‘Magic mint’ triggers cosmic, and legal, high

When he first smoked it, Bennett says the world around him went flat, "like the second dimension." Another user described having a sense that he had become a native in the Amazon jungle and then merged with a tree. Others experience panic because they find the cosmic ride too intense.

"There's a real dissolvement of the ego . . . that sometimes can be quite frightening for people who have a hard time letting go. But for people who have an easy time letting go, it can be quite a blissful experience."

Dr. Bryan Roth, director of the psychoactive drug screening program at the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health, says the chemical structure of the plant's active ingredient is "totally unique."

Roth, whose lab at Case-Western University in Cleveland was the first to map its molecular makeup five years ago, says salvinorin A is a "kappa-opiate agonist" that binds to a single type of receptor in the brain.

"It's amazing that this drug targets that particular receptor," he says. "Most drugs are not so selective. LSD hits about 50 receptors."

As a result, Salvia is creating a real buzz among scientists in the pharmaceutical arena. While pure salvinorin A is unlikely to have any use as a medication, its derivatives could be useful, and about 200 have been isolated so far, says Roth. Compounds that could block the effects of Salvia may be candidates for treating depression, schizophrenia or Alzheimer's-induced dementia.

"It's a really, really hot area in medical chemistry right now," says Roth.

When it comes to recreational use, Roth is reluctant to pronounce Salvia divinorum "dangerous," although he doesn't encourage people to smoke the leaves or extract (or take any other mind-altering drug, for that matter) — and he's never used it himself.

"The big problem with it from a safety standpoint is that people are pretty incapacitated when they take a hefty dose. They're pretty much disoriented in space and time and they could wander off a building or walk in front of a car and not know where they are."

That's why Bennett of Urban Shaman warns that anyone taking Salvia "should always have somebody there with them. That's a Number 1 rule.

"Because you enter into a waking kind of dream state in which you lose your critical judgment in a similar way you might in a dream. So you want to make sure a person remains sitting down or lying down."

That's advice Hunter can relate to: the second time he smoked the plant's dried leaves, he did it alone in his room.

"I remember looking at what was like a spinning top, like a Jewish dreidel. It was spinning and the faster it spun, I felt like I was spinning with it. And then all of a sudden I looked down and I was it. I became it.

"For a second, I thought I went insane because if you don't have someone around to, like, hold you down, you might get a little bit panicked. It can be a terrifying experience."

Still, Hunter says that when he feels ready, he may try Salvia again.

"It's strictly about information, no pleasure," he concedes. "You can't call it a high. You go just into an altered stare of being, really. You feel the effects of life through different eyes."

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