it is advised that you take two to three hits from the pipe or bong, each time holding your breath for as long as you can, exceeding 30 seconds if possible. The effects will be noticeable after about one minute, giving you up to about three hits before you should put the pipe or bong down. The effects will remain for up to about half an hour.

Pros:

• Quick
• Easy
• No bad taste
• Relatively safe – It’s quite hard to get too much salvinorin-a into your body from smoking only leaf

Cons:

• Hard to achieve effects
• Smoking anything is never good for your lungs
• Harsh on the throat/lungs – the smoke is very hot
• Short effect duration

Smoking Extract

Salvia divinorum extracts are quite simply salvia leaf with a lot more kick. Extracts are prepared by taking the salvinorin-a from a large quantity of leaf and depositing it back onto a much smaller quantity of leaf. For example, one gram of 20x extract is, give or take, one gram of salvia leaf, with the salvinorin-a of 20g of leaf added to it. To visualise it, imagine filling your bowl with 20x the amount of normal leaf, and smoking it all. For more information on the extracting process, you might like this article: How To Make Salvia divinorum Extract. This method ensures you get enough salvinorin-a into your body as soon as possible, opening up the deeper levels of the salvia experience. Unfortunately, due to the strength of some extracts, it can be hard to accurately measure out a correct dose, so you could end up taking in far more than you intended. The extract should also be smoked in a pipe or bong.

Pros:

• Effects are very easy to achieve
• Less material needs to be smoked compared to leaf for the same effects

Cons:

• Short effect duration
• Easy to take too much
• Smoking anything is never good for your lungs
• Harsh on the throat/lungs – the smoke is very hot

The Quid Method

A “quid” is basically a big wad of leaves. Fresh leaves, if possible, but dry leaves can be used too. If the leaves are dry, immerse them in a cup of warm water for about a minute before you wish to begin – this step is essential, otherwise you’ll be chewing on dry leaf, which will taste just plain disgusting. Take about ten to fifteen fresh or soaked leaves, roll them up into a ball and pop the ball, or quid, into your mouth. Now all you have to do is chew those awful tasting leaves for a good fifteen to thirty minutes. Sounds easy? Well, you have to do it swallowing as little saliva as possible. This method works by a process called “sublingual absorption”: the salvinorin-a is absorbed into your blood through the mouth, so the quid needs to stay in your mouth for as long as possible. After the time is up, you should begin to feel the effects, although rather subtly compared to smoking the leaf or extract. You can now either spit out the contents of your mouth, or swallow it. Swallowing it can be a ghastly experience, but it’s recommended, since any remaining salvinorin-a in your saliva or the leaf will eventually get absorbed through your stomach. Just like the “Mazatec Oldskool” method, the effects last longer than smoking.

Pros:

• Safe
• Doesn’t harm the lungs

Cons:

• Tastes horrible
• Takes longer for the effects to set in
• Can be harder to obtain full effects

Salvinorin Tincture

Salvinorin tincture works in the same way as the quid method: sublingual absorption. That is, you let the liquid sit in your mouth for 15 to 30 minutes, allowing the salvinorin-a to diffuse into your blood through your mouth. The tincture itself is an alcohol-based solution of salvinorin-a, meaning doses can be measured more accurately by diluting it, and it doesn’t taste nearly as bad. The effects are also brought about much faster.

Pros:

• Quick
• Easy
• Relatively safe
• Tastes nicer than quid method
• Doesn’t harm the lungs

Cons:

• If the tincture is not diluted enough, it can burn the mouth

Conclusions

Many people report a variety of different effects from each method, from nothing at all, to a full-blown shit-your-pants trip. Non-smokers will naturally prefer the oral methods, while smokers would naturally be more comfortable smoking the leaf or extract. It’s also not unheard of for people to combine two or more of the above methods to achieve a greater effect than either on their own.

As Coffeesh0p gets bigger and bigger, I’m getting more and more worried about promoting the psychoactivity of the plants we sell. Recently, the hyped up sales talk all over EveryoneDoesIt has resulted in them removing Salvia divinorum from their shop, so in response, we’ve slapped “not for consumption” labels in a few of our product descriptions. One problem still remains however – our articles section, which contains cannabis recipes, extraction teks and info on proper usage. While I’ve always been a supporter of providing proper information, these articles are making me more and more uncomfortable as the days flit by. As any Internet marketer should know, article writing is one great way to boost traffic and get links back to your site, but any Internet marketer worth his salt also knows, you shouldn’t take unnecessary risks.

The substantial traffic gained from these articles is also pretty poor when it comes to e-commerce – people looking for information probably aren’t ready to buy anything, so “convert” poorly. But those information seekers make great blog readers, so moving those articles to this blog makes perfect sense. It’s tempting to look at overall traffic and feel good as you see it increase, but traffic that converts poorly is actually more of a cost than a benefit. More people = more hosting bills!

Over the next week or so, I’ll gradually be transferring those articles onto this blog (with a 301 redirect, naturally), so keep an eye out!

Kenny G

American Saxophonist.

Daniel Siebert

Independent researcher, pharmacognosist, ethnobotanist, educator, author and Salvia crusader.

Oh oh! It seems Salvia Divinorum has finally attracted the wrong kind of attention. Maybe. It seems no one really knows what’s going on.

EveryoneDoesIt, the big-brand headshop and legal highs retailer, received a letter on Oct 31st from the MHRA demanding they “immediately cease to sell, supply, promote or advertise all salvia divinourm products intended for human administration”. The MHRA, or the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, is a government-run group of people who keep an eye out for safety when it comes to drugs, among other things. So why are they getting involved? Salvia isn’t the kind of medicine a doctor would prescribe. Maybe that’s just it though, if they say it’s a medicine knowing full well it will never be prescribed, no one will possibly have access to it! So, is this a sneaky attempt to ban salvia without actually banning it? It sounds plausable, but why have they not published any news about this on their website? Unusual, considering they made a big deal about BZP last year.

Even more strange is the fact that no one else has been contacted! While EveryoneDoesIt have removed their salvia divinorum products just to be sure, my wholesalers have no problem getting hold of salvia, and Coffeesh0p hasn’t heard a thing! Perhaps it’s down to the way their salvia was marketed – as a legal high rather than an entheogenic botanical specimine. I’ve since added a bit more of a warning on our salvia category page, making sure people understand that.

So, no one’s really sure if this is real or not. It certainly seems real considering EveryoneDoesIt have removed their stock, but if it is, the MHRA have gone about this very strangely. No public statement, only contacting EveryoneDoesIt and no warning period in which to sell off remaining stock.

An elaborate hoax by one of their competitors, maybe? Don’t look at me!

As I mentioned before, I got to give a 10 minute presentation on Salvia divinorum to my pharmacology class. It went down pretty well, so I thought I’d write it up for you guys! Clicking on any slide will open it full size in a new window/tab.

The first thing you should know about Salvia Divinorum is that it’s a very potent hallucinogen. I mean, realllly potent. It’s name directly translates to “Sage of the Seers” or “Diviner’s Sage”, so already we know it’s gonna be cool. Salvia Divinorum is a member of the mint family, along with other common herbs, such as basil, rosemary and garden sage. In fact, Salvia is the Sage genus, which includes the common sage as well as S. Divinorum. This plant is native to one region only – the Oaxaca ["wahaka"] province of Mexico, where it grows best in a moist, shady environment.

Salvia Divinorum found extensive use among the Mazatec, the indigenous people of this region. Their religion is a blend of traditional superstition and a flavour of Christianity (also superstition!) brought over by the Spanish conquistadors. They make extensive use of the natural psychoactive plants and fungi in their rituals, including Salvia Divinorum, Morning Glory seeds and psilocybin mushrooms. Salvia in particular was used very much as a learning tool to facilitate visions, particularly in the context of healing or divination (hence the name).

Salvia was also a common medicine, prescribed for such ailments as diarrhoea, headaches and rheumatism. It was also the number one cure for a semi-magical disease known as “panzón de borrego“, or swollen belly.It’s no surprise to see a difference in use between the Mazatec and the “west”. The majority of use in the USA, UK and other developed nations is for recreation, while the Mazatec adopt a somewhat more “respectful” approach. Traditionally, salvia leaves were chewed, or an extract was prepared by crushing the leaves and consuming the liquid. There is no indication the plant was ever smoked by these people, which makes sense – the active compound has a very high vaporisation temperature. It is only the western world who smoke high powered extracts though a bong with a turboflame lighter!

The effects are many and varied, depending greatly on the amount consumed. Uncontrollable laughter is perhaps the most obvious effect, but it doesn’t happen to everyone. Other effects include remembering past memories, dissociation of the body and mind, a sensation of a force or pressure pushing or pulling on the body, usually in a particular direction, perceiving membranes or films or multiple small tiles covering surfaces and merging with, or becoming other objects. This is in no way comparable to any of the classic hallucinogens, such as LSD or Mescalin in effect or duration, as the Salvia experience usually lasts 15 to 60 minutes.

The active compound of Salvia Divinorum is Salvinorin-A, a diterpine compound. I know what you’re thinking – “why should I care?” – well, you should! Salvinorin-a is the only known psychoactive diterpene AND the first non-alkaloidal (or non-nitrogenous) hallucinogen to be discovered. It acts as an agonist at the kappa opioid receptor, which is also unusual. The other, classical hallucinogens work at the 5-HT2a receptor, and the other opioid receptor ligands tend to be alkaloids.

Shown here is a receptor selectivity profile, comparing the LSD in red with salvinorin-a in green. As you can see, the salvinorin-a is very selective for the kappa opioid receptor and not a lot else, while LSD shows activity across multiple receptors.

Shown here is the proposed kappa receptor:salvinorin-a binding complex, produced from various mutagenesis studies.An active dose of salvinorin-a can be as low as 200 micrograms, around the same as LSD, making it one of the most potent hallucinogens. But, as I’ve already mentioned, the experience usually lasts under an hour. Salvinorin-A does not remain in the body for long, with a half life of between 20 to 80 minutes in nonhuman primates.

So, an interesting drug, but is it also interesting clinically? Definitely! First off, salvinorin-a has shown promise in analgesia (pain relieving) studies in mice. Salvinorin-a, when injected intraperitoneally, produced an increased tail flick latency in these mice. The tail flick test is designed to measure the pain threshold – the mouses tail is laid out flat on a plate, and at one point along the plate, a beam of light is focused on the plate from underneath, creating a hot spot underneath the end of the mouses tail. As soon as the mouse begins to notice any pain, it flicks its tail to the side, so an increase in this amount of time shows an increased pain threshold. This antinociceptive effect is abolished if the mice are first pre-treated with a kappa antagonist, or are genetically engineered to lack kappa receptors, which proves salvinorin-a acts on these receptors in vivo as well as in vitro, shown by the previous graph. To make sure this effect was consistent and really did show an increased resistance to pain, other assays, such as the hotplate and chemo-nociceptive acetic acid abdominal constriction assays were done and produced results concordant with analgesia.

As I mentioned before, Salvia was administered by the Mazatec for diarrhoea, but it has now been shown to prevent myenteric cholinergic transmission in the small intestines of a guinea pig, effectively stopping muscle contraction.

Salvia may also shed some light on depression. Other kappa selective agonists typically produce depressive like behaviour in animal models, and salvinorin-a seems to produce a similar response. This supports the hypothesis that kappa opioid receptor signalling plays a role in depressive behaviours, but there has been at least one case report where salvia divinorum was used to treat refractory depression – depression that responds to nothing else. Before we can conclude anything from this, further work, including clinical trials must be undertaken. Either way, interesting stuff!

As we’ve seen, salvinorin-a is a bit strange, offering us an exciting new molecule to play around with. Already, chemical tweaking of the molecular structure has given us a selective agonist for the mu receptor and further research might lead to many novel, receptor-specific compounds.

Salvia has also shed some light on kappa receptors and their role in hallucinatory diseases. If the kappa agonist, salvinorin-a is able to produce such intense hallucinations (proving the involvement of kappa receptors in modulating our perception), could a kappa antagonist help reduce hallucinations in diseases with prominent perceptual disturbances, such as Alzheimer’s or Schizophrenia? There are many avenues Salvia Divinorum could lead us down, but if one thing’s for certain, more research is needed!

There are some great papers here, all of which I’d recommend, but if you can’t be bothered, there’s a brilliant TV documentary on there, Sacred Weeds. Definitely worth a watch. Thanks!

The slides are available as a PDF here: Salvia Divinorum Presentation [836kB]

What better way to skim over the scientific method than by talking about Salvia Divinorum!

Bman_666, over at SalviaSource, had the very noble idea of applying a little science to growing salvia divinorum in order to dispel any myths or misconceptions about it, and maybe produce the ultimate “How To Grow Salvia” guide for salvia cultivators around the world.

Some of the variables under scrutiny are:

• Natural vs artificial light
• Different soil compositions / Fertilizer mixtures
• Effectiveness of CO2 supplements
• Contained growing (with controlled humidity) vs growing out in the open
• Will your TV kill your plant? [What?! - I suppose most scientific breakthroughs develop from "outside-the-box" thinking, so I'll reserve judgement...]
• Hydroponics vs Soil
• Watering frequency
• Misting the leaves vs not
• Varying soil pH
• Distilled/bottled/tap water comparisons

Noble goals indeed, but at the time of writing, Bman_666 wasn’t quite sure what he’d be letting himself in for! The first page of the thread in question contained some excellent insight about how the results might be structured within the forum, and some quick guidelines on standardisation, which are both important to prevent confusion and help mine accurate data. But there was one thing missing – repetition, they key to any scientific study.

Perhaps they’re way ahead of me, I thought – we could all take repetition for granted. Just to be extra vigilant (the, uhh, second key to any scientific study? It must some kind of many-keyed combination lock, with iris scanners ‘n’ all. A complicated beast!), I posted my advice on using 8-10 plants per variable to test. So, 4-5 plants for the control and another 4-5 differing in a single respect (ie, watered with deionised water). It turns out they weren’t as far ahead as I thought.

At this point, I’ll just point out I had to explain the same thing to someone in the lab today. We were setting up cell cultures in order to add varying concentrations of a drug (retinoic acid) to them to see what happens. For each concentration of the drug (dissolved in a solvent), we had a total of 8 cell cultures set up – 4 to receive the drug/solvent and 4 to receive the solvent without the drug, as a control. Since the concept of repetition seemed a less universal concept than I first realised, I figured I’d talk about it here.

So, back to this thread. My reply was the following:

Suppose your get set up with your soil cutting and your hydro cutting. If, for some unknown reason, the hydro cutting dies, all you can conclude is that hydro kills salvia plants.

Or, say in 1 week your hydro plant grows 10cm and your soil plant grows 9cm (I have no idea how fast it grows; figures are arbitrary). All you could conclude from that is that plants that grow in soil grow 90% as well as those with a hydro setup. Now, supposing you had 5 plants with each variable – the hydro plants grew this much {10,12,16,17,23} (average 15.6cm) and the soil plants grew by this much {5,7,8,8,9} (average 7.4) – as you can see this data suggests an approx 50% difference. Taking the tallest/shortest combinations of your 5 plants, you could end up with a height difference of as much as 18cm or as little as 1cm – working with only 1 plant per variable can give you very inaccurate data.

In reality, the ranges will likely be much narrower, but you should get the point. Even plants grown under identical conditions will not develop 100% identically, and that variable is one that you need to take into account, like any other (eg humidity). Because you can’t control that variable, the best you can do is eliminate its effects by using multiple data and averaging. You wouldn’t trust a drug that had been tested on a single individual, would you?

I hope that can highlight just how meticulous you have to be with your research. Growing only two plants side by side is great for a fun, personal experiment, but to further the collective knowledge in a particular field, you need to apply a strict scientific method.

Bman_666’s main concern with repetition was the number of plants he had available, which is fair enough. But serious science demands a serious commitment. From an idea in the mind of a chemist, to an actual prescribable drug, pharmaceuitical companies have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on research, involving trials of thousands of people.

While the details may be a bit out, the SalviaSource guys are certainly making tracks in the right direction. If you have 10 or so salvia clones lying around, maybe you can contribute to this fascinating project? Be sure to get involved @ SalviaSource!

Arrrghhh! We’ve all seen the media’s sensationalist take on Salvia Divinorum. I swear I’ve seen it mentioned as “the next LSD” and “the next marijuana” in the SAME article before. I’m sure it makes compelling reading for those conservative types, wielding the banning stick, but come on!

Just yesterday, I received a newspaper clipping through the post entitled “Concern over craze for ‘psycho sage’ videos“. The article focused mainly on those tw@s that think it’s fun to post videos of themselves on YouTube smoking salvia, which is fair enough, but in approximately 250 words of ill-informed “journalism”, I can see LSD mentioned twice.

Why This Is Fucking Stupid

1. Anything labelled so consistently as “LSD-Like” is sure to receive a banning from any MP wanting to appear “tough on drugs”. We all know how Gordon Brown likes to ignore scientific evidence when it comes to drugs, so I don’t think the fact that salvia divinorum is NOTHING like LSD will be mentioned at all. Considering that this amazing herb does actually have a lot of medicinal potential, is it really worth comparing it to LSD just to make exciting reading? This is a sure fire way to get it banned. Arsehole Journalist: I’m sure all those people with Parkinson’s will thank you! (NB: that’s not to say LSD doesn’t have any clinical use – in fact, it shows amazing potential in curing addiction far quicker than regular therapy – shame no one wants to research it any more because it’s such a ballache to get permission…)
2. The public tends to believe it, and may get hurt! If that many places are reporting its similarity to LSD, then the uninformed public will take it as read. Last night, someone submitted an anonymous report on Salvia Trip, entitled “Not for me”. This bloke is a 36 year old programmer, who used to be into LSD back in the good old days. He goes on to say that he’s heard about salvia and wanted a similar experience. As you’d expect, he didn’t enjoy it. Thankfully, nothing bad happened, but there is certainly the potential for something to go wrong. This is only one report (and the inspiration behind this post), so imagine how many more people this has happened to. This piss-poor excuse for a journalist is going to do more harm than good.