The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday issued a warning about the dangers of the “Benadryl Challenge”, a rumored ticket ok stunt that involves drinking high doses of allergy drugs to induce delusions.
The FDA has warned that teens are aware of the news of ending up in an emergency room or dying after participating in a “Benadrill Challenge” promoted in a video posted on the social media application Ticket OK.
However, there is little evidence of widespread challenge ticketing, and the platform has disabled both the hashtags “Benadril” and “Benadril Challenge” to prevent copycat picks.
There have been many local news reports about teenagers involved in the challenge, while NBC News has not confirmed these reports.
The FDA said in a warning that “these reports are being investigated and a review is being conducted to determine whether additional cases have been reported. Once our review is complete or more information is available for distribution, we will publicly correct it.”
The agency also said it had contacted Tiktok and “urged them to be vigilant in removing videos from their platform and posting additional videos.”
According to the FDA, taking more than the recommended amount of diphenhydramine sold as benadril can lead to serious heart problems, stroke, coma or even death. Parents should keep diphenhydramine away from children, and the agency recommends prescribing all medications to prevent accidental poisoning by children and abuse by adolescents.
In a statement to NBC News, Johnson and Johnson, who makes Benadril, said in part, “This online ‘challenge’ is extremely dangerous, dangerous and should be stopped immediately.”
The statement continued, “As soon as we became aware of this dangerous trend, we contacted the social media platform to remove the content.” “We continue to monitor and work with security teams on various social media platforms to eliminate hazardous content.”
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