Could the drug have affected his brain?
Salvia is still legal in a majority of states, and millions of Americans have used the drug without incident. That includes pop star Miley Cyrus, who was caught on video last year smoking salvia from a bong.
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What little research that has been done shows that all strains of Salvia divinorum, a plant grown for centuries in Mexico, produces a chemical called Salvionon A. This chemical affects the kappa opioid receptor, a part of the brain that’s in large part responsible for our perceptions of reality.
In an unmodified state, salvia—whether it’s smoked, chewed, or swallowed in extract form—produces an intense high, lasting less than half an hour. “It’s one of the most behaviorally impairing drugs that we’ve come across,” says Dr. Matthew Johnson, assistant professor of psychology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. “At the higher doses, people are completely dissociated from this reality . . . They describe being completely transported to another dimension.”
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There is, however, at least one reported case of salvia leading to a mental breakdown. “We had a case of a male who came in, 23 years old, and was actively psychotic,” says Dr. Peter Przekop, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the Loma Linda University School of Medicine in California. “The only thing we could attach it to was the night before, he had smoked the XXX [high-strength] salvia. We stabilized him, put him on medication, transferred him to the psych department. When we tried to gradually wean him off antipsychotics, the symptoms returned. This was permanent psychosis we suspect was brought on by this drug.”
Przekop, who published a letter detailing his case in the American Journal of Psychology, hypothesizes that the patient had a predisposition for mental illness brought on by salvia use.
Loughner was using Salvia Divinorum which is used by the Shaman's of the Sierra Mazateca and is often called Seer's Sage. Although it is indigenous to Oazaca, Mexico, it can be, and has been, ordered from online companies. In fact, it is legal in most states.
Salvia divinorum:
In their rituals, the shamans use only fresh S. divinorum leaves. They see the plant as an incarnation of the Virgin Mary, and begin the ritual with an invocation to Mary, Saint Peter, the Holy Trinity, and other saints. Ritual use traditionally involves being in a quiet place after ingestion of the leaf—the Maztec shamans say that "La Maria (S. divinorum) speaks with a quiet voice."
I probably experimented with every known drug in the Sixties but not salvia as it was not available in those days.
I'm glad I didn't after reading this:
I used it on a number of occasions, and I can say there were no positive qualities associated with it. It makes you entirely dissociative and causes powerful hallucinations. The "come down" kind of feels like going from insane => sane. I couldn't describe it any other way; your thoughts are jumbled, you don't know where you are or what matters. If you speak, it's generally nonsensical to the sober people around you. Unlike mushrooms or LSD, there is no insight, no feeling of empathy - just a powerful feeling of alienation and jumbled, dissociative thoughts. I can easily see a young mind, susceptible to mental illness, being snapped by a couple salvia trips.
I'm not saying this should turn into a witch hunt against salvia, but if there was ever a drug that I felt young people should not be able to get their hands on, salvia is the one. Frum's cannabis argument is pretty specious, but I'm telling you, salvia is a psychologically dangerous drug, especially when smoked as an extract, and especially for young, or mental-illness-prone minds.
All drugs are dangerous. Most psychedelic plants are not physically toxic and cannot be overdosed but I watched quite a few folks in the Sixties who were mentally unstable before taking a psychedelic drug go off the deep end. One close friend went nuts on LSD and turned to heroin (which unlike psychedelics, dulls the mind.) He ended up being a heroin addict for 20 years. Another friend (the nephew of Harold Pinter the playwright) flipped on Acid and sort of recovered only to kill himself ten years later.
Psychedelics have traditionally been used for "divination" or some other sort of "spiritual" experience. They are not recreatational drugs and should be used with respect and caution.
I wonder, if Loughner's lawyer fails to convince a jury that this kid is permanently and completely insane, if she will then attempt a "temporary insanity brought on by drugs" as an alternative defense. It has succeeded in some cases usually with alcohol but most notoriously was successful in the "Twinkie defense" used by Dan White's lawyer to reduce the crime from murder to manslaughter.
