LEGAL HIGH NEW WORRY FOR PARENTS

LSD-Like Herb Blamed in Delaware Teen's Suicide

In the daily search for reasons behind their 17-year-old son's
suicide, Dennis and Kathy Chidester keep coming back to the same
answer: salvia divinorum.

The herb, a cousin of the flowering sages enjoyed by backyard
gardeners, contains the world's most potent natural hallucinogen, as
strong as LSD. The drug is legal in most states, including Delaware,
and easily available through hundreds of Internet sites, including
eBay.

That aura of legitimacy lulled Brett Chidester, a straight-A senior at
Salesianum School, into thinking smoking salvia leaves was safe, even
while convincing himself that he had gained incredible insights into
the universe, his parents said.

"Salvia allows us to give up our senses and wander in the
interdimensional time and space," Brett wrote in an essay his parents
found after his death. "Also, and this is probably hard for most to
accept, our existence in general is pointless. Final point: Us earthly
humans are nothing."

Brett acted on that belief Jan. 23.

Dennis Chidester had been trying to call Brett all day with no luck.
He came home at 5 p.m., opened the garage door and saw a tent pitched
inside -- an odd sight that he didn't process right away.

"I just ran upstairs calling his name," Chidester remembered. "Now my
heart's pounding. He's not in his room. I go downstairs, I go into the
garage and I open up that tent.

"That's the one thing I didn't want to do," he said, his voice
cracking. "I found him in there, dead. He had taken a charcoal grill
and ... carbon monoxide poisoning."

Brett's essay, suicide note and actions before his death still leave
his parents with more questions than answers.

"We just won't have any answers, and we have to learn to accept that,"
Kathy Chidester said. "But my gut feeling is it was the salvia. It's
the only thing that can explain it."

Abuse Concerns DEA

Mazatec Indians have used salvia divinorum to divine spiritual truths
for hundreds or thousands of years, experts said. Outsiders discovered
it in the 1960s, but it remained a relatively obscure drug until
popularized on the Internet, beginning in the 1990s. It's now sold as
live plants that can be grown indoors, dried leaves or liquid
extracts, from tiny bags costing a few dollars to wholesale shipments
for hundreds of dollars.

"You type 'salvia divinorum' in a search engine and you get 10,000
hits, most of which are head shops on the Internet," said Thomas E.
Prisinzano, a medical researcher at the University of Iowa. "That's
not good. People are going to abuse it."

Experts and users say when the leaves are chewed or smoked, they
produce powerful visions that make users believe they're in an
alternate place and time. Despite its growing popularity online, law
enforcement and health officials, as well as several teenagers and
their parents, said salvia is not a common drug in Delaware.

Since 2003, the federal Drug Enforcement Agency has considered salvia
divinorum a "drug of concern" because of its wide availability,
potential for abuse and unknown long-term effects. Louisiana, Missouri
and several countries have outlawed it, but congressional attempts to
control it in the United States have failed, in part because of a
reluctance to infringe on the religious freedoms of American Indians.

"It's dangerous," DEA spokeswoman Rogene Waite said. "Just because
it's not a controlled substance, people shouldn't think it's OK to use
it."

Dennis and Kathy Chidester, who divorced when Brett was 3, are
uncomfortable talking publicly about their son's salvia use and
suicide. But, they said, they are more uncomfortable remaining silent
and letting other parents learn through tragedy.

"If other states can [regulate] it, why do we have to wait for a
nationwide law?" Dennis Chidester said. "States should act on their
own."

Delaware should consider outlawing salvia, two state legislators said.
Sen. Karen E. Peterson, chairwoman of the Senate Combat Drug Abuse
Committee, and Rep. Pamela S. Maier, chairwoman of the House Health
and Human Development Committee, had not heard of the herb but said
they would look at the laws in Louisiana and Missouri.

Legislators in those states banned salvia last year over concerns
about teenagers' abuse of it and other hallucinogenic plants.

"It was being marketed to high school kids," said Scott Lipke, a
Missouri state representative. "It's not a widespread problem, but we
were trying to be out in front on it."

Delaware police said they know little about salvia. "I don't think
we'd even know what it is," said Sgt. William Wells, Wilmington police
spokesman.

Health officials said it hasn't hit their radar screen, either.

"If it's not an FDA-regulated drug, we couldn't track it any more than
we could track someone using ginkgo biloba," said Heidi
Truschel-Light, spokeswoman for the Delaware Division of Public Health.

Local merchants who sell glass pipes and other smoking supplies said
they don't sell salvia, even though customers ask for it and
wholesalers have urged them carry it.

"Kids come in here all the time and ask for it," said Randy Neil, a
cashier at Frolic in Newark. "But we don't mess with it. As far as I
know, the only place you can get it is the Internet. Probably the
reason it's legal now is most people don't know about it."

'Getting Deep'

Dennis and Kathy Chidester had never heard of salvia until Brett's
cousin told them last summer that she was worried about his salvia
use.

About the same time, a friend showed Kathy Chidester Brett's site on
MySpace.com, an Internet service where teenagers can chat and share
pictures and music. Brett's site contained a video of him and a friend
smoking salvia. She confronted him.

"He kept saying, 'Mom, it's legal. It's just an herb. The Indians used
to use it to divine knowledge of the universe,' " she remembered. He
told them he stopped using salvia, and they believed him.

Still, when Brett was out with friends, his parents would stay up
until he came home.

"I thought, if he's doing this stuff or he's drinking, I'm going to
know," Kathy Chidester said. "And when he came home, he would be
normal, always normal."

Experts said salvia's effects last from a few minutes to an hour or
two, with no hangover or other symptoms. Daniel Siebert, a California
botanist who sells the herb online and promotes its "responsible" use,
described the experience as similar to a vivid dream. "It's like your
mind is on autopilot," Siebert said. "Your brain is generating images
that have some kind of narrative line to them. It puts your mind in a
very introspective place. It's a way of getting deep inside yourself."

Siebert said crowds and loud music make a salvia-induced trip
unpleasant, so it's unlikely people would use it as a "party drug"
more than once or twice. He supports some regulations on salvia, such
as age restrictions and penalties for driving under the influence of
salvia.

"People take their experiences way too literally and read too many
things into it," Siebert said. "If you take it literally, you really
believe you've traveled to other dimensions and met other beings that
told you things. Minors are particularly prone to not understanding
that."

That doesn't stop some Internet merchants from billing salvia as a
legal, albeit more expensive, alternative to illicit recreational drugs.

The site where Brett Chidester got at least one batch sells it in
packages dubbed "mind bender," "mood mix" and "freshman selection." It
sells a "party pack" of three different strengths of extract, plus
four ounces of leaves, for $207.90.

Promising Medical Use

Salvia does have legitimate research value.

Prisinzano, who earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry from the
University of Delaware in 1995, is studying whether salvia's main
ingredient, salvinorin A, could be used to create a nonaddictive
painkiller. Also, he said, understanding the way salvia creates
hallucinations could help scientists better understand Alzheimer's
disease and mental illnesses that alter patients' perceptions of reality.

"It's actually become a hot area of research," said Bryan Roth, a
leading salvia researcher at Case Western Reserve University in
Cleveland. In 2002, he discovered how salvinorin A travels through the
brain.

One salvia user described watching a mountain lake turn into a desert,
Roth said. Another said she found herself in a room with an alternate
future behind each door. She picked one door and saw the death of her
child, he said.

"Depending on the dose, it can cause a mild sense of distortion," Roth
said. "In the extreme, people are basically shot out into another
reality, another place and time."

A Changed Son

Dennis and Kathy Chidester think that's what happened to
Brett.

About the time Brett began using salvia, he became more melancholy and
had trouble sleeping, his parents said. He was sometimes angry for no
reason. Because Brett had never displayed typical teenager moodiness,
they thought he was just catching up to his peers.

"He definitely changed," Kathy Chidester said. "It wasn't a drastic
change. I just figured well, this is the other shoe dropping. This is
what teenagers are like and we haven't experienced it."

The week before Brett's suicide, Kathy Chidester called him from
Austria, where she was leading an annual ski trip for the Wilmington
Ski Club. Brett said he was fine and probably was going to make the
Salesianum honor roll again.

The next Saturday night, Jan. 21, Brett went to his girlfriend's
homecoming dance. In the few months they had been dating, the
relationship had become serious, his parents said. Brett noted in his
daily planner that he was going to buy her flowers and take her to
dinner for Valentine's Day.

Brett spent much of the weekend writing college application essays,
hoping to become an architect. Brett was off work Monday, Jan. 23,
from his job in the dining room of Cokesbury Village, an assisted
living facility.

He was still sleeping when his father left the house that
morning.

"Mom and Dad, don't worry about me," Brett wrote in his suicide note.
"Please don't cry. I love you guys so much. I always have. Take a
vacation. You deserve it. Please do not be sad. I want you to carry on
your lives. Remember me and be happy when you think of me, not sad.
Tell yourselves I'm in a better place, because I am. I'm sorry I
didn't get to say goodbye before this, but I love you."

[Sidebar]

SALVIA Q&A

Is it legal?

It is not a controlled substance, so it is legal to own, use and
distribute salvia divinorum in Delaware and most states. Louisiana,
Missouri and several countries have outlawed salvia.

What are the effects?

The DEA considers salvia divinorum a "drug of concern" because its
full effects are not known. Researchers said they do not know the
long-term effects of using salvia.

Is it addictive?

Researchers and users said salvia is not addictive.

Who uses it?

Mazatec Indians have chewed salvia divinorum for ritual divination and
healing for hundreds of years. Westerners discovered it in the 1960s,
and its popularity has grown among teenagers and young adults since
the 1990s because of availability over the Internet.

Does it have other uses?

Medical researchers are interested in the herb's potential to treat
pain without addiction and to better understand Alzheimer's,
Parkinson's and other diseases that alter a patient's perception of
reality.

How is it sold?

Web sites and Internet vendors sell salvia divinorum as live plants,
dried leaves, crushed leaves and a liquid extract.