13-year-old dies doing TikTok 'Benadryl Challenge'

A boy from Ohio overdosed on over-the-counter allergy medication attempting doing a viral TikTok stunt that is meant to cause hallucinations, the New York Post reports.

The 13-year-old died from an overdose of Benadryl while doing the "Benadryl Challenge": taking six times the recommended dose of the drug to allegedly produce hallucinations.

The online trend was reported on in 2020, when a 15-year-old girl died from an overdose of Benadryl that summer. The challenge was to take more than a dozen of the pills, which poison control authorities said can be fatal.

“The dose that can cause a hallucination is very close to the dose that can cause something potentially life-threatening,” said the director of the Oklahoma Center for Poison and Drug Information, Scott Schaeffer, in 2020.

“Large amounts of Benadryl can cause seizures and, particularly, problems with the heart. The heart tends to go out of rhythm and not pump blood effectively," he added.

The overdose-causing trend prompted Johnson & Johnson to issue a warning the following month in September 2020, saying that “the Benadryl TikTok trend is extremely concerning, dangerous and should be stopped immediately."

The Ohio boy was recorded by friends taking the pills before having a seizure, parents told ABC 6.

“It was too much for his body,” the teen’s father said.

The man also described his feelings upon hearing his son did not have any brain activity.

"They said we could keep him on the vent, that he could lay there — but he will never open his eyes, he’ll never breathe, smile, walk or talk.”

The boy died after six days on a ventilator, which his father called "the worst day of his life."

“It didn’t matter how bad of a day I was having, no one could make me smile, Jacob could make me smile," the boy's father continued.

The teenager's parents say they began an effort to get lawmakers to put an age restriction on buying Benadryl and similar products. The teen's father says it's now his life goal to make that happen.

"I'll go at it until the day I die," he said.

As for TikTok, the parents would also like to see age restrictions on that platform.

Less than 10 days before, 10 children in Massachusetts were hospitalized due to a different TikTok challenge that involved extremely spicy gum, rated at over 16 million Scoville heat units.

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