15-year-old Oklahoma girl Leah Presson is currently in intensive care after allegedly taking part in a TikTok dare known as the “Benadryl Challenge”.
As per NewsNation, this “challenge” involves taking a large amount of antihistamine medication Benadryl, which has the common side effect of drowsiness. The aim of the challenge is apparently then to stay awake through the drowsiness in pursuit of a high.
But, as reported by People, Presson suffered seizures and cardiac arrest while attempting the challenge and is now hospitalized at Integris Health Baptist Medical Center in Oklahoma City. Sadly, her prognosis is poor, and her father Richard Presson has told ABC8 News that repeated tests have confirmed that there’s no brain activity.
He added the hospital chaplain told him “to pray”, saying:
“I don’t even want to think about a funeral because I feel like there’s still hope and everybody’s like, giving up too soon. I believe in miracles, that she’s definitely a miracle baby.”
Presson also claimed that his daughter had previously attempted the Benadryl Challenge, and that all her symptoms indicate her current condition is a direct result of trying it again.
“If your child is acting strange, look around”
It should be underlined that, unlike many other social media scares, the Benadryl Challenge is well-documented as being real and causing direct harm to children.
It’s first recorded as appearing in 2020, with it being brought to mass attention in 2023 after 13-year-old Ohio boy Jacob Stevens died after consuming over a dozen Benadryl tablets and began convulsing. He died after six days in intensive care, with it being found he’d suffered critical brain damage.
Dr. Ryan Brown of Oklahoma Children’s at OU Health told ABC8 that parents must be aware of this challenge, saying:
“When you take the Benadryl or diphenhydramine in excess of that, in excess of this, it can lead to seizures and cardiac arrhythmias, and sometimes those cardiac arrhythmias lead to cardiac arrest, which can lead to no blood to the brain, which can lead to brain death.
If your child is acting strange, look around. Make sure that there’s not an empty pill bottle or something in the vicinity that may lead you to a clue as to what may have been going on.”
TikTok has attempted to squash this at the source, with searches for “Benadryl Challenge” returning results for community guidelines and substance support resources. But, reportedly, teens have recirculated it under different names to evade the filter.
