Report: Loughner Used Hallucinogenic Drugs
The Daily Beast reports:
Arizona shooter Jared Loughner used Salvia, the hallucinogenic drug, according to a high school friend of his. Obviously, Loughner was troubled. But did Salvia have anything to do with it?
Currently, there’s very little scientific information about the drug’s effects—thanks, in part, to Salvia’s relative safety. “So far the federal government has not funded any studies, because it’s not seen as relevant until someone dies of an overdose,” says John Mendelson, MD, a pharmacologist at California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute. “The only reported injuries are idiot injuries: people drop the apparatus they were using, fall of their chair, that type of thing.”
Salvia is still legal in a majority of states and millions of Americans have used the drug without incident. That includes pop star Miley Cyrus, who was caught on video last year smoking Salvia from a bong. (Anecdotal evidence indicates that sales spiked as a result).
What little research that has been done shows that all strains of Salvia divinorum, a plant grown for centuries in Mexico, produces a chemical called Salvionon A. This chemical affects the kappa opioid receptor, a part of the brain that’s in large part responsible for our perceptions of reality.
In an unmodified state, Salvia—whether it’s smoked, chewed, or swallowed in extract form—produces an intense high, lasting less than half an hour. “It’s one of the most behaviorally impairing drugs that we’ve come across,” says Matthew Johnson, MD, assistant professor of psychology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. “At the higher doses, people are completely dissociated from this reality . . . They describe being completely transported to another dimension.”
Typically, those who use Salvia are not able to do much, says Johnson. The limited intoxication period of Salvia, combined with its impairing effects on mobility, make it unlikely that Loughner used Salvia at the time of the shooting.
There is, however, at least one reported case of Salvia leading to a mental breakdown. “We had a case of a male who came in, 23 years old, and was actively psychotic,” says Peter Przekop, MD, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the Loma Linda University School of Medicine in California. “The only thing we could attach it to was the night before, he had smoked the XXX [high-strength] Salvia. We stabilized him, put him on medication, transferred him to the psych department. When we tried to gradually wean him off antipsychotics, the symptoms returned. This was permanent psychosis we suspect was brought on by this drug.”
