Salvia Leads Chemists on a Psychedelic Existential Journey
On August 2, synthetic organic chemist Ryan Shenvi stood before 300 people at the Natural Products and Bioactive Compounds conference and told them something he knew was sacrilegious: He\u2019d synthesized salvinorin A, the active ingredient in the wildly intense hallucinogen salvia, and he hadn\u2019t just copied a molecule, as synthetic organic chemists are wont to do. He had subtly changed its molecular structure, as synthetic organic chemists are not wont to do.