Scientists love to throw in the odd ‘fun’ experiment every now and again. It helps to keep us as commentators on our feet and presumably it is a little bit of light hearted entertainment in what can, potentially, be a difficult and tedious task. Okay, I’m making excuses for the fact that they like to be silly sometimes.

A recent scientific test trying to discover just how Salvia affected its users falls neatly into this pigeon hole of ’silly’ experiments. The respondents to a questionnaire were asked to describe how they felt just after going into a Salvia trip. The results were astounding.

Nearly half of the people interviewed said that they felt increased connection with the Universe. I can completely understand how people might say that, but is this a scientific term? Is that metric or imperial ‘increased connection’?

Next were the questions that will definitely change on a Salvia trip-by-trip basis: do you have more or less concentration; do you feel more confused or more alert?

I don’t have a problem at all with people feeling these things, but this kind of effect changes every trip. Ask the same respondents about their feelings next trip, perhaps in a new room with new people and smoking a different amount of Salvia, and I guarantee you will have a totally new set of results.