For Karen Schrock, it started with a big hit off a smoking pipe filled with Salvia divinorum and a crash to the kitchen floor. From there she was off to an alien world of silhouetted figures who lived by a complex social structure. Any sense that there had ever been an Earth, a hallucinogenic drug, or a Karen Schrock disappeared. "I had no memory that this was not the real world, no sense that I was on a trip," recalls Schrock, now 26 and a science magazine editor. The September 2006 experience for her was intensely spiritual and profound. "I remember feeling at the time it was a life-changing experience because I had never had a drug trip before."
While Salvia might have flown Schrock to an alternate reality, scientists say the active ingredient, salvinorin A, holds promise for guiding drug discovery for mood disorders. Salvia's use originated with Mexican ...
