A 13-year-old boy from Columbus, Ohio, tragically died after overdosing on over-the-counter medication while attempting a dangerous TikTok stunt known as the “Benadryl Challenge”. Jacob Stevens had taken 12 to 14 antihistamine pills, six times the recommended dose, in order to induce hallucinations. The challenge started gaining popularity in 2020 as teens uploaded videos of their attempts on TikTok.
Jacob was at home with friends when he overdosed and his friends captured the footage of him taking the pills, after which his body reportedly started to seize up. He was rushed to the hospital and put on a ventilator, but despite medics’ best efforts, he passed away six days later.
Jacob’s father, Justin, warned parents about the dangers of teens using social media unsupervised and is also campaigning for age restrictions on over-the-counter pharmaceuticals like Benadryl. He wants TikTok to impose similar safeguards, including requiring users to provide an ID before creating an account. This comes after Jacob’s death and the previous fatality of a 15-year-old girl in August 2020 who fatally overdosed on the allergy drug during another attempt at the challenge.
Johnson & Johnson, the manufacturer of Benadryl, issued a public advisory regarding the challenge, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) put out a public service announcement warning about the dangers of taking higher than recommended doses of the common over-the-counter allergy medicine diphenhydramine.
