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Terence
Mckenna
From
Terence McKenna: Live in New York,
WFMU-FM, East Orange, NJ, June 20, 1993
What's new and fun that you haven't experienced?
Oh,
well here's something new and fun. There's a plant, called Salvia divinorum,
which is absolutely legal. It's not only legal, the active principle is unknown
to science -- therefore it can't be made illegal! [singing:] S-A-L-V-I-A
D-I-V-I-N-O-R-U-M Salvia divinorum -- remember you heard it here first!
[laughter] Okay, so here's the deal with this. This is a plant that was carried
on the books for years as a hallucinogen, but nobody took it seriously because
when the botanists and the chemists would test for alkaloids, it's alkaloid
negative. So they said, "Well then, to Hell with it, it just can't
be." But recently, an anthropologist who will remain nameless spent some
time with the Indians where this stuff is happening, and they showed him how to
do it. And he has been telling everyone how to do it. And, you know, true to the
spirit of that, here's how you do it.
First of all, this is a plant that looks like a coleus, which is a common
houseplant. You could grow this stuff in your window box or your apartment; it
would pose no problem whatsoever. It's also -- cuttings are available from plant
dealers. And what you do is you take about fifteen leaves, which are about
like... that, and you pull out the mid-rib, so you just have the soft, leafy
material. And you roll it up into a quid, and you put it in your cheek, and you
lie down in darkness where you can see one of those illuminated digital clocks,
you know? Lay there for fifteen minutes by the clock, slowly squeezing the stuff
down. And it's very bitter. I mean you feel like the whole front of your mouth
wraps around this stuff, but it's worth it. It's worth it. And after about
fifteen minutes, if you will just spit this into a receptacle, Kleenex,
whatever, uh, hygienic product is your choice [snickering] then, about two
minutes later, it will begin to stream. In other words, these afterimage-colored
lights begin to form and come past you. And about two minutes after that, these
cobalt-blue, magenta hallucinations begin to unfold. And what it reminded me of
was "Nude Descending a Staircase" but as if Duchamp had done it in
ultraviolet and blue and cobalt, and just this -- [question from audience] Where
did I learn about this plant? Well I've known about it for years, but like
everybody else I just didn't take it seriously. [question] No no, it's in the
Oaxacan Mountains, it's in the Sierra Mazateca of central Mexico. And after
about 45 minutes, it all gently goes away. And believe me, I'm a skeptic, I'm
hard to move off the dime, I'm not an airhead. And it worked, it worked. And --
very interesting -- I called the guy who gave it to me the next morning and I
said, "It looks to me like it has the potential to be a craze!" And he
said, "The very word that occurred to me -- craze! craze!" [laughter]
So, like I said, you heard it here first.
Interviewed by Bruce Pavitt in theStranger.com
April 22, 1999
What can you tell us about salvia divinorum?
A remarkable psychedelic plant--remarkable in that it evaded identification and
characterization of its chemical constituents for so long. A plant that is a
powerful legal psychedelic, easily prepared and used. One of many examples of
the bounty of nature providing means to alter our consciousness regardless of
the opinion and values of the culture at large. There is a great deal of
specific information on salvia on the Internet, and people who are interested in
this plant should certainly do their homework there.
Live at Wetlands Preserve, NYC
July 28, 1998
Audience Question: How do you compare salvia [divinorum] to DMT? I know that DMT
is weirder, the way it sounds...
TM: Some people don't think so. I think so. To me, salvia seems like a strong
hallucinogenic drug, but it's not as hard for me to explain to myself what's
going on as with DMT. DMT, if it works, pushes me into a place where I just have
to admit that I don't know what I'm talking about. All these metaphors that have
been spun out, in books, and onstage, were just shadow play. The real thing is
so appalling, so confounding, it's just, you know, "may the baby Jesus shut
your mouth and open your mind!"
Q: Did you ever smoke salvinorin-A?
TM: The pure compound? I did smoke it once. It came on so fast, that I found
myself on it; I had no impression of getting high at all. I found it happening
to me.
I was expecting it to be weirder than DMT. To me it didn't seem to be weirder.
To me it seems liked a very accelerated ayahuasca rush of some kind. It
definitely distorts your body image in some way. People have these weird things
where they're half in and half out of something, and they talk about it and they
try to crawl into it or crawl out of it... I liked it, I like the leaf. The way
I do it is I take 35gms of leaf and I lie down in the dark, and I chew it. At
about the 15 minute mark it begins afterimage streaming, you know, lights past
the eyes. Then I just spit it out into a Kleenex without holding it. It's a big
mouthful.
Interviewed by Bruce Eisner,
Psychedelic Island Views magazine, 1997
I'm very excited, for instance, by things like Salvia divinorum. Because it's
legal, and because it is not chemically similar to any presently scheduled
compound, and because it has a history of religious usage, and because it can be
grown easily in most parts of the world.
I think we need to endlessly promote and bring forth things like this. New
sources of the psychedelic experience. New chemical families. New botanical
species. And to make it clear to the establishment that there is no way this can
be legislated out of existence, or controlled, or propagandized to silence. We
are here to stay.
Salvia Divinorum Lyrics - 1200 Mics
This is a news flash folks, we interrupt this program to bring you this special
announcement. A new psychoactive substance has been discovered. A very powerful
psychoactive substance. The most powerful since the discovery of LSD. A
substance so powerful that 300 microgramms is the dose. That means 1 gram will
dose 1000 people. Salvia-s-a-l-v-i-a and then Divinorum-d-i-v-i-n-o-r-u-m-the
diviner's mint.
Dennis McKenna interviewed by Michael Pinchera in The Resonance Project
There has been mention, on the Heffter Organization home page, that possibly
eight other Salvia species contain chemicals like those which give Salvia
divinorum her power, can you elaborate?
Well, diterpenes similar in structure to Salvinorin are actually pretty
widespread in nature. They occur in a number of other Salvia species, and even
species outside that family... but they are similar in structure, not identical.
Nobody knows anything about their pharmacology. They may be inactive, or they
may be active, or they may be neurotoxins that will drop you dead in your
tracks. This is another area where caution is advised... but I've no doubt that
there are many other psychoactive diterpenes out there.
I am dying for species names!
Some Salvias which contain the Salvinorin "backbone" are: S. rubescens,
S. splendens, S. truxillensis, S. pseudococcinea.
Are those as rare as Salvia divinorum?
Don't know. You probably won't find them at your local garden shop... then
again, you just might. You will have to look into it. There is a young man I met
at the Millennium conference just recently, I think he's a post-doc at UCSF or
something. He had a very interesting idea for characterizing a Salvinorin
receptor, and I think a sample I isolated sometime ago got to him and he is now
working on this project. He wants to isolate a DNA library from a mouse brain,
and express that in frog oocytes; the receptors will express on the surface of
the egg, and then he can incubate it with Salvia divinorum and if it spikes a
polarity change, he knows he's got it! Then he can start fishing out the gene
using molecular probes, and finally whittle it down... I thought it was
brilliant, to the degree I understand it. He had some other interesting ideas,
too, to use 5MeO - DIPT, which causes auditory distortions, to study the genetic
basis of bird songs... interesting guy. This is the sort of thing that needs to
happen with psychedelics... they need to be recognized for the tools that they
are. People need to get over their fear, and their awe, to a certain degree and
just realize that we have in psychedelics tremendous tools for understanding the
mind.
