Archive for July, 2008

What is the ’secret’ to smoking Salvia (Salvia Divinorum)? Well, there isn’t one really, and actually everyone will have their own favourite method. Obviously you have to start somewhere, though, and this short look at the techniques and equipment used in smoking Salvia may point you in roughly the right direction.

Your state of mind before you smoke Salvia will greatly influence the feelings and experiences that you have when you’re under the influence. For this reason it is important to find somewhere comfortable and quiet: this is your first time and you’re going to have enough trouble working out exactly what it is you’re meant to be feeling, without falling over balconies or running into the path of oncoming vehicles (or driving said vehicles. Don’t smoke and drive kids: not cool).

Are you sitting comfortably? Then you may begin. Fill a water pipe with cold water and fill the bowl with enough Salvia for one person (how much depends on how badly you want to get mashed and how strong the Salvia is). Light the Salvia and inhale away. Inhale as deeply and hold the smoke in for as long as you possibly can. Depending on how good you are at inhaling and holding your breath you will probably need two or three quick puffs before you start to feel any effects. Take a gulp of fresh air between Salvia hits otherwise you might pass out.

One piece I have read is to keep loading the pipe and taking hits until you can no longer see properly to reload. This, I understand, is a great way to see vivid hallucinations. It is also a good way to get completely off your face so I simply cannot advise doing that until you’re sure you know what you’re doing with Salvia Divinorum.

The trip will last around five minutes or so, so if you and a friend want to take it in turns you won’t be waiting too long in a non-stoned state. Obviously having a spotter is also much safer than doing it on your own (not that it’s particularly dangerous anyway).

However you choose to do it, stay safe, and enjoy it.

There a loads of Phuket bars that are well worth a visit. They are mostly venues that occupy both an indoor and an outdoor area, with seating for maybe 20 to 30 people. The bars really come alive at night but many are open throughout the day if you’re interested in mid-afternoon refreshment! Phuket is a relatively safe place to get drunk, but do remember that there are people all over the world that are more than happy to take advantage of a drunken Westerner. Drink sensible, whether you’re in Phuket bars or anywhere else.

The key to Phuket bars is often the girls that are placed there by request of the management. These (usually pretty) girls are there to keep you company and to help you to spend more time and money.

The girls that sit around in Phuket bars will usually be an expert at any number of trivial games. Connect-4 and Jenga are specially popular with these ladies; play them for drinks and you are sure to lose: bring your A-Game! These girls use this ‘hustle’ to make a living, so don’t begrudge them. They’re not cheating you. Nor are they offering anything sordid: the girls are not prostitutes but they are willing to use their looks to get money.

Choosing the correct free Ares download for you, for your skill level, and for your computer system, is sometimes a little bit trickier than we would hope.

The theory is great: choose a free Ares download, download it, install it. Where it falls down is finding the right one: there are simply so many to choose from it’s a little bit of a jungle out there.

Help in the form of a web site by the OfficialAres.com is at hand. And this is the kind of help that everyone needs and wants: useful help. There are a number of reviews on the site which go through the pros and cons of the various free Ares download versions. Where the downloads are likely to be garbage, the Official Ares team will tell you.

Knowing what you’re getting before you download has obvious advantages. No more important, in my mind, is the protection you will get from downloading a free Ares download that includes some spyware. Ares Destiny is infamous for falling into this category: OfficialAres.com helps you spot these before it’s too late.

I went for Ares Ultimate in the end and, honestly, I couldn’t be happier with my choice of free Ares download!

With so many people trying Salvia for the first time it is likely that some, if not most, do not know how to ‘use’ the Salvia that they have. There are a variety of different ways to go about this, all producing differing results. Here I present a very brief introduction on using Salvia for those with no experience.

Traditional Mazatec methods are safe but slow, and you will need a lot more leaves than would otherwise be the case. The first way the Mazatecs take Salvia is to make a drink from fresh, ground leaves. The drink tastes pretty nasty. Also, as Salvia’s effective hallucinogenic ingredient Salvinorin is not ingested particularly effectively through the stomach the process is extremely slow; when it does kick in though it lasts much longer than with other methods of ingestion.

A similar method is the chewing and swallowing of a large number of fresh leaves. Again this is a very slow method, and most of the effect actually comes from the time when the leaves are in the mouth, so chewing slower is usually more effective than gulping them down. The taste is apparently very bitter indeed and some people struggle to ingest the leaves without gagging.

More modern methods are the quid method and smoking. These methods are almost always those used by modern users of Salvia Divinorum.

The Quid method requires a ball of rolled up Salvia leaves. The ball should weigh between two and eight grams. If the quid is chewed for about 30 minutes then the chewer will start to feel the effects. The quid should be kept in the mouth along with all of the juices it releases. Try and chew once every 10 seconds or so, with the quid laying under the tongue between chews.

The final and most potent way to ingest Salvia is to smoke the leaves. Salvia needs to be smoked very hot, and the smoke inhaled very quickly. A pipe or bong is needed for you to get the most out of the Salvia experience. Salvia can be used with vapourisers but this is not for the faint of heart and you absolutely must have a sitter present.

Smoking Salvia releases a really pungent smell and you’ve got to be prepared for this; it’s too much for some people.

Salvia is a plant that has become something of a household name in recent months; ironically it probably would have remained in relative obscurity without the attentions of enthusiastic, over zealous and confused politicians. If lawmakers had not started to crack down on the herb like it was Satan’s own recreational hallucinogenic then the media attention would have been non-existent. As it is, Salvia appears in our newspapers on an almost daily basis.

But Salvia is a source of much confusion for many people. What is it? Where does it come from? Read on…

Saliva is a member of the mint family, which encompasses many herbs. Salvia, along with the genera (species) Perovskia and Phlomis are collectively known as Sage. Salvia is not restricted just to the hallucinogenic drug that so many people are now aware of, but also a huge variety of annual, biennial and perennial herbs. Salvia is truly a worldwide plant.

Sage originally comes from the Mediterranean and Asia Minor where it has been actively grown since the middle ages. The Native Americans used the Salvia plant as a herb, and the Romans worshipped it as sacred; the Chinese were very eager to get it, too, and Dutch traders made great profits trading Sages for tea. Part of the reason Salvia is so well respected is that it is thought to have potent medicinal properties. In particular Salvia officinalis improves cognitive function when used over several months.

Central Mexican tribes have used the sub-species Salvia Divinorum as a hallucinogenic for many years. It is this usage that has brought the humble little plant to our attention in recent years. Of course Salvia Divinorum is just one plant in the Salvia family, but the name is now inextricably linked with hallucinogenics and the legal and moral questions surrounding legalised drugs.

Salvia is a diverse little herb with a big history and a big following. Banning it for recreational spiritual use seems petty and ignorant. But what do I know?

Salvia is an hallucinogenic drug that has been gaining a lot of attention in the media lately. Users smoke a concentrated version of a plant extract or chew the leaves — though smoking is considerably more potent — in an attempt to reach a three to five minute ‘high’ or trip. The effects are similar to those experienced by users of LSD in that hallucinations are common, but the differences, though subtle, are very noticeable.

So what exactly are the effects of Salvia?

The full name of Salvia is Salvia Divinorum and it differs from the rest of the Salvia family of plants in that it has psychoactive properties. The name Diviner’s Sage comes from the fact that, in the past, people have used it to reach their spiritual side.

Salvia’s psychoactive ingredient is known as Salvinorin A which is the only known naturally occurring ingredient that has hallucinogenic properties.

The immediate effects of a strong dose of Salvia can include:

• Uncontrollable laughter or fits of giggles
• Regression and the retrieval of old memories
• Overlapping realities
• Outer-body experiences
• Visual and aural Hallucinations

Medium-term effects are reported to be a heightened state of awareness, calmness and happiness. There are no known long-term effects.

The benefits and dangers of Salvia are relatively unknown and researchers and scientists are still trying to find out more about its properties. If, as seems likely, Salvia is banned across the US, this research will likely be scuppered. There have been no known fatalities directly relating to the use of Salvia in any of its forms, but the parents of one Delaware teen who tragically took his own life blamed his frequent Salvia use on their loss. It is partly the anguish of thisteen’s parents that has push Salvia into the limelight and caused it to take the brunt of the Lawmakers’ pens.

Whatever the situation in the future, it is the case that Salvia is currently legal in most US States, and in almost all countries across the world.

‘Les Metheurs’, a popular cafe on Montreal’s Mount Royal Avenue, is being forced to shut down after almost 9 months of selling hallucinogenic drugs to its customers. The cafe, says owner-operator Mathew Lipscomb, was attracting a clientele that included people who wanted to to smoke Salvia. The establishment also sold a type of tea that makes those drinking it feel inordinately happy. LesMetheurs is a popular haunt of those wishing to relax and explore their spiritual side with like-minded individuals; the building’s owner was not one of those like-minded individuals, it seems.

Licomb was recently taken to court by the building’s owner in an attempt to force him to stop selling Salvia. The case, Licomb claims, cost him a lot of money and is one reason that the business has to close. The last Salvia sale will be on August the 23rd — the last day of trading LesMetheurs and the last time the 30-seat cafe will cater to the chilled out individuals that had grown to love it.

Other reasons for the forced closure include the changes in the Quebec legislation surrounding tobacco and smoking indoors, and also the problems thatLipcomb experienced in getting reasonably priced insurance for the business.

All this despite the two ‘drugs’ that Les Metheurs had gained a reputation for providing are not in any way illegal in Canada.

It is a sad time when legitimate entrepreneurs like Lipcomb are being forced to give up their businesses in favor of high-minded pettiness by others around them. The building’s owner was likely in the group of people that did not understand Salvia and its effects. When people here of a ‘hallucinogenic drug’ their minds jump pretty much straight away to much stronger — and probably much more dangerous — substances like LSD. Comparisons to (usually illegal) Marijuana are also common because Salvia is usually ingested by smoking. For the record: Salvia is unlike either LSD or Marijuana.

The hallucinogenic herb Salvia has taken quite some time to get the press coverage it is currently enjoying.

Whilst the drug has been used in the past by natives of Mexico’s Sierra Mazateca range it’s drug-like properties were only really properly documented by drug researchers in the middle of the last century.

Scholars Richard Schultes and R Gordon Wasson were the first to point out — in the a report written in 1963 — that Salvia has played a role in their psychedelic explorations. When one considers the absolute drug experimentation frenzy that took up most of the 1960s and 1970s, the lack of recognition for Salvia is even more surprising.

In 1991 Salvia got a mention in an article in the Vancouver Sun: it was a throwaway reference in a piece on cooking with Sage. A 1998 TV documentation aired on British TV was the first serious look that viewers got of Salvia and this spawned a few mentions on TV and in bits of the press.

The lack of previous attention has meant that Salvia has been able to keep its metaphorical head down and is the reason it has been able to stay legal for so long. Ironically the calls for its banning that now saturate the media across the US have brought it more into the spotlight than ever before.

Despite repeated attempts by over-zealous politicians and law makers to ban it completely from the US, Salvia remains as popular as ever. An estimated 1.8 million people aged 12 and over have tried Salvia at least once, and 750,000 of those were in the past year. The largest demographic to give Salvia a whirl are males between the ages of 18 and 25.

Salvia appears to be relatively harmless. While there have been no fatalities in which Salvia has been shown to be the cause, the tragic suicide of a teenager in Delaware was said to have contributed to his state of mind at the time of the death.

There is no age restriction at all on Salvia and experts are concerned — whatever the long- or short-term effects of the drug — that younger people cannot handle the hallucinogenic experience in the same way that an adult could.

A Worcester County commissioner called Linda Busick is trying to drum up support for a ban on the drug. It is, she says, a dangerous substance that really does need to be banned before the world implodes. Or something alarmist like that. It’s clear that she knows more about the good and bad side effects of Salvia than do the good scientists who have been studying it for around 50 years or so:

It’s certainly detrimental to anyone who uses it. I don’t know of any beneficial effects that it has. It’s a psychedelic drug, and it’s dangerous, and I’m totally against anybody who sells it

Salvia merchants disagree (predictably) but even they are of the opinion that younger people should not be using the substance. He says that he is a responsible retailer that could make three times as much as he does if he sold to teenagers. He won’t, stating that his self regulation policy is strict so that kids don’t ‘lose control’.

There are a lot of very passionate people with vehement views on Salvia. Nobody really knows if it is bad, though, and certainly it is the case that Alcohol and Tobacco constitute a much greater problem for the police and for society in general.

A home based business is a fantastic opportunity for you to take your life into your own hands; it allows you to be your own boss, to stick to your own time schedule (imagine being able to pop into town while the shops, banks, chemists and post office were all still open! What a luxury!). A great opportunity to better yourself and expend more effort on your own projects.

That’s what I though — and I still believe it to be true — but I started off on the wrong foot with a business opportunity that simply wasn’t right for me.

I have since done a lot more research — most with the help of the rather excellent CitizenCorps.com website — and I now know that a home business review could quite easily have saved my bacon. Second time a home business review of the opportunity that I spotted was how I started my research and, so far, everything is going very smoothly indeed.

Starting a home based business without reading a home business review (or more thank one, if possible) is like driving without knowing how a car operates. A home business review is an absolutely essential start to any home based career.