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Editor’s Note: Stephanie is a parent living in Richland County whose first name has been changed to protect the privacy of her child.
MANSFIELD — Stephanie believes a tumble down the stairs might have saved her daughter’s life.
The 15-year-old girl got up in the middle of the night and fell, spiking her adrenaline and waking her father.
“(Her dad) checked her out, she seemed to be ok. Obviously she was shaken up,” said Stephanie, who lives in Richland County.
But the next morning, her daughter was acting strange, so her father took her to the emergency room.
Doctors ruled out a head injury and tested the girl for cannabis. That test came back positive.
But Stephanie said she thinks the reason for her daughter’s hallucinations was something else — an overdose of a common over-the-counter allergy medicine.
When the girl’s father returned home, he found a nearly empty bottle of Benadryl.
“She was kept overnight for observation at the hospital. Psych saw her the next morning and decided this wasn’t an attempt on her life, this was an attempt to get high,” Stephanie said.
The Benadryl challenge surfaced in 2020 as a dangerous TikTok trend that encouraged users to take far more than the recommended amount of the medicine in order to get high.
Christie Barnes, a mental health therapist who practices in Mansfield, said she’s concerned the Benadryl challenge is making a comeback.
Barnes told Richland Source she’s spoken to seven families impacted by the challenge over the last two months, with teens ranging in age from 12 to 16. She said many teens likely underestimate the dangers of the Benadryl challenge because it’s a legal substance.
“Kids are going to keep doing this and pushing the edge until something bad happens,” Barnes said.
“They want to get high. They want to hallucinate. They think it’s funny. They believe they’re invincible.”
Is the ‘Benadryl challenge’ on the rise in north central Ohio?
Determining how prevalent Benadryl misuse is among teens can be a challenge.
A nationwide coalition of poison control centers recently reported that misuse is on the rise among teens.
Richland Source contacted local law enforcement agencies, hospital systems and Richland Public Health to ask if there has been a documented increase in Benadryl misuse locally.
Chief Jason Bammann of the Mansfield Police Department said the department has recently responded to “a couple of incidents” involving theft of Benadryl.
But many other local officials said they had seen no evidence of a resurgence.
“We are not seeing patients as a result of the “Benadryl Challenge” and have not heard that from our community either,” said Marcus Thorpe, a spokesperson for OhioHealth.
Maj. James Sweat with the Richland County Sheriff’s Office said, “We checked, and this does not appear to be a current issue within our response area.”
“We haven’t been made aware of any upticks in Benadryl overdoses or hospitalizations at this time,” said Shannon Nelson, administrative coordinator for the health commissioner.
Stephanie said she thinks parents may not be aware of the trend because of the stigmas surrounding substance abuse.
“People don’t really want to talk about it,” she said. “I do believe there has been some other overdoses that just aren’t talked about. I do not believe this is an isolated incident.”
The Ashland County Sheriff’s Office sounded the alarm about a spike in Benadryl misuse back in February.
“Over the past several weeks, the Ashland County Sheriff’s Office has investigated several incidents where juveniles have purchased over-the-counter Benadryl and ingested more the than the recommended dosage, resulting in a medical emergency,” Sheriff Kurt Schneider wrote in a safety bulletin on Feb. 5.
Det. Aaron Crites told residents there had only been a couple of isolated incidents, including a child in Loudonville, but no one had died from overuse.
The department responded by issuing the safety bulletin and asking local businesses to review their policies and practices pertaining to the sale of over-the-counter medications to minors.
Crites told Richland Source the department hasn’t encountered any additional cases of Benadryl overdoses since then.
“I think we kind of nipped it in the bud,” he said. “We handed out some fliers to our local businesses and I think that definitely helped.”
Parents should be vigilant, talk with kids about dangers of substance abuse
Nevertheless, Barnes encouraged parents to be vigilant and to have conversations with their children about the dangers of substance abuse and their own mental health.
“Every generation has experienced peer pressure, but today’s teens face it on a scale we’ve never seen before. Social media can transform a risky idea into a nationwide trend within hours, exposing millions of young people to behaviors they would never have encountered otherwise,” she said.
“These “challenges” spread quickly because they tap into a teenager’s developmental need for belonging. When young people repeatedly see peers engaging in a behavior online, the activity can become normalized, even when it’s viewed as dangerous.”
Stephanie said parents shouldn’t discount the trend, even if their children seem happy and healthy. She never imagined her daughter — a bookworm and nature lover who loves to paint — to experiment with substances.
“Be open and honest with your kids. Have the difficult conversations. Talk about actions and consequences,” she said. “Watch what your kids are doing on social media.”
Barnes also advised parents to start talking with children once they reach middle school about risky behaviors and trends so that it becomes a normal part of family life.
“They need to start having these types of conversations and the onset so that when they get older and the situations become much more serious, it’s not such a big deal (to talk about),” she said.
“They should already be having conversations about, ‘What’s going on at school? What are you hearing? Do you have friends who struggle with anything?'”
