LEGAL HIGH: PSYCHEDELIC SALVIA A CONTROVERSIAL SUBSTANCE

There is a drug out there so legal that your 6-year-old brother could
order some ... if he really wanted to. Yet that same drug is so
potent, so mind-altering, that researches are classifying it under
the same category as LSD.

I've tried some. I've tried some right on campus, in a friend's dorm.
The effects of Salvia divinorum lasted about 10 minutes, but have
left so much of an impact on me that I felt urged to write this article.

People are catching on to salvia, its more common name, though. The
drug has been outlawed in Australia and several U.S states, but that
does not prohibit salvia from entering your home via your local post office.

"I ordered 20x salvia Online and I got it in the mail in like three
days," said Juan Villareal, a junior. "There are some places like
Yuckies in the Grove that sell it to you right there, but it's really
expensive."

Salvia has different strengths - ranging from 5x to 80x and up - and
was used as a healer to the sick and for religious purposes by the
Mazatec Indians of the Oaxacan Mountains in Mexico. A 1962 expedition
by Albert Hoffman and Gordon Wasson to find the hoja de Ska Maria
Pastora - the Mazatec name for salvia - brought the plant to the U.S.
for scientific research. After several years it was deemed legal to import.

Hoffman's expedition can be read in detail in his book "LSD - My
Problem Child."

Salvia leaves can be smoked or chewed, with the latter having longer
effects. While under the influence of salvia, uncontrollable laughter
and the inability to talk seem to happen to many; as well as
out-of-body experiences.

"I prefer chewing it than smoking it," Villareal said. "It's a nicer
high. I've had bad trips smoking it."

The long-term effects of Salvia divinorum are unknown, since its use
is relatively new to the States, but when tested on mice, mice
entered a sort of depression state that lasted several days.

However, there are no reports relating human depression to salvia.

Botanist Daniel Siebert, sometimes referred to as the 'guru of
salvia', has been studying the history and chemistry of the drug since 1991.

"A lot of people would say even if you don't have any evidence of
psychological harm, just the fact it causes intense hallucinations is
dangerous in itself. That can be a dangerous thing to do. You could
jump out of a window. In that sense you could make an argument that
there is a legitimate concern," Siebert said in a BBC-News interview.

Siebert believes the drug's widespread availability and teenagers
being over indulgent with it may lead to its potential ban.

In the same interview, Siebert describes his first experience with
salvia: chewing raw leaves.

"I noticed some shifts in visual perception, objects had a glow or
colored aura. I looked up at the hills. There were Hobbit-like houses
nestled into the hillside. There was light coming from the windows.
There was something fairytale-like about the scene, there was
something very comforting about the whole thing," he said.

Siebert does not recommend doing the drug without supervision.

Despite absolutely no reports of human deaths occurring under the
effects of salvia, Brett Chidester's mother said it had to do with
her son's suicide in 2006, and fought to get it outlawed in her home
state of Delaware.

Kathy Chidester told NBC10.com that her son was taking an acne
medication linked with depression, alcohol and Salvia divinorum when
he committed suicide; he killed himself by carbon-monoxide poisoning.
She does not blame salvia for his death, but said her son told her he
'had learned the secrets of life . he went to another realm' when
under the influence of the drug.

"I just think, with all the things he had going on, and to add Salvia
to that mix, it was a lethal combination," Chidester told the Web site.

Brett's law was passed three months after the boy's death,
prohibiting the use of Salvia divinorum in Delaware.

Salvia is not a drug to abuse. I probably won't do it again. Salvia
had its 15 minutes of fame, or shame, with me. Hopefully, with more
research and less irresponsible teens, the effects of Salvia will be
fully understood and the drug won't have to share a home with its
close cannabis cousin in a far away land called Amsterdam.