Salvia divinorum

The most comprehensive overview of Salvia divinorum, a member of the mint family, was published in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology in 2013 by a team of researchers headed by Ivan Casselman. 

Their article “concentrates on the investigation of Salvia divinorum over the last 50 years including ethnobotany, ethnopharmacology, taxonomy, systematics, genetics, chemistry and pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic research.”

In the ethnobotanical section, the authors link traditional uses of the fresh leaves of this plant to Mazatec shamanism in Oaxaca, Mexico, where the plant is used as a palliative for patients near death. Similar approaches are being explored for more effective hospice care in the United States, Canada, and Europe.

Men and women Mazatec healers undergo apprenticeship training with three plants: the leaves of Salvia divinorum, the seeds of Ipomoea violacea and Psilocybe spp. mushrooms. 

“Initially,” say the authors, citing work published by Leander J. Valdés, “trainees ingest increasingly large doses of Salvia divinorum leaves which show them the way to heaven, where the initiated learn from the tree of knowledge.”

With regard to the chemistry of the plant, Casselman’s team of researchers confirms that “it is the diterpene salvinorin A that is responsible for the bioactivity in Salvia divinorum and which are also considered to be potential lead compounds in pharmaceutical research.”

In their introduction to a study of Salvia divinorum published in Journal of Pain Research, Mexican researchers Ulises Coffeen and Francisco Pellicer cite traditional uses of this plant to treat “inflammatory conditions and pain, such as headaches, gastrointestinal (GI) problems, or rheumatism” in addition to, among the Mazatecs, “insect bites, eczema, candidiasis, cystitis, and menstrual cramps, and even depression or alcohol addiction.” In their conclusion, the authors affirm that “the experimental evidence supports the fact that S. divinorum, salvinorin A (SA), and their analogues decrease the pain induced by neuropathy and inflammation.”  

Portuguese scientists directed by Andreia Machado Brito-da-Costa published an extensive article on the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of S. divinorum in the journal Pharmaceuticals in 2021 in which they study the psychological, physiological, and toxic effects of this plant and its bioactive compound the neoclerodane diterpene salvinorin A. As the authors point out, “unlike the other naturally occurring hallucinogens, salvinorin A is a terpenoid that does not have nitrogen atoms in its molecular formulae.”  The article also provides detailed statistical analysis of recreational use of S. divinorum in the United States, Canada and Europe as well as the plant’s global legal status. The authors give considerable attention to forensic techniques for the detection of salvinorin A in products containing S. divinorum.  The researchers maintain that “the short-term effects of S. divinorum vary widely from person to person, and include modification of visual perception, hallucinations, out of body experiences, altered states of self and reality, dizziness, light headedness, disorientation, mood and somatic sensations, confusion of senses (e.g., hearing colours or smelling sounds), dysphoria, and increased vigilance.”  The scientists also highlight that “the therapeutic potential of salvinorin A for the treatment of drug dependence [such as cocaine addiction] comes from the drug’s capacity to decrease dopaminergic activation and extracellular DA levels.” In their conclusion, the authors state that “it is noteworthy that the drug [salvinorin A] seems to induce tolerance without displaying abuse potential nor dependence.” Their future research goals seem to be focused on the possibilities of creating analogues of salvinorin A that would not produce what they call undesirable “psychotropic side effects” in their hopes of developing “opiate analgesics with a better safety profile.”  

Quite a different approach is what one finds in Ana Elda Maqueda’s chapter “The Use of Salvia divinorum from a Mazatec Perspective,” from Plant Medicines, Healing and Psychedelic Science, edited by Beatriz Caiuby Labate and Clancy Cavnar, which foregrounds psychoactive properties of S. divinorum in a ritual context conjoined with the knowledge of traditional healers. The author is part of the Human Neuropsychopharmacology Research Group in Barcelona’s Hospital de la Santa Creu y Sant Pau, and her study, based on her fieldwork while living in the Mazatec community, opens with a superb natural history of Salvia divinorum. Maqueda notes that the Mazatec refer to this plant as “ska pastora,” ska or xkà meaning herb or leaf in the Mazatec language. The name, which connotes a Christian influence, may well have a lost a more ancient Indigenous nomenclature that may yet be recovered through interviews with elders. Maqueda clarifies that “the first specimens of living and flowering S. divinorum that came out of Mexico and constitute the common strain of the plant that has spread throughout the world were collected at the Mazatec Sierra by psychiatrist and ecologist Sterling Bunnell, who introduced them to the United States in 1962.” The S. divinorum variety that circulates commercially should, in fact, be known as the “Bunnell variety,” not the “Wasson and Hofmann variety,” since these two researchers never exported from Mexico the live plants that they collected.  In the section of her study called “Traditional Use,” Maqueda reports conducting interviews in a Mazatec town with people suffering from a wide variety of ailments ranging from vaginal diseases to cocaine addiction to bronchitis who were cured with different applications of fresh S. divinorum leaves, usually in a ceremonial context. Maqueda says that some Mazatec consider the plant a female doctor or hold that the feminine healing presence is the Virgin Mary, “while others believe her to be the goddess of plants and animals or the soul of Mother Nature itself.” What makes Maqueda’s study particularly invaluable is precisely its emphasis on ritual healing and how the chjota chjine xkà (“the wise person who cures with herbs”) maintains a balance that unites the divine and the earthly in a shared existence. In the section on the therapeutic potential of S. divinorum, Maqueda has a warning for researchers who insist on working within a strictly Western scientific paradigm that ignores Indigenous wisdom keepers: “It is very important to remember that the traditional use of S. divinorum by the Mazatec to successfully treat a complex and multifaceted problem like addiction is part of a ritual and a much larger, organic, and inclusive worldview than our compartmentalized interventions and that the properties of this herb cannot be reduced to the pharmacological mechanism of just one isolated component in the form of a pill.” Even so, Maqueda maintains that potential applications that could be developed from salvinorin A include safe analgesics without addictive properties, anti-inflammatories, medications to treat different types of cancer, medications for disorders such as schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease, antidepressants, medications to treat psychostimulant abuse, psychotherapeutic uses, and neuroprotectors. A truly impressive list, to be sure!