Quote:
Diane Dobrzenski noticed a change in her son’s behavior, but didn’t know what was causing it.
Over the course of a couple months she says the 17-year-old stopped playing his much loved guitar, working out, and started skipping school.
In the beginning of June it got really scary. He started acting agitated, paranoid, and began obsessively locking doors.
Then on June 13th she heard him talking to himself as he took a really long shower. When he got out he put his head under the kitchen sink faucet, and said he was trying to cool off. He then began vomiting. She took him to Hurley Medical Center in a near catatonic state. Doctors said he was suffering from hallucinations both visual and audio.
She later learned he had taken massive amounts of over the counter cough medicine containing dextromethorphan or DXM in order to get high. Users say the high can range from mild inebriation, to impaired senses, to hallucinations. It is found in unregulated cough medicines that anyone can buy off the shelf.
“At first we're like at least it’s not LSD or something,” said Dobrzenski. “Then we learned it’s just as frightening.”
Hurley Medical Center E.R. Dr. Jim Weber says he is seeing an increasing number of overdose cases involving DXM. In the worst cases it can cause psychiatric breaks, brain damage, or even death.
He says the frightening thing is that kids often have no idea the drug is so dangerous. In many cases the labels recommend safe doses, but do not say what can happen if more is consumed.
“This label needs to be changed due to the popularity of street use of this drug,” says Dr. Weber.
Dobrzenski agrees. She also thinks it needs to be put behind the counter at pharmacies, like medicines that contain pseudoephedrine. Pseudoephedrine is regulated because it can be used to make methamphetamine. She says DXM should be regulated because it is dangerous as it is.
Dobrzenski is now waiting, hoping her son recovers fully. She knows there are cases where kids are forever changed by the abuse of DXM. She wants other parents to know of the dangers and warn their children.
“I don’t want any parent or any other child to have to go through what my family has gone through these past two weeks.”
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The sensationalized video is pretty bad.
"Hallucinations! Brain damage! Even death!"
