Middletown Teen Hospitalized After Doing 'Benadryl Challenge'

MIDDLETOWN, NJ — In what is the first publicly known case in New Jersey, a teenage boy from Middletown Township was hospitalized on April 15 after he did the infamous "Benadryl Challenge."

The boy, 13, was admitted to Jersey Shore University Medical Center for three nights, and survived the ordeal. But his mother now wants to come forward with his story.

"I don't know what the answer is. I just don't want any other parent to go through this," she said this week. "I want everyone to be aware this can happen to their teen. And we were lucky; my kid lived. Another family is having to bury their child."

She's referring to Jacob Stevens, also 13, the Ohio teen who died after he too did the "Benadryl Challenge," which encourages teens to take up to 14 Benadryl pills to make them hallucinate. Stevens' friends filmed him as he swallowed the pills. He lost consciousness from the drug overdose and was on a ventilator for a week before his family made the decision to remove him from the machine.

That boy died April 12. Three days later, on April 15, this Middletown boy searched for the words "Benadryl challenge" on TikTok, said his mother.

"He's on TikTok a lot," she said. "We saw he had typed in 'Benadryl Challenge.''"

However, a spokesman for TikTok said the platform's role in the "Benadryl Challenge" has been misunderstood:

TikTok said it has banned all videos on this type of content. If one types in the words "Benadryl Challenge" into TikTok, no videos or audio come up. Instead, all searches result in a redirection to a safety page from TikTok on the dangers of drugs, alcohol and tobacco.

Patch asked both RWJ Barnabas and Hackensack Meridian Health, the two largest hospital systems in the state, how many ER or hospital admissions they've seen due to the Benadryl Challenge. A spokeswoman for RWJ so they do not identify patient diagnoses that way, so could not provided statistics.

The names of this Middletown family will not be disclosed to protect their privacy. But the mother provided Patch with hospital discharge records and a photo of her son being rushed to Jersey Shore University Medical Center in an ambulance, which she did not want published.

The night of April 15: A parents' nightmare

It was Saturday evening. The husband and wife had gone out for dinner.

"It was just a normal day. My son plays electric guitar in a band; we dropped his guitar off to be fixed. Then my husband and I went out for dinner, a rare date night. There were no red flags; this could have happened on any day and at any time."

"We came home and my husband went to check on our son in his room. I heard my husband scream my name. We found him lying on the floor of his room in a fetal position, his eyes open and staring at a blank notebook," she said.

Her son's eyes were open, his pupils dilated, but he could not talk and he could not walk. His father carried him down the stairs and drove him to Riverview Medical Center.

"As soon as they got to the Riverview ER, the doctor immediately asked them, did he take Benadryl and how much did he take?," she said. "I had bought a big bottle of Benadryl at Costco a few months before, because spring allergy season was coming. A big huge bottle, those pink pills. I went to look at it. I told my husband I couldn't tell how many pills were missing."

Witnessing her child like this "was terrifying."

"His eyes were open the whole time but he could not talk. He was twitching, his whole body was twitching and seizing, and he was picking things — nothing — from the air and eating them. He was delusional; he was seeing things."

At Riverview, doctors gave him IV fluids and Ativan, to slow his heartrate. At 2 a.m., they transferred him to Jersey Shore University Medical Center in Long Branch for more intensive care, particularly from psychiatrists. There, her son was given Haldol, an anti-psychotic. He was twitching and seizing so violently he had to be strapped down so CT scans could be taken. As the drugs kicked in, his racing heart slowed. He fell into a deep sleep in his hospital bed as his mother watched him.

As he recovered in the pediatric intensive care unit at Jersey Shore, the Middletown mother searched through her son's phone.

"We found SnapChat messages he had sent that night to a friend. He told the friend 'I just took 7 pills of Benadryl.' The friend wrote back, Oh my god, that's a lot, are you OK?

"My son then wrote, 'I think I took much because I'm seeing s***.' He then said, 'I took this many,' and texted a photo. But because it's SnapChat the photo disappeared. To this day, we still don't know exactly how many pills he took."

The following Tuesday morning, he was discharged.

TikTok: You cannot find videos for the 'Benadryl Challenge' on our app

The Benadryl Challenge is not new: In 2020, a 15-year-old Oklahoma girl died after she ate large amounts of Benadryl; teens in Texas have been hospitalized for it.

It was in 2020 that the U.S. Food & Drug Administration first posted this warning about the Benadryl Challenge. At the time, the FDA said there were Benadryl Challenge videos on TikTok.

But since 2020, TikTok has been blocking and banning any videos associated with the words "Benadryl Challenge." TikTok also bans search results when one types in "Bena challenge," etc.

Today, it is virtually impossible to find a video on the Benadryl Challenge in TikTok. In fact, it was an influencer on YouTube — not TikTok — who most recently talked about taking large amounts of Benadryl to hallucinate.

Justin Stevens, the father of the Ohio boy, said this to Fox News this week: "They sit back and make billions and billions of dollars," of TikTok, "and I can't even wake up and say hello to my kid anymore, you know?"

After the 13-year-old Ohio boy died, TikTok released a statement:

“Our deepest sympathies go out to the family,” said the company. “At TikTok, we strictly prohibit and remove content that promotes dangerous behavior with the safety of our community as a priority. We have never seen this type of content trend on our platform and have blocked searches for years to help discourage copycat behavior. Our team of 40,000 safety professionals works to remove violations of our Community Guidelines and we encourage our community to report any content or accounts they’re concerned about.”

This Middletown mother emphasized that she does not know what the answer is.

"Yes, we let our kids watch TikTok. But we scan their phones every night to see what they're watching, who they're talking to. We used to take the phones and iPads from them at night and lock them up to be charged. But when they became teenagers, we let them have more freedom. And now we're paying the price."

The Benadryl Challenge comes at a time when some American lawmakers want to ban TikTok, citing dangerous and deadly challenges such as this one. There are also concerns the Chinese-owned company can harvest and store Americans' data.

"I do think we need to regulate or monitor the content that's on TikTok," said the mom. "I've been reading about this and the algorithms are set up to evade parental controls. It's set up to feed your child what they are looking for."

"I thought I had to be scared of guns, knives and drugs in my home. I never thought it would be Benadryl. Now I'm looking around my home thinking, 'What else in here could hurt my kids?' What's next, the laundry detergent?"

"For kids today, everything is online. Schools don't even use textbooks anymore," she said. "The big question to me is how do we keep our kids safe in a world where they're constantly being bombarded with so much technology and so much information?"

From the Wall Street Journal's technology reporter Taylor Lorez, who tweeted last week that TikTok's role in the Benadryl Challenge has been falsely explained by the media: