208 Gentlemen’s Quarterly june 2007 june 2007 Gentlemen’s Quarterly 209

Jonas and I chewed the psychedelic sage in a hotel room in the town Under the Spell of the Magic Mint of Huautla de Jimenez, in the high, cool Sierra Mazateca, where the Mazatec shamans grow the plant and use it for healing and divination. I at first felt nothing and was waiting for the thwack of The active ingredient of S. divinorum is salvinorin A, Deep in the forests of Oaxaca, the drug, pulling bedcovers over my head, when I heard a perhaps the most powerful naturally occurring halluci- groan—Dios—and looked up and saw Jonas had stripped nogen known to man—approaching the potency of the naked and wrapped himself in sheets of yellowed cotton. epically powerful lysergic acid diethylamide. Fittingly, Then he crashed to the floor and against the bathroom the kids in the States had dubbed it the “legal acid”—since Mexico, grows a plant with door and rolled across the room, chirping and clicking, it is, indeed, mostly legal, but probably not for long—and and I thought this was hilarious and went into a fit, until smoked it in bongs, chattering about the high afterward I abruptly remembered the warning of the shaman, who on their laptops, how they left their bodies and traveled psychedelic properties that rival said that the madness of the abuser begins with a foolish in time or saw the future or spoke with demons. laugh. So I shook it off and stood up and went to make The Mazatec shamans prefer to chew the plant, but sure Jonas was all right. some will not touch it at all, for fear of the power of Sal- LSD’s. Local shamans say it can I had come down to the Sierra Mazateca, in the Mexi- via divinorum, the magic it contains and the madness can state of Oaxaca, for an experiment: to see what hap- it can induce. Jonas Eslava, my translator and guide, pens when fatheaded Americans get their hands on a had told me a few days earlier, as we left Oaxaca City on sacred consciousness-altering plant and abuse it. The the treacherous winding road to Huautla, that he would bring you wisdom ancient plant in question was Salvia divinorum, the never touch salvia again, not after the incident years “diviner’s sage,” whose recent migration from the cloud ago, when his wife was still alive, when he took it with forests of Mexico into the suburban-America countercul- magic mushrooms and her face turned to stars and he for life. Ethnobotanists ture had sparked a kind of hysteria in newsrooms and saw blood pour from her mouth and knew he was fore- government o∞ces. seeing her death. He walked for two days to escape the

say it has the potential mint family Diviner’s Sage to cure many of our Salvia divinorum María Sabina, on a Mexican postcard. Below, the author (left) with locals in Huautla. physical and mental ills. And various authorities in America say it’s a scourge of our suburbs and must be stopped. Christopher Ketcham goes on a consciousness- altering search for the truth about Salvia divinorum 2 1 210

shaman’s temple. temple. shaman’s a outside guide, author’s Jonas, the the  Jonas, son of a famous curandera. famous a of son Jorge the shaman, shaman, the  Jorge

Gentlemen’s Quarterly Quarterly Gentlemen’s O C I X E M young Harvard professor named Timothy Leary read the salvia than of the ubiquitous anyway the Indians were more protective of the secret of this new salvia went unmentioned in the makes god appear within”). But the entheogenic power of which “that or entheogens, flora psychoactive inducing duced visions of god (Wasson dubbed this family of awe- shrub of the genus white-and-violet-flowering broad-leafed, mysterious a another magic plant employed by the Mazatec shamans, primitive man in the very idea planted of a have god.” not may mushrooms] [such whether asking of point the to emboldened is “one Sabina, with experiences his of said he mushrooms,” divine the by beatific sense of awe and ecstasy and caritas engendered the mind in bear we “When fungus. the of miracle the in discovered they the rooting woods, when, concluded son wondered what the first upright Homo sapiens had Was seen.” not but seeing incorporeal, invisible, eye, disembodied a space, in “poised mountains, the over rose Wasson and dissolved, palaces.” hut the of walls the arcades,…resplendent Then “courts, with began of issue 1957 a in later ticle, sung like very ancient music,” Wasson would write can words,”crisp a “full-bodied chanting and clapping sacred the of morsels twelve ate Wasson night, of dark the in famous in her old age. Welcomed to make a would Wassonhut whom for and a old ceremony years 61 then was female shaman, a 1955, his guide in the of mysteries the was mushroom a something of a worldwide psychedelic-mushroom craze. and folklore in primitive societies and ended up mythsparking to fungi psychoactive of relationship the chart to out set naturalist self-taught The historic. became ing amateur,grand Wasson’sthe of tradition the adventur mycology.In of powers the on fixation lifelong his isfy sat Mazatecato Sierra the into expedition an financed York,J.P.New of in president Morgan vice a as job his named R. Gordon Wasson, who banker in a find, 1955, a such vacationing make to from expect you’d man last the magic of the psilocybin mushroom, courtesy of the It was in Oaxaca that modern Westerners discovered the in scrubby hot sun hills the outside Oaxaca. in tree piñon a under awaking vision, Wasson’s report drew swarms of pilgrims to Huautla. A It was also from María Sabina that Wasson learned of June in Jimenez de Huautla at arrived he When Jonas, eyes wide, would not speak. “What do you see now?” I said as he lay on the floor. Psilocybe hongos, Psilocybe june 2007 june curandera, Salvia Sabina shouting “violent, hot, hot, “violent, shouting Sabina Life. that, like the mushrooms, pro hongo. named María Sabina, who He reported visions that that visions reported He Oaxaca Life article, and - - - - -

of the hundred or so people in the room raised hands. raised room the in people so or hundred the of half than more salvia, tried had audience his in many peutic use of MDMA (that’s Ecstasy to you). thera the popularize helped who chemist white-haired Among the speakers, for example, was Sasha Shulgin, research. the psychedelic of world the in figures venerated wealthy American neo-hippies attracted by the lineup of States, had drawn the usual contingent of mostly young, Mind called conference, the town, old the of periphery mind-altering substances. Held in a swank hotel on the tury cathedrals, to speak at a seventeenth-cen conference and about the streets use grid of of capital colonial a brain. When I first met him, he had come to Oaxaca City, tirely new center of hallucinogenic activity in the human of action the that the few scientists who suspected, as Siebert had early on, among perhaps except following visible no had Siebert salvia is “intolerant of ignorance.” Unlike Leary, though, that cautioned has he languages, seven into translated his In history. its and plant the of knowledge cyclopedic of Leary Timothy the calling to taken had outlets news some whom and California, Malibu, in lives who Siebert, Daniel named and coffee could hear the wailing of the passengers. kicked up in the rainy season, the women picking wind the when and said, mountains,”Jonas the down once that smashed together, full of families, and they fell were taken.two “There he was 80, said the road was haunted with the lives it the had cliffs. Jonas, who was 32 and looked 20 but where there sighed is no likeshoulder to keep you from running off hairpin turns into the cloud forest of the Sierra Mazateca, craggy ranges; then it vaults into the air, climbing hot and Oaxaca’s desert northern organ-pipe-cactus through runs Huautla to City Oaxaca from road The the secret of salvia lay dormant in the mountainsides. mostly sealed to the outside world. For many more years, ers, and for more than a decade the Sierra Mazateca was federales chickensthrough the mud streets. Finally, around 1969, walking naked and hallucinating in the villages, chasing Mazateca eventually became disrespectful of the natives, The hippies who by the mid-1960s descended Dylan on and even theWalt DisneySierra also came to eat psilocybin.) was said, but never confirmed, that the Beatles and Bob turning on buddies Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. (It pieceandsoon founded theHarvard Psilocybin Project, When Siebert stepped to the podium and asked howasked and podium the tostepped Siebert When I’d been warned about the roads by an ethnobotanist ava iiou Ue’ Guide, User’s divinorum Salvia raided the communes and arrested the foreign 1 Illustrations by Illustrations Salvia divinorum, Salvia S. divinorum S. autobús on the road to Huautla pointed toward an en an toward pointed roderick mills roderick largely for his en his for largely hc hs been has which 2 maíz

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1, 2, 3 & 6: COURTESY OF CHRISTOPHER KETCHAM

4: L.A. TIMES PHOTOS/NEWSCOM. 5: KEVIN EISENHUT/MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL/NEWSCOM. ster ster was Ecstasy, marijuana, crack, and salvia mixed in a the guys were smoking the Monster,” she said. The Mon that had a Ping-Pong ball bong floating homemade on the a water.at “Some sucking of shore, Maryland the on or fifteen serious trips). She smoked it in a rented house leaf for about $30 a gram (a gram being su∞cient for ten bought it from a Web site, one of hundreds that retail the high school in rural Maryland, told me how her friends sister, who was 18 years old and had just graduated from tecs; 81 percent said they’d use the leaf again. My wife’s than chewed it, as traditionally prescribed by the Maza 23. Ninety-three percent of users smoked the leaf rather found that 93 percent were male, with an average age of substances, psychoactive of culture the catalogs which Erowid.org, by 2004 in conducted users salvia 520 of In Brooklyn, I met salvia freaks in shithouse bars. A study ley, I met a salvia smoker hiking in the salt badlands. Val Death In Australia. Britain, France,Germany, InCity,Oaxaca smokerssalvia Denmark, from met I swered or cured by the simpler magic of the an be not mushroom. could and grave very and complex very was that needed answering, the sickness that needed curing, Her wisdom was sought when the question of the seeker you listened, mals who fed from the land. If you were sensitive to the lives her,of men but if over the blades of grass and the ani herdess, the lady of the leaf, who watched not merely ska over María Pastora, or just plant Yerba de la Pastora, or in the language of Mazatec, told Siebert what they had told Wasson: They called their The somewhat with regard to their sacred sage, but not much. Indiansup loosened the village,had the into wandered their own time on the folded peaks. By the time Siebert Mazatecskept the but fell, and Mexican—rose Spanish, Throughout history, distant central governments—Aztec, town’s 20,000 Indians lived in tin shacks and adobe the and huts. unpaved still was Sierras the to road the when teens, telescopes the peak American period of to method roughly preferred ten the minutes.) (Smoking, intense. the intoxication lasted perhaps an hour—very short, very said, “and it all seemed completely normal.” The height of fairylikebeings, childlike, with enormous eyelashes,” he bit houses” nested in the hills. “These were the homes of out from the deck of a friend’s home and saw little “hob looked and leaves bitter” “very twenty-six ate he when 1989, in plantexperiencedthe first had he howscribed whisper,de aSiebert as offcame thatclear, alto sweet Siebert was taken aback; he looked almost touched. In a 3 Siebert had journeyed to Huautla in the early 1980s, 1980s, early the in Huautla to journeyed had Siebert curanderas pastora of the Mazatec, the “women who cure,” showed the way to live the good life. 4 pastora: the herb of Mary, shep ------

bnn la o mushrooms of leaf banana a quor, or children in packs, failed to offer to set streets, me or waiters up in cantinas, with or drunks sucking cane li competitive price. (Not a day went by that old men in the who immediately offered to ply me with mushrooms at a eyes black coal with bony19-year-old a Aurelio, cousin, ceremonially it minister ad would who shaman a and plant the of samples In Huautla, I told Jonas I needed to find two things: dent, for salvia to go that way. It will toldmeback probablyin2004, was “atragedy, happen.”some foolish acci needed,DanielSiebertnowprohibition.was that to All “drugs and chemicals of concern,” the common precursor year,though, placedDEAthe in committee; there Baca let it rest. By December of that law salvia and criminalize its use and sale. The effort died tano, the Hallucinogen Control Act, which sought to Napoliout Grace Democrat fellow with cosponsored, and opportunity to grandstand against the apparent scourge the Congressman(D-Calif.)2002,onseizedJoe Bacain D,” “the magic mint,” “the Lady.” The press by the caughtLatin or as the on,mystical shepherdessand but as “Sally into the class of dangerous drugs, known on the street not played a secondary role, at best, in the incident. disorder,salvia affectivethat bipolar and with agnosed di been has son Moffa’shis spot). said since has father users often talk about turning into a tree, rooted to one (experienced mobility precludes notes, he intoxication, salvia deep A implausible. tale kid’s the found Siebert Moffa was sentenced to five years in juvenile detention. defense, a ploy that didn’t travel far in the courts: Young insanity” “salvia-induced a mount to hoped Moffa nior se The Sagewisdom.org. site, Web his through Siebert contacted by Moffa’s infuriated father, who tracked down close to the heart, nearly killing him. Daniel Siebert was claimed to be hallucinating on years old, had apparent differences, and Moffa, who later juana from a local dealer. He and the dealer, who was 16 mari of bag a purchase to went he Then morning. one named Daniel Moffa smoked salvia before going to school universally liked. the Nintendo 64 Super Mario Brothers game.” Salvia was was skinny as a fence post. Another guy thought he was tried to talk, but nothing came out. One guy thought he I pinkish. yellowish, white, Neonrepeated. All zeros. of around and saw that the world had turned digital. Made the Ping-Pong bong: “I held it for ten seconds and looked in alone Monster.salvia the But want didn’t She blunt. Still, boy Island Rhode 15-year-old a 2002, October In 5 S. divinorum 6 had graduated from an obscure plant . He took me first to see to first me took He . S. divinorumS.

salvia, stabbed the dealer (continued on page on its listitsofon 240

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6 5 4 3

home in Malibu. in home Siebert’s Daniel outside growing divinorum, Salvia The sage plant plant sage  The in Jorge’s temple. Jorge’s in Figurines of Mary Mary of  Figurines divinorum. A cutting of of cutting  A mountains of of Oaxaca. mountains the in high Jorge’s temple, temple,  Jorge’s Salvia Salvia RUNOVER and a chamane to take me tripping, and al- to ask him questions, but if we’re not paying, prescribed by Valdes, powdering the dried salvia vision. “Pharmaceutical companies wisdom. A young shaman administering It is their survival.” The bartender happened ways muy barato). Aurelio and Jonas talked he’s not talking. I mention yerba de la pas- leaves, dissolving the powder in chloroform, have long been interested in substances that pastora will drive himself crazy, said Jorge, also to know something about pastora. He aside, and when Jonas informed his cousin tora. “Ah, no! Pastora? No! No!” He waves us repeating the process until he obtained a mimic or block the actions of dynorphin,” which reminded me of the rabbinical tradi- was willing to speak, but not if we used his we were looking for the rarer pastora, the off and walks away without saying good-bye. honey-thick tar that he further refined with says Dr. Bruce Cohen, who is working on sal- tion that warns against a youthful reading of real name. “Call me Victor Ubalva,” he said. boy raised his eyebrows and pondered. He Jonas seethed at the offense. He promised methanol to a thimbleful of crystals: crude vinorin A derivatives at the labs of a Harvard the Kabbalah—its secrets too much for the “Victor, how do you use pastora?” “To concluded that we must climb to the top of now we would not leave Huautla until he salvinorin A. He ignited the crystals on a teaching hospital. High levels of dynorphins jejune. cure ills. To see the future. To solve money the tiered town to find the family of María had delivered me a shaman who would de- sheet of tinfoil and inhaled the smoke. Noth- have also been known to counteract cocaine “Well, could I see where the plant grows? problems.” Sabina. liver us to salvia. ing happened. He tried again. “I suddenly addiction by stifling the craving response A plot in the woods?” “What were your money problems?” It was rainy and fog-strewn, and around didn’t have a body, a house, an earth,” he among related opioid receptors. Daniel “Ah, no. Only the curer can go and find “Well, I was not doing well,” Victor replied. us the mountains disappeared in cloud. said. “I was in no physical place.” Salvia had Siebert reports that he has received dozens the plant. He must talk to her, make friends “I took pastora, I asked these questions— Along the narrow streets, wild dogs teemed while recorded* use* of* the magic mush- shattered “the fabric of existence. It is mad- of testimonies from alcoholics and drug ad- with her, explain why she is being cut. She is how can I solve my money problems?—and and fought and ran away, and I was tempted room had gone back over 500 years in Me- ness,” he wrote afterward. “Then I came out dicts who cured themselves using salvia. He shy, muy delicada. She does not like strang- now my brother owns this bar and I work to throw a rock. “Careful! Some are nagual,” soamerica, salvia went unmentioned in the of it,” he told me, “and I realized—eureka!” showed me scores of letters from salvia us- ers.” Jorge gave me a thoughtful look. “Why here. I don’t want to say more.” Aurelio said, using an Aztec word that de- annals of the Aztecs and the conquistadors. Three months later, he completed a paper ers who found it alleviated depression; one are you so interested in pastora? Why not a Around 1 a.m., the bars closed, the can- scribed the animal form of a metamorph Gordon Wasson had eaten a small dose of detailing the discovery of salvinorin A as the man claimed the leaf turned him from the mushroom ceremony instead?” A pecuniary tinas swept clean, Jonas and I were wasted shaman, a shape-changer, what primitive the leaf in 1961, six years after his first psy- hallucinogenic principle in S. divinorum, brink of suicide. The anecdotal evidence and gleam in his eye. “The mushroom, you know, with nowhere to go. On such a binge, I usu- Europeans called lycanthropes, whose chief chedelic summer in the Sierras. But it wasn’t with himself as test subject, and published it preliminary scientific studies together point is so much easier. Pastora—mucho trabajo! ally don’t like to stop until the sun is up and specimen on the Continent was the were- until the fall of 1962, on a return trip to the in a 1994 issue of the Journal of Ethnophar- toward a “unique mechanism of antidepres- You must abstain from sex for fifty-three days I’m near collapse. There was only one thing wolf. But nagual also referred to a magical Mazateca region, that Wasson, in the com- macology. sant action” in salvinorin A, according to a before taking pastora. Hard for people!” He to do, which was to eat some of that fresh leaf bond the Mazatecs kept with the natural pany of Albert Hofmann, Swiss inventor of But salvinorin A itself presented a further 2001 report in the Journal of Clinical Psycho- laughed. Then Jorge told us of a Westerner that Jorge had given us and keep the night world: When a person is born and his soul LSD, plunged into the cloud forest on mule- mystery. You can recognize its strangeness, pharmacology. The report cited the case of a who mistreated salvia, failed to keep to the going. Back at the hotel, I stuffed a couple formed, the Mazatecs say, so too is a soul back to finally secure cuttings of the plant its newness, from the first time you try sal- 26-year-old Australian woman plagued by abstinence bargain, and ended up stripping of leaves in my mouth and handed over a double born among the animals. To throw for identification. The first batch of acquired via, if you’ve also tried LSD or psilocybin or untreatable depression who, after medicat- naked, running crazily through the streets bunch to Jonas, who looked at them and a rock even at dogs rooting in garbage or leaves was insu∞cient for the exigencies of mescaline. “My salvia experiences,” wrote ing with a mild dose of salvia leaves chewed of the town. “Many people become naked,” me and remembered his vow that he would sleeping in the gutter or ripping out one lab work, but generosity, so characteristic one user on an Internet Listserv, “made even three times a week, enjoyed a “total remis- Jorge said, “when pastora chases them. Very never do it again, not after he saw his wife another’s windpipes was, quite possibly, to of the Mazatecs, favored the expedition: A the most extreme LSD ones seem like a walk sion” of symptoms. Researchers at the Uni- sad.” dying in a flood of stars. stone one’s secret self, one’s companion and curandera deep in the jungle brought forth in the park.” Unlike any of these kissing hal- versity of Mississippi and the University of I told Jorge that I first learned about pas- Things went badly after that. Jonas click- shadow—one’s nagual. from her secret garden a bundle of the splen- lucinogenic cousins, whose common trait as Iowa are also hotly pursuing the salvinorin tora because young men and women in the ing in his native Zapotec and rolling around We climbed high above the town to a peak, did-flowering plant, which was dried and alkaloids is their binding to the serotonin A question. No one among these scientists United States had recently started using it naked—Jorge had said it would happen— El Cerro de la Adoracíon, where along the sent to a University of California botanist receptors of the brain, salvinorin A does not wants to see a prohibition scare shut down without care, as a drug, to get high. and finally, the tequila besting the shepherd- mile of the black-forested height the faithful named Carl Epling. Epling declared it an en- target serotonin. In this respect, it is alone their efforts. “How do they take it?” ess, falling off to stunted sleep in a corner come to place pesos and goat’s blood and ca- tirely new species of sage, and given its pow- among hallucinogens. For this reason, too, “They smoke it.” of the floor. I felt…dumb, fogged up, like I cao beans and to light candles at the shrines ers, he christened it Salvia divinorum. S. divinorum fails to come under the pur- He shook his head as if hearing awful was wearing a layer of old gray chopped of nested crosses. Aurelio explained that But there remained the deeper question view of either the Controlled Substances Act huautla is a *wonderful* * town in which news. “It’s no good. They don’t know the ter- meat over my eyes. It’s said that 15 percent of God trawls up here collecting the prayers, of chemical identity. Hofmann returned to of 1970 or the Federal Analogue Act of 1986, to do nothing and not know the time. I ate rible risk they are taking. Moreover, pastora people who first try salvia experience noth- and sometimes, every three or four months, Switzerland, to Sandoz Laboratories, to pin which together prohibit all the serotonin- mushrooms during the day and walked should not be mistreated like that. She will ing whatsoever, as if the neural pathways El Señor de Huautla, as Aurelio calls him, down the action of the plant. After several binding hallucinogens. Salvinorin A instead through the mountains listening to the not like to be smoked.” He paused. “I wish,” have to learn salvinorin A. Jonas knew pas- comes to town, “where he has many women. assays, he failed and at last gave up. So, too, produces hallucinations by oddly targeting barking of the naguals and the wind in the he said very slowly, “I wish I could come to tora. That was clear. Maybe it was ancestral. They surround him, they come running—I did a gifted young lab wizard named Sasha the family of neurotransmitters known as clouds, and Jonas in his shiny black shirt the United States and hold an orientation Later, I came out of the stupor and took a have seen this.” “You have seen this?” I ask Shulgin, the future guru of Ecstasy, who was the opioids, with a specific a∞nity for the and black slacks and cowboy boots seduced with American children who take pastora walk in the town, feeling suddenly guilty, in English, at which Jonas, who won’t trans- then employed with Dow Chemical and who kappa-opioid receptor. Indian girls by the side of the road. Then, one to warn them. That little by little they will like I’d poisoned the poor guy, and depressed late, throws me a look, as if to say, “Aurelio in his spare time grew S. divinorum in his None of this was known until 2002, day, a young shaman with gold teeth, Jorge become…tonto.” that we’d eaten the leaf like dumb drunks. has never been out of Huautla—let him be.” greenhouse. Both men, scientists of vision, when a biochemist at Case Western Reserve Aurelia Aurora, son of a famous curandera, “What do you mean?” The sea of dogs parted, the moon shone, and We marched higher into the muddy yard were in this particular case victims of blin- University, Bryan Roth, who had heard of agreed to consult with us on the powers of “Their minds will be blind. They will be- high above the town I walked along the cliffy of a home of cinder block and tin where six kered expectation. Hallucinogens to that salvia’s effects from an undergraduate, con- salvia. Jonas brought the news with his come fools.” paths to the shrines where the prayers had chickens free-ranged and a goat loafed at his point had all been classed as alkaloids—psi- tacted Siebert for extracts of salvinorin A usual flamboyance: “I found your chamane! Jorge said he had some business to attend been laid for the Lord of Huautla to gather stake and a banana tree drooped with many locybin and LSD chief among them—but to test its action on the human brain. That I am fucking good!” to. Mushroom pilgrims from Israel. But he them up. little crescent-moon bananas bunched S. divinorum did not hold to the pattern. in the messy world of human biochemistry, We climbed the town in the hot afternoon, would do us a favor. He would go into the among the big leaves. This was the prop- Pastora was something truly new; its active salvinorin A would bind as an agonist to the to a place where the road turned to dirt and a forest above the town and pick some leaves erty of the grandson of María Sabina, who ingredient was not an alkaloid. Thirty more powerful and wide-reaching kappa-opioid tall blue cross on a pink cement altar marked from his plot and provide us with a sample. in the morning,* *Jorge* stood over me. in the wake of Wasson’s attentions suffered years would pass before Daniel Siebert led receptor, and only the kappa-opioid recep- the steps to Jorge’s home. Jorge was lean and For a small fee, of course. “Claro,” I said. “Jorge,” I croaked. He’d somehow gotten in a backlash among her peers. I’d been told the way to cracking the plant’s code. tor—most agonists tangentially tweak a va- handsome in a sinister way, and wore a mus- Later, leaf in hand, Jonas and I went to a the room, and now he wanted an extra hun- that within a year of Wasson’s visit, her hut In 1983, two researchers working inde- riety of receptors, producing unwanted side tache and wisp of beard. He took us to a tin- soiled little cantina on the edge of town and dred pesos for the interview and the fistful of was burned to the ground and her family ex- pendently, Alfredo Ortega and Leander effects—was unprecedented and, in the com- shack temple where icons of Mary covered ordered Sol and tequila. Across the road was leaf. He smiled his gold hyena smile, noting iled to this mountaintop at the edge of town, Valdes, had isolated from the leaves of S. di- munity of biochemists, frankly shocking. the walls. He told us of the salvia ceremony: a filthy whorehouse, two stories that leaned that he’d raised his mushroom ceremony fee where the old curandera lived for thirty-one vinorum a compound they called salvinorin Thus salvinorin A suggested a universe of The altar where the shaman prays always badly, where the women in rags called from to 1,800 pesos, having learned from me—for more years. During that time, by dint of the A. Ortega simply discarded the compound, medicinal opportunity. It effectively mimics faces east. Offered to the spirit of pastora, to their falling-down windows, looking like which he gave thanks—that his competi- marketing of the lucrative mushroom, she neglecting to test further. Valdes, a graduate the actions of the neuropeptide dynorphin, Mary on the walls, are flowers, honey, cocoa, serpents. Our waitress was a round-assed tor, María Sabina’s grandson, was charging became a countercultural hero. Multiple student in the United States writing his dis- the body’s natural kappa-opioid agonist, water, laurel, plumas de guacamaya. Copal transvestite with long legs, rare among the 2,000 pesos. books, at least one opera, and a movie have sertation on salvia, suspected this was the which means it could modulate everything incense is burnt, so is tobacco. As with the short, stubby women of the Mazatecs. Jo- Whatever the market would bear. Perhaps been written about her; T-shirts in Mexico psychoactive agent. But he made no attempt from pain response to tissue healing to ap- mushrooms, the leaves are eaten in selected nas was in love. “Oh, I would love her for all this is the kind of spirituality we in the god- City and Guadalajara and even Tijuana are to test it on humans. petite and mood (perhaps explaining salvia’s pairs. It must be dark, preferably after mid- time if she was not a man!” We got drunk. less West deserve: the kind you get gouged printed with images of her wizened, leathery Daniel Siebert was baffled that Ortega use among the Mazatecs for the treatment of night. You must be quiet. Then pastora will We started asking around about pastora. We for on the back end of the deal. face. and Valdes had avoided this obvious next stomachache, headache, and rheumatism). come. Sometimes she appears as a giant told the story of our search, of Jorge, and of In the end, it just might be greed—coupled, Sabina’s grandson, a watchful man in his step. But then again, they knew the perils. Kappa receptors flooded with dynorphins woman. María Sabina’s grandson. All listened and naturally, with fear and ignorance—that will fifties, appeared from a doorway. He had Siebert had no formal training as a chemist, are suspected to be responsible for the on- But alas, Jorge could not o∞ciate to bring said nothing. The bartender finally spoke up: get salvia illegalized in the States. Ten years long ago tired of ’shroom pilgrims and cut certainly none as a researcher—he’d studied set of schizophrenia and dementia, whose her forth. “I have never taken pastora,” he “This may not have been a Sabina grandson. ago, there were perhaps a handful of dis- short the pleasantries: A mushroom cer- painting in college. In his California kitchen, symptoms are not unlike the radical time said. “I am afraid of her.” His mother, Aure- There are many Sabina-family fakers. They tributors of the leaf, on the Internet, in head emony cost 2,000 pesos, about $200. I want Siebert followed the method of extraction and space dislocations experienced in a lia, yes, because she understood pastora’s are as numerous as the dogs. It is a business. shops. Daniel Siebert estimates the number of Web sites selling salvia increased one hun- Inspired by the efforts in Delaware, law- ape-men with an unhappy farting sound. dredfold between 1995 and 2005. A Google makers in Alaska, New Jersey, Illinois, Penn- Several times my wife said she found my search of “Salvia divinorum” produces al- sylvania, North Dakota, Iowa, Utah, Texas, body on the floor. I was rolling around na- most three-quarters of a million hits—and California, and Oregon followed suit, offering ked, speaking in tongues, but she said there as in any market, salvia purveyors fight for to control the terrible leaf, possibly soon to was no mind in the eyes, that I didn’t recog- sales share with the weapons of marketing: join Louisiana, which in the summer of 2005 nize her. I told her the next day that some- promotions, price slashing, steady “im- became the first state to criminalize the pos- thing was in the room. A homunculus. The provements” to the product. Many vendors session and sale of S. divinorum, mandating nagual. I began to feel the presence widely, now sell superpotent leaf impregnated with prison terms of up to ten years for selling the on the street, on subways, in supermarkets. pure salvinorin A. “So many people selling leaf, five years for possession, and tens of Once I heard it talking to me from behind it, so many of them irresponsible, targeting thousands of dollars in fines. Missouri also a wall. Around the tenth or twelfth trip on the huge teenager market,” Siebert tells me. criminalized possession, with equally draco- salvia, I threw out the rest of my stash and He keeps his prices high because he doesn’t nian penalties. (Most recently, Tennessee in gave it up forever. “want salvia to be the price of bubble gum. May 2006 and Oklahoma in June 2006 crimi- It’s not LSD or marijuana or a party drug. nalized some forms of possession or distribu- christopher ketcham writes for I’ve tried to approach these vendors. They tion.) New York State, where I live, now has Harper’s Magazine and Mother Jones. This tell me to go to hell.” a bill in the works, too, though it’s relatively is his first story for gq. The desire for the product grows in modest: a $500 fine for possession. Thus be- Huautla, and farmers have adapted accord- gins the slide down the slippery slope. The ingly. Jonas had told me how the economy legislator who crafted the original New York had been devastated by free trade, how law, Assemblyman Carl Heastie, was report- NAFTA wiped out fair prices for the coffee edly inspired by “the nature of the drug’s bean and the corn crops that once fed the euphoria and its dangerous side effects,” ac- villages of the Sierra Mazateca. The farmers cording to an aide. “There were some kids gladly found a niche market peddling salvia in Rochester who had overdosed on salvia,” to foreigners, as distasteful as this was to the the aide said. “They had taken it and gotten elder shamans. The irony is that it’s easier violent and uncontrolled.” When I asked to find salvia on the Internet from a middle- for substantiation of these events, the aide man than in the place where the shamans faxed me a report from the Ithaca Journal, tend the leaf. “They will sell to a computer which said nothing about Rochester but did but not to us,” said Jonas. This was perhaps quote a police source with the state Commu- as inevitable as the depredations of NAFTA: nity Narcotics Enforcement Team: “We have distant markets, out of sight, out of mind. no experiences with [salvia] at this point. No It was inevitable, too, that the tragedy one has reported problems with it.” foretold by Daniel Siebert would come to pass. On January 23, 2006, a Delaware teenager named Brett Chidester, who had on my last day* in Huautla,* * I found a sha- apparently been smoking salvia routinely, man who would not take money. Lisa was el- committed suicide by asphyxiating himself derly, living alone in a stucco house among a with stove fumes in a tent in his father’s ga- maze of banana trees, where I found her qui- rage. His grieving parents found an essay he etly sweeping old corn husks from her deck. wrote about his salvia use: “Salvia allows us She wouldn’t do a ceremony for 4,000 pesos. to give up our senses and wander in the in- Nor for 6,000 or 10,000 pesos. She said that terdimensional time and space,” Brett wrote. those who know salvia well, who have truly “Also, and this is probably hard for most to befriended her, do not need to ingest her. accept, our existence in general is pointless. Hold her to your body, she said. If your stom- Final point: Us earthly humans are noth- ach is sick, hold her there; the leaf dries up ing.” His parents were convinced that salvia in an instant and your sickness is gone. And had led their son to suicide. So were Dela- that was all she would say. ware legislators, who that spring passed It wasn’t until I got back to Brooklyn that Brett’s Law, illegalizing salvia statewide. The I tripped properly on the leaf. I had brought mainstream media smelled a story in Brett’s home Jorge’s stash, and I also had gotten a corpse: He would be the poster child for the bitter tincture from Daniel Siebert. In addi- perils of the “new” drug. On CNN’s Anderson tion, I’d made it through customs with a load Cooper 360°, the threat was clarified from the of psychedelic mushrooms, fresh sweaty outset—“Others are at risk as well,” intoned monster caps as big as my fists, bought from Cooper—and the obligatory expert was trot- a coked-up Indian at 7,000 feet in the sier- ted out, one Steven S. Martin, associate di- ras. So the supply was secure; I didn’t have rector of the Center for Drug and Alcohol to leave my room for some time. I choked the Studies at the University of Delaware. “It’s foul tincture under my tongue or smoked been particularly found that heavy doses of the leaf, drinking beer to stay calm, closing salvia can lead to depression,” Martin tells my eyes, keeping the room dark and quiet. us. Which, on its face, is exactly wrong. When One night I turned into a cactus. I watched I called Martin to ask about his sources, he a distant light across the desert, a shower of told me they were “anecdotal.” “Professor stars. I was a child with my father on the is- Martin must be fabricating his information land of Nantucket. I walked across a dune to about Salvia divinorum’s leading to depres- a cliff by the ocean where a group of cavemen sion,” offered Daniel Siebert. “I know of no ridiculously tried to fly away in a hot-air bal- evidence to support such a claim.” loon, which sank into the sea, drowning the