An Oregon man who tried salvia divinorum said when he was younger he tried other hallucinogens such as peyote and psylocybin several times but didn't expect to repeat the Mexican herb. "Nothing I had done prepared me for it — I mean I thought I knew what these things did to you," he said. "I found it valuable, I felt like it re-opened some things that maybe had started to close up in me, but I don't think I want to go back." "I can't preclude there's something special about salvia divinorum because of the shaman connection," Halpern said. "It's a tool that's remained in the shaman's bag and that's probably where it should stay."

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When mind-altering substances like psychedelics produce unpleasant experiences - "bad trips" or worse - the real cause is often not so much the drug itself, but "dosing." In street slang, "dosing" does not refer to the normal medical administration of measured amounts of a drug. Instead, the slang use of "dosing" is the dangerous and stupid practice of covertly administering a drug to an unsuspecting user. During the 1960s, some proponents of LSD usage were so enthusiastic about its effects that they routinely offered strangers spiked drinks containing the drug. But it's one thing for a fully informed emotionally mature adult to voluntarily take a drug. It is quite another when someone is "dosed," and has effects mimicking a psychosis. The reckless abuse of LSD soon led to draconian criminal laws and suppression of research into potential beneficial effects of psychedelics. More recently, there has been concern about so-called date rape drugs, GHB for example, slipped into a woman's drink to facilitate sex (of course, the most common date rape drug is simply alcohol).

Salvia divinorum is a sage used for millennia by natives of Oaxaca for its psychoactive properties. The active ingredient of the plant is salvinorin A, which is similar in potency to LSD. The drug is now available worldwide through the Internet and in head shops as leaves for smoking, or as a liquid tincture. Salvia produces intense short-lived psychedelic effects - longer effects when taken orally, shorter when smoking the leaves. In most of the United States, salvia is still sold legally. Users generally report pleasant experiences, but some have reported the opposite result - fear, terror, panic and worse. The September 2008 issue of the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry reports a case of Salvia dosing that led to a near-fatal toxic psychosis.salvia

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