Shulgin and Salvia

[gibran2]

I was reading this experience report on erowid – a 1964 report by Shulgin taken from his notes.

The experience didn’t interest me very much, but a comment made near the end of the report did:

To greenhouse - distinct pleasure in looking at the lush salvia divinorum - the smell fits the appearance

Shulgin was growing Salvia Divinorum in 1964! That’s incredible. Wasson first published a paper about salvia in 1962, so the fact that Shulgin was growing it just 2 years later is impressive.

 

[headphoneperson]

Fascinating find. A lot of this is to be found in Pihkal, word for word, in chapter 9 of Book I on DOM. I distinctly remember reading that passage in Pihkal and finding it amazing that he never elaborated there or anywhere else that I could find about Salvia Divinorum. Clearly he must have been aware of its effects, though.

 

[Entropymancer]

The early history of those first S. divinorum plants in the US is rather interesting. Since they first appeared in cultivation in the US right around the time that Wasson and Hofmann received viable type specimens in Oaxaca and sent them to Carl Epling for identification, everyone assumed that the plants were propagated from Wasson and Hofmann's samples. The strain has even been called the Wasson and Hofmann strain. In fact, Wasson and Hofmann sent only dried specimens of the plant, no live ones. But at virtually the same time, a psychiatrist named Sterling Bunnell was in Oaxaca to collect cultures of psilocybian mushrooms, and at the same time happened to collect an S. divinorum plant, which he brought home and raised in his garden. A few months later, he saw Wasson and Epling's articles in the Harvard Botanical Museum Leaflets, and donated a cutting to the UCLA botanical gardens as well as giving a cutting to Dr. Shulgin and others involved in the exploration of psychoactives.

Despite having the plant since the early 1960s, Shulgin apparently tried the plant only once, and didn't experience any effects on that occasion... he was always too busy with bioassaying other psychoactives of his own devising to become interested enough in followup experiments. He finally tried the plant for a second time in 1998, at the Salvia conference held at the Breitenbush Hotsprings.

 

[blue lunar night]

it is indeed impressive that Sasha was cultivating Salvia d. at such an early date !

of course this is speculation, but i don't think more Salvia experience would have done anything to win him over to Her camp...
both the Shulgins are vocal about their distaste for dissociatives such as ketamine & dxm, or anything that cleaves the psyche from the corporeal matrix.
and Sasha often seemed to perceive plants as a 'means to an end' anyway...

i mean the chapter 'shrooms' in tikhal is hardly enticing... the experience they present sounds grimy & not very relevant... but that's what 'shrooms' are for the shulgins, apparently.

& in an interview with MAPS, Ann speaks about Ayahuasca harshly telling her & Sasha to never come back !

anyways, i the shulgins, but they really have very little to say about plant entheogens, beyond their chemical constituents...

 

[Entropymancer]

I was looking through the index of Sasha's lab notebooks from the early 1960s, and sure enough, he has a couple entries on Salvia divinorum:

3/15/63
Subacute effects of Salvia divinorum

Attempt to confirm and evaluate the use of Leaves of the Shepardess (S. divinorum) as an intoxicant or as a hallucinogenic plant.

Consumption
A.M.
7:40  1 leaf  1.3 g
7:45  1  "    1.6 g
7:50  1 leaf  1.6 g
7:55     "    1.0
7:56     "    1.2
              _____
              6.6 g

Comments

These leaves were large, older leaves from [redacted]'s greenhouse. Eaten without difficulty. Distinct taste of bad spinach - no bitterness to speak of - some after taste. There was probably no effect. Possibly slightly unusual feeling at 1/2 - 1 hrs but this was extremely [illegible]. 2 hrs later nothing. Possible diuretic effect - urinated three times in this 2 hr period, copiously. Also had drunk lots of coffee, so.....

The scan quality was poor on that page... I'm attaching the entry below in case someone else can decipher the illegible word.

5/28/63
10:50 PM several small leaves, Σ 5.0 g
11:10 PM several more, 5 g → 10 g

These were leaves which were left from the pruning and making cuttings of one of the plants [redacted] brought to the lab. Unfortunately prior to this trial I had consumed both dinner and a corresponding amount of wine. Taste not at all unpleasant. An intensification(?) of the (wine) intoxication provides sufficient justification to build a green-house. Am doing.

8/5/63
20 g - possible transient feeling - not too believable.

8/10/63
20 g - initial face puffy. Not too believable either.

Trials of S. divinorum

Based on 960 g → 30 g

Ingestion of "salvose" - the glassy extract of the first annual workup.

 date             amt     leaf equiv    effects
_______          ______   __________   _______
6/9/64    7:35   0.22 g  
          8:45   0.25 g     Σ 15 g       none

6/12/64   6:55    0.6 g       20 g       none