The short version: This is a short talk I gave for Psymposia, published in 2015, about salvia and the body. I share two stories: one from a salvia research study, where a participant lost all sense of having a body, and one from my work in a substance use clinic. Both point to the same idea: we are bodies, not just people who have them. It’s education, not a recommendation to use any drug.
We are bodies, and our relationships with our bodies can be a source of pain and frustration, and a source of healing and inspiration.
What the talk is about
This talk was part of a Psymposia forum on how people relate to drugs. I’d just finished postdoctoral research at Yale, where I studied salvia, and I’d also spent time as a clinician in a substance use clinic. People often asked what I’d learned. My answer: pay attention to the body.
I offer two examples.
The first comes from research. An early participant in a salvia study inhaled the pure compound and almost immediately lost all sense of having a body. The effect ended just as quickly. Back in the hospital room, they cried and said, “It’s hard being human.”
The second comes from clinic work. A client began using an opioid after surgery. Over time, it took over more of their life. Long after stopping, they still lived with the consequences. For them, the drug made being human harder.
The point between these stories is this. Drugs can be used to escape the body or pain, at least for a while. What I recommend instead is integration: making room for all of what you feel, “a body in pain and a body that has joy,” rather than trading one for the other. Integration can happen in drug-assisted therapy, but also without drugs, on your own or in any kind of therapy.
What we learned about salvia and the body
In 2015, colleagues in Barcelona and I published a small study of eight experienced volunteers (Maqueda et al., 2015). Each person had a placebo and three increasing doses of salvinorin A, salvia’s main active compound, in separate sessions.
The pattern went in two directions. At lower doses, participants reported more awareness of their body sensations. At the highest dose, awareness of the body dropped sharply. Some described losing the sense that their body was theirs at all.
The study focused on interoception: your sense of what’s happening inside your body, like your heartbeat, your breathing, or tension. It was a small sample of experienced psychedelic users, so the findings may not apply to most people. Still, it put numbers to something people had described for years, including the participant in my first example.
Why this matters in therapy
Much of what brings people to therapy is lived in the body: tension, pain, exhaustion, feeling shut down or on edge. Salvia research showed me how much our sense of having a body can shift. Clinic work showed me the cost when a drug becomes the only way to feel okay in a body. That’s part of why I pay attention to the body in therapy, not just to thoughts or words.
Where to go next
If you want the science behind this, including how salvinorin A works and why its dissociation-like effects differ from other psychedelics, see my main piece on Salvia divinorum in psychotherapy.
Curious about working together? Get in touch.
Peter H. Addy, PhD, LPC, LMHC is a Portland-based licensed psychotherapist specializing in psychedelic-informed and harm-reduction psychotherapy, ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, and chronic pain. His research background includes postdoctoral work at Yale School of Medicine on psychedelic substances. Learn more about my practice →
