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The following post is a summary of a paper published last year in the journal Psychopharmacology entitled "Acute and post-accute behavioral and psychological effects of salvinorin A in humans", by Peter H Addy.

Introduction

The paper begins with a bit of background on Salvinorin-A, the active compound in Salvia divinorum. Unlike "classic" hallucinogens such as psilocin, LSD, etc, salvinorin-A does not bind to the 5-HT_2A receptor, but instead binds specifically to the kappa opioid receptor. In the body, very little is known about the effects produced by the kappa opioid receptor, but synthetic drugs that bind to it tend to cause dysphoria (ie the opposite of euphoria, so not very nice), hallucinations and other effects we'd associate with Salvia divinorum including perceived distortions in space and time and uncontrollable laughter.

Up to the point this paper was published, the author mentions the four clinical studies of Salvia divinorum on humans, only one of which was a placebo-controlled study (where an inactive dose or dummy substance is used as well), however, this particular study only had four participants - such a small sample size is too small to draw any major generalised conclusions from. There has also been relatively little research done on the subjective experiences from Salvia divinorum use, or the after-effects of use in humans.

Back in 2008, I gave a presentation about Salvia divinorum's background and pharmacology. It was obvious when I was doing the research that scientific interest in the matter was only just developing, with papers being published at the time on topics such as which receptors in the brain the active compound, Salvinorin-A, binds to, molecular structures and plenty of speculation on what the future may hold for such a unique plant.

Almost five years later, I thought it might be interesting to see how far the research has progressed - have any of the hopeful speculations been realised - so, the first thing I did was look at how many more papers have been published on salvia since then. Turns out it's a lot!

Of course Salvia divinorum should be banned! Read this Top 8 List of reasons to find out why!

A Canadian woman has successfully sued a drug dealer who sold her methamphetamine (crystal meth). The woman suffered a heart attack and spent 23 days in a coma after taking the drug.

Following the appearance of videos on YouTube of people under the influence of Salvia divinorum, BBC news has questioned whether its legal status should be reviewed.

Right. We are finally, FINALLY properly back online. We've done the orders every few days from a local pub who very kindly let us use their wifi but unfortunately that meant we just went there, 'print screened' the orders and left. As a result of this we haven't been able to update on here (apart from once, briefly), Twitter, reply to emails properly or mark the orders as dispatched. I updated the order statuses yesterday and we're slowly but surely catching up with the rest - but as of now it's business as usual. (If anyone's wondering, it took longer than expected as there wasn't a phone line in our new house when we moved - then the bloody Jubilee delayed everything by about a week. But we're settled in now and have loads more space than our old place meaning a much more efficient work space and way more room for stock!)

W've moved premesise and we're still offline!`

Firstly, I'm proud to introduce our new, premium quality incense, Squidgy Black - produced in conjunction with the well known K2 Incense brand...

It's been forever in the works, but it's now finally possible to order stuff to an alternative delivery address automatically through the site.