Salvia Divinorum and Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a disease that causes both auditory and visual delusions that negatively interfere with someone's life. Most schizophrenics are left with no option but to live in a facility that is able to regulate and care for them. Although some schizophrenics live on their own and manage their own medicine, their loved ones find the illness difficult to deal with, which can lead to a life of loneliness and misunderstanding.

Schizophrenia is believed to be genetic, although the use of powerful psychedelic drugs such as salvia divinorum can exacerbate the onset of the disease.

What Causes Schizophrenia

• Although the cause of schizophrenia is unknown, the most popular theory is that it is due to an excessive amount of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the brain. Consequently, drugs called antipsychotics serve to lower dopamine levels in an effort to alleviate the troublesome delusions.

  Many also believe that an individual can be predisposed to the disease and that environmental factors that happen later in life, as well as the use of drugs that may alter brain chemistry, can exacerbate a person's chance of developing schizophrenia.

Salvia Divinorum

• Salvia divinorum is a powerful hallucinogenic drug grown in Mexico. The drug is legal in the United States and is available in the form of dry leaves that can be smoked. Salvia and other drugs, however, are currently under investigation by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and may soon become illegal.

Salvia Divinorum and Schizophrenia

• Although salvia divinorum will most likely not cause an individual to develop schizophrenia, usage in a person's early teens and 20s is believed to increase his or her chances of developing schizophrenia as well as other diseases.

  Salvia divinorum is a powerful stimulant and when ingested, it alters brain chemistry to allow for hallucinations both auditory and visual in nature. In essence, it mocks schizophrenia and for those who use the drug excessively or are unknowingly predisposed to the disease, it may exacerbate the onset of the disease.

Treatment

• Regardless of how schizophrenia is caused, its treatments remain the same. Antipsychotics are commonly prescribed to alleviate delusions, as are mood stabilizers and anti-depressants.

  These drugs sometimes cause life-threatening side effects and typically require constant monitoring via blood work to ensure that levels are not high enough to damage the liver. Schizophrenia requires a lifetime of medication that loses efficacy and must be changed every couple years.

Tips

• If schizophrenia runs in your family and you are concerned about developing the disease, stay away from drugs. Drugs affect each person differently and if you are truly predisposed to schizophrenia, they may help bring on the onset of the disease.

  Abstaining from mind-altering drugs is the best medicine to evade psychiatric issues later in life. If you are experiencing delusions of any type, seek the help of a medical professional immediately.