Salvia divinorum Extract

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Salvia divinorum extract is available at The IAmShaman Shop, and is unmatched in both its quality and its price.  The owner still spends a few hours of each of his days sifting out all of the stems, and sifting out the powder, leaving behind washed, crushed leaf with few black waxes.  Salvia extract can vary so widely in potency, but our Salvia extract is continually tested for quality and consistency.

Salvia divinroum extracts are made from the Salvia divinorum plant that is native to Oaxaca, Mexico. The Mazatecs never made extractions from this sacred plant in any stronger form than a tea, so Salvia extraction is a new phenomena that was started in America. The Mazatecs possess alcohol, and with their vast knowledge of plants and shamanistic ritual, they could have easily created some sort of extracted Salvia product of their own, but they never chose to do so. They felt that the spirit of the plant would be poisoned by alcohol, and that the true spirit of the sacred plant would only reveal itself to them when chewing fresh Salvia leaves in the form of a quid. We have often wondered what the Mazatec people would think of this new invention of ours, this Salvia extract that they have never experienced.

We make all of our Salvia extract exactly the same way that we have always made it; in small batches, using only Spirytus ethanol, with washed leaves that have been de-stemmed and crushed to a nice consistency. Our Salvia extract comes in a crushed leaf form, unlike many other venders who offer their Salvia extracts as powder form; a form that often looks like gunpowder. We do our absolute best to create a Salvia extract that honors both the spirit of the plant, and offers a uniquely high quality product that remains as true to the original plant as possible.

The active principle in S. divinorum is salvinorin A, a furanolactone neoclerodane diterpenThe active principle in S. divinorum is salvinorin A, a furanolactone neoclerodane diterpene: Salvinorin A is hydrophobic, which explains a lot about the methods of dosing; an infusion is always made using fresh leaves, so that an emulsion is formed (thus giving a foamy head). Its activity and potency in open-field tests with mice are similar to mescaline: decreased activity without sedation, and no loss of righting reflex. Doses of up to 100mg/kg were tested in mice, although the method of administration was later found to be highly inefficient. It is active in humans at 200-500 micrograms, and is thus many times more potent than any other plant-based hallucinogen. Doses of 1000mg/kg in mice did not produce fatalities (this is 5000 times the effective dose for humans!) and salvia may be extracted from fresh or dried leaves (dried leaves are probably easier).

Valdas et al. successfully isolated salvinorin A:

After extracting the dried leaves with ether in a Soxhlet apparatus and partitioning the extract between hexane and aqueous methanol, one has a fraction that is almost 10% salvia extract by weight when dried. This procedure is so effective at concentrating the diterpene that the crude compound often precipitates out of the aqueous methanol solution before being subjected to chromatography. Ether is used to extract the plant material because it has a low boiling point, but chloroform or methylene chloride will serve as well for this initial extraction. Chromatography is used for final purification of the compound because it is faster and gives higher yields than repeated recrystallization of the precipitate.

One kilogram of dried leaves produces about 1 gram of salvia extract.

Nobody knows exactly how salvorin A works. The NMDA/sigma class shares a lot in common with salvinorin A. The hallucinations tend to be eidetic at lower doses, i.e., more like vivid imagination than true hallucinations. Like salvinorin A, NMDA/sigma agents tend to be more hallucinatory in the dark and in silence. The synchronization of experiences among people who share their experiences as they have them is also a feature that has been identified in NMDA/sigma hallucinogens. The general nature of the hallucinations is also consistent with NMDA/sigma agents. Interestingly, salvinorin A does not seem to produce significant dissociative effects. Thus if it is a NMDA/sigma agent, it is probably much more potent at sigma receptors than NMDA.

We may have come across the very first natural NMDA/sigma hallucinogen. If so, its lack of dissociative effects could lead to significant improvements in our understanding of the psychophysiology of sigma receptors.