Salvia-tion comes to Mont-Royal
New salvia café offers the Plateau another psychoactive refuge
By Tristin Hopper
It only took one month for Matthew Lipscomb to transform his small Internet café in the Plateau into Les Mentheurs, a new one-of-a-kind Montreal shisha café. Visitors remove their shoes at the door and don special slippers. Moving further into the dim lights and shisha smoke of Les Mentheurs, they discover deep couches, lulling world music and a mysterious, Middle-Eastern-esque décor. Bound to be the café’s signature attribute, however, is its exclusive offering of two legal hallucinogens.
For under $20, patrons can smoke a shisha pipe laced with salvia, a mint-like plant known for its intense hallucinogenic powers. Or they may elect to drink a special tea mixed with kratom leaves, a Southeast Asian tree with psychoactive effects.
As far as Lipscomb knows, he is the only café offering either salvia or kratom in Montreal, although it is sold as incense at some hemp stores.
“That’s irresponsible, because it’s obvious that people aren’t buying it as incense,” said Lipscomb. “[Salvia] is really not a toy, it’s not a recreational drug.” He adds that he intended Les Mentheurs to be a safe place where patrons could enjoy manageable doses. “I don’t want people feeling like they’re dripping into the floor,” he said. For control purposes, Lipscomb does not allow his employees to serve the drug, a responsibility he reserves for himself. As well, Lipscomb always insists on having a sitter available to keep watch over a patron using salvia.
“It’s an intense feeling, very hard to describe,” James Newhouse, a Montreal musician and friend of Lipscomb, assured The Link. He said that salvia does not elicit cravings or bring about “downs” afterwards.
Salvia is legal in Canada, although reps from Health Canada and the RCMP have both said that they are keeping a close eye on the legal sales.
“I suppose I’m sort of pushing my luck,” said Lipscomb, but affirms that he’s not selling the drugs for any political reasons. “I don’t want to lose my house or go to court over this.”
Of course, legal drugs are not the only selling point of Les Mentheurs: Lipscomb intends to fashion the café as a unique music venue. Lipscomb, who is also a musician, said he intends to host only intimate, acoustic sets.
Near the end of the evening, a group of students from the Université du Québec à Montréal and CÉGEP St-Laurent have just finished a round of kratom tea in the corner. Lazily propped up on pillows surrounding a low table, one of them offers the critique: “it’s like something between shrooms and marijuana.”
Les Mentheurs is looking for local art to display. For details, call 812-2335 or drop by Les Mentheurs at 163 Mont-Royal E.
