Salvia divinorum, a hallucinogenic plant native to Mexico, has been used by the Mazatec Indians in divinatory rituals to contact spirits of the dead, traditionally by chewing the leaves for visionary effects. Western drug cultures have adopted the plant since the mid-1990s, often smoking dried leaves for immediate effects. Qualitative data from 10 Salvia users, collected via email interviews with in-depth responses presented verbatim, show that effects vary between users and are sensitive to situational factors. Users familiar with the traditional ritualistic setting appear to have a fuller experience than those who are not.
Since the mid-1990s, publications in the UK and Europe sparked interest in psychoactive plants from South and Central America that were previously obscure outside their native regions. Although information about their effects and extraction methods became widely available, the plants themselves were hard to obtain until online headshops began selling legal alternatives to controlled drugs. This study assessed users' own experiences of how easily they could access information from online suppliers of these substances.