A San Diego teenager is now severely disabled after he jumped out of a fifth-floor hotel window while high on salvia, a legal drug.
sam taylor said NBC 7 this week he took the drug to feel ‘something from another world’. Salvia, a legal drink that can be smoked, is available in most brick-and-mortar stores in California.
“They said I had a 15 percent chance of surviving when I entered [to the hospital]’ Taylor told the station.
In total, he suffered fractures to his pelvis, sternum, wrist, ribs and feet. Taylor’s body is held together by 62 pieces of hardware.
Experts say that sage, which is part of the mint family, acts on the brain in a similar way to LSD, the highs do not last as long but are more intense. The drug is banned in 29 states, as well as Guam.
Sam Taylor, walking with his mother, Becca Budd, in San Diego this week, now needs a cane to walk
Taylor discussed her use of salvia in an interview with NBC 7 in which she said she took the drug to experience something “otherworldly.”
The shocking moment when the teenager runs to the fifth floor window
Users say that salvia can produce vivid hallucinations and out-of-body experiences, but it can also make them feel like inanimate objects and cause short-term memory loss. It is commonly known by the street name Sally-D, as its full name is salvia divinorum.
Taylor was with a friend, known as a trip sitter, who did not take the drug and was there to ensure the teen’s safety, in Salt Lake City when it happened.
“The room went black and I looked at my friend’s face and it looked like it was melting,” Taylor said.
Security footage broadcast by NBC7 shows Taylor running out of his hotel room as his friend gives chase.
His friend stops suddenly in horror as shards of broken glass enter the frame, which is the moment Taylor jumped out of the window.
‘I had been taking psychedelics for five years. I have tripped over 100 times in my life. Salvia is my last trip,” Taylor said.
He went on to say that the doctors told him there was a good chance he would never walk again.
Taylor’s friend, known as a traveling caretaker, is left in shock after Taylor jumps five stories.
CCTV video from the hotel in Utah shows Taylor running from her hotel room into the hallway.
The window Taylor jumped out of in Utah
In total, he suffered fractures to his pelvis, sternum, wrist, ribs and feet. Taylor’s body is held together by 62 pieces of hardware.
Taylor told NBC 7 that doctors initially told her there was a good chance she would never walk again.
He did heavy damage to his body during the fall.
‘What are we going to do in the future? That’s all we can think about is what are we going to do moving forward,’ her mother, Becca, said this week.
Salvia is legal in 21 US states, including California, and is completely legal in Mexico.
While her mother, Becca Budd, said: ‘What are we going to do to move on? That’s all we can think about, it’s what we’re going to do in the future.
Social media posts show that Budd is a Mormon and that one of her other children is currently an active missionary in the Church of Latter-day Saints.
Salvia is often promoted as ‘legal ecstasy’. Rolled in paper and smoked like a cigarette, chewed, or inhaled from a pipe or bong, salvia has also been described as a mix of marijuana and LSD.
An estimated 1.8 million Americans over the age of 12 have consumed salvia. TO 2016 Lake Forest University study found that recreational use of the drug was much more common in Mexico than in the United States.
According to a 2022 study from addictive behaviors magazine, the drug is linked to suicidal thoughts and depression in the same year it is used.
Singer Miley Cyrus shocked her fans in 2010 when a video of her smoking salvia went viral.
It became extremely well known in 2010 when Miley Cyrus, then best known for her work on Disney’s Hannah Montana, was filmed smoking salvia out of a bong in California.
“I’m not perfect,” Cyrus told Marie Claire magazine in February 2011. “I made a mistake…I’m disappointed in myself for letting my fans down.”
They asked him: ‘But do you really think it was a mistake? Obviously, college kids your age all across America are smoking bongs that contain a lot more than sage.
The Disney star’s response: ‘But they’re not Miley Cyrus. They are not role models. So for me it was a bad decision, for my fans and for what I stand for.’
Reportedly filmed just five days after her eighteenth birthday, the video for Cyrus’ sage bong hit features the singer/actress declaring she was “having a bit of a rough ride.”
Among the indigenous Mazatech population of Mexico, and in particular among community healers, sage is a powerful and sacred plant with healing powers and frightening, mind-altering effects.
Mazatecs believe that people who disrespect an animal, a river, or any other feature of nature may find themselves cursed with disease.
They must seek the advice of a shaman who offers sage to patients to find out what they did wrong.
Herbal healers say that rubbing Salvia on the skin can heal burns and make scars fade. They say that wearing sage on the head for 20 minutes can cure any headache.