Bad publicity sucks :( Salvia blamed in suicide...

here
(photos too)

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."

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.

 

What a loser

 

This is a very disturbing article. Especially because it draws attention to a probably non-existant link between Salvia divinorum and suicide.

First off, I want to say this:

As a Salvia user, there is NO WAY that this moron could have killed himself *while under the influence of Salvia*. For two reasons:

(1) Physical inebriation. While you are experiencing the effects of salvinorin-A, you are for the large part physically inebriated beyond that of even alcohol. That means, no pitching a tent in your garage (which would take longer than the effects' come-down time anyway), no lugging a charcoal grill into it, and no waiting for carbon monoxide poisoning. Let alone writing a suicide note.

(2) Mental inebriation. This boy was obviously very disturbed to begin with. I don't know anyone who, off the top of their head, could say "oh you can kill yourself using a charcoal grill via monoxide poisoning," especially while under the influence of a substance that induces "vivid dreams" as Daniel Siebert likens them to.

This kid obviously did his research on how to kill himself way ahead of the time that he actually did it. It most certainly was NOT something induced because of a single Salvia divinorum experience.

And this is only akin to killing yourself because you're drunk. If you kill yourself because you had a bad experience, or you think you've gained some kind of philosophical insight during a psycoactive experience, then it's not the drug that killed you, it's your own dumb fault. The kid killed himself; Salvia didn't make him do any research on how to kill himself, nor did it tell him to pitch a tent and poison himself.

And, no matter what psychoactive drug you take, if you KILL YOURSELF because of any "philosophical knowledge" that you BELIEVE to have obtained during such an experience ... you're just a complete idiot. Nobody in their right mind would take philosophical knowledge from a vivid psychoactive experience seriously, and then would act on that belief in their mind.

The boy was obviously disturbed to begin with; Salvia divinorum hasn't driven anyone to kill themselves in the past several hundred years, and I'm a firm believer that it hasn't done so now.

 

Oh this is fucking great, What a fucking bunch of bullshit. :$ I seriously doubt, in most cases, drugs are in any way the cause of suicide, but more a symptom of the user being suicidal at most.

 

I completely agree, to be honest, as much as it sucks that he killed himself, he's just fucking dumb. He HAD to have been extremely disturbed to do this. And like you said, theres no way he could have done this shit while under the influence of salvia.

 

He didn't do it while under the influence, he got the idea that life is pointless from smoking salvia. But yeah there is always tons missing from the story. Do you tell your parents everything? Do you write everything down? This guy proably didn't either, no doubt there was alot else going on. But don't worry too bad, google didn't bring up any other papers that reported on this article.

 

And here's the real point ... you can stumble across the philosophical knowledge that life is pointless by using Salvia ... OR, you could read it in a textbook.

Conclusion: Salvia is no more philosophically dangerous than a textbook.

And Turn, you raise a very valid point: Look at this kid. He's a straight-A honour student, with a lot going for him. But undoubtedly, he has to work very hard in order to KEEP it all going for him. What kind of stress does that put on him? Tons.

And I'm sure enough stress will make your son start to feel agitated and become angrier. I'm sure the stress of having parents that STAY UP UNTIL YOU GET HOME EVERY NIGHT to make sure you haven't been doing something that is legal (Hey! My parents do this, and it puts unfathomable stress on me.) doesn't help the stress any more than the high expectations do.

 

a) Salvia is not LSD-like, whatsoever. LSD is a serotonin-antagonist, Salvinorin is a kappa-opioid agonist. Dissociation/delerium is more of a salvia effect than the more tangible sensory distortions of LSD.

b) because Salvia is an opioid agonist, it's not particularly euphoric...who the fuck would want to abuse it?!!

one of the definitions for abuse (from dictionary.com): improper use, or handling; misuse abuse of authority, drug abuse

i don't like that definition, I tend to look at drug abuse as the prolonged, extensive, habitual use of a substance....and I have a hard time seeing salvia used in this manner.


misinformation fed to the public by media is one of my biggest pet peeves.

 

Although, keep in mind ... there are some people that extensively and habitually use substances for prolonged periods of time (like Rastafarians for example) which don't fall into the category of "drug abusers."

Perhaps it's a combinations of these definitions?

 

yeah, I know what you mean...but the only people who typically use salvia extensively and habitually are shamen (curanderos). besides...how do you misuse weed, or salvia for that matter?

salvia, like I said, doesn't really feel all that great, and noone I know of (and I know quite a few who've done it) wants/cares to make a habit of smoking salvia. It's nothing like weed.

take for instance, datura.... some kids may get curious and experiment with datura, but most will agree, datura feels horrible; yet datura is not a watched/scheduled plant, and has little potential for abuse. datura is even MORE dangerous than salvia could ever be. datura could kill you in high doses (not to mention, the delerium lasts a lot longer than salvia delerium), salvia will just make you pass out and forget the whole experience; but both substances are quite dysphoric, for the most part, therefore, have low potential for abuse.

 

I agree completely.

 

They would rather blame salvia, because all the other reasons are too uncomfortable.
Like maybe he was mentally unstable (schizofrenic maybe?) or it could have something to do the family situation. You don't need salvia to find a reason to kill yourself. Teenage suicide isn't a problem that has much to do with drugs. But of course, if you can blame drugs, why look any deeper for answers?

 

Sounds about right.

 

I wasn't being sarcastic I agree with what you said. I just like that face.

 

^_^

 

Remember to count your lucky stars all . Its completely illegal here

 

This is probably some fucking propaganda made by the government.

They need something like this to make salvia their personal scapegoat so they can criminalize it.

 

In Australia they criminalised it through a group of food and health representatives with no scientific knowledge of the drugs who found most of their information through internet chat rooms as opposed to real evidence.

How smart are we?

Salvia is another herb that supposedly can to help stop addictions and act as an alternative to pharmaceutical drugs. Sometimes the very groups that try to lobby for illegalisation are working for alcohol, cigarette or pharmaceutical companies. Its happened over here with Kava, passionflower and natural tobbaco. Thats right, you're not allowed to grow natural tobacco, yet they're allowed to sell you the nasty processed shit. What a democracy hey?

 

if he said he realized life was pointless, and then he killed himself...

shouldn't we blame life, and make living illegal?

 

They were looking for someone to blame. Salvia is easier to blame then to say "Oh we might be bad parents and raised our child to kill himself".

Maybe salvia did offer him insight into his own personal problems and then pushed him to do it sooner... but he was obviously already pretty fucked up as it was.