My own experiences with Salvia were marginally positive. I certainly "learned" a great deal from them in the form of the sort of criticism one would like to get from an honest and caring friend.

On the downside, however, I also found these experiences to be terrifying.

For the sake of readers here who haven't tried Salvia, but would like to, here are a few words of advice:

* Salvia isn't "fun." It isn't even close to being "fun." It is very powerful and intense - and interesting and fascinating. "Fun" is a word, however, that very few Salvia users would use to describe the experience.

* Neal Pollack's attempt to have a Salvia trip at a concert was not a good idea. One experiences profound "disassociation" during a Salvia "trip." This means that you are completely cut off from your physical surroundings and in another world. If you smoked Salvia behind the wheel of a car, you would crash the car. If you smoke Salvia while operating machinery, you would likely harm yourself. If you smoked Salvia in public with a group of people who didn't know what you were doing, they would likely call 911 for medical attention. You might as well be on a different planet for the 5 or 10 minutes you're on your "trip." Note, too, that a solo Salvia trip can be troublesome as well... Candles could be knocked down and start a fire without you even knowing it. You could end up walking around, crashing into furniture, falling down stairs, etc. Be careful!

I would cautiously recommend a trial Salvia trip only for experienced psychedelic drug users who really want to push the envelope. Salvia can be a valuable tool, but also unwieldy. The learning experience gained during a Salvia trip is far more oriented towards you being "shown" wisdom, unlike an LSD trip which is a far more "interactive" learning experience.

Finally, it's worth noting that until just a few years ago, Salvia was largely "undiscovered" and only used by Mazatec Indians near Oaxaca Mexico. American curiosity and commerce may have "saved" the plant from a slow extinction in the dry Mexican highlands. We should be thankful to the Mazatec for sharing this magic plant from their pharmacopoeia with us.

For more Salvia info, see http://www.erowid.org/plants/salvia/salvia.shtml or click on my profile link.

Vaya con dios!

Ayahuasca is pretty intense, too. Not for the uninitiated or the faint of heart.

Good old LSD, mushroom or mescaline trips should be sufficient for most seekers' needs.

Nobody should move on to Ayahuasca or Salvia before they've had some experience with one or more of the "standard" psychedelics.

Well... Such is life!

If these young ladies were in any number of other countries, their pregnancies at this age wouldn't be unusual. The existence of the "pact" is what makes this story so bizarre.

Any teenage girl entering into such a pact must be desperately missing enthusiasm for the future from their parents.

I thought it was an awesome article. I intend to buy the book.

For the record, about 30% of the population of Malaysia is non-Muslim (mostly Chinese). A different set of day-to-day laws applies to this population as opposed to the ethnic Malay (Bumiputera). Muslim women must wear scarves, etc., but Chinese women, non-Muslim Indian women, Thai women, etc. are allowed to express themselves in any manner they choose. Non-Muslim women wearing scarves, etc. is all but unheard of.

The flyer is silly, and I doubt that proportionally more non-Muslim women in Malaysia become victims of rape than scarf-wearing Muslim women. What a stupid idea.

It should be noted that the father's name, Rasheed, sounds Muslim and the mother's name, Lakshmi Devi, sounds Hindu. There may be some other meaning there that I'm missing - I don't know what Anvar represents, for example.

A one minute forty-three second ad showing newspaper headlines and dates? I felt my consciousness slipping away towards the end.

I've seen this in Paris off an on over the years, definitely by 2001 and possibly as early as 1996 or 1999. I wonder why it has taken so long to come to the United States?

Mmmmm...