Witnesses described a 17-year-old boy as "shaking, growling, foaming at the mouth." According to police reports, Elijah Stai was at a McDonald's with his friend when he began to feel ill. Soon after, he "started to smash his head against the ground" and began acting "possessed," according to a witness. Two hours later, he had stopped breathing.
The Grand Forks, North Dakota teenager's fatal overdose has been blamed on a drug called 2C-I. The night before Stai's overdose, another area teen, Christian Bjerk, 18, was found face down on a sidewalk. His death was also linked to the drug.
2C-I--known by its eerie street name "Smiles"--has become a serious problem in the Grand Forks area, according to local police. Overdoses of the drug have also been reported in Indiana and Minnesota. But if the internet is any indication, Smiles is on the rise all over the country.
"At the moment I am completely and fully submerged, if you can't tell by my eyes, in a psychedelic world known as 2C-I," says a man who appears to be in his late teens or early 20s on a YouTube video posted back in October. His pupils are dilated. He struggles to formulate a description of what he's feeling-it's hard to tell if it’s because his experience is profound or if his speech skills are simply blunted. He's one of dozens of users providing Youtube "reports" of their experiences on the synthetic drug.
Smile's effects have been called a combination of MDMA and LSD, only far more potent.
Users have reported a speedy charge along with intense visual and aural hallucinations that can last anywhere from hours to days.
"At first I'd think something was extremely beautiful and then it looks really strange," another user says in a recorded online account. "I looked at my girlfriend's face for a minute and it was pitch black…the black started dripping out of her eye."
Because the drug is relatively new--it first surfaced around 2003 in European party scenes and only recently made its way to the states--the most readily accessible information about 2C-I comes from user accounts, many of which detail frightening experiences.
On an internet forum one user describes the high as a "roller coaster ride through hell," while another warns "do not drive on this drug," after recounting his own failed attempt on the roadway.
Over the past few years, synthetic drugs like K-2, Spice and Bath Salts, have become increasing popular with teenagers and young adults. Their ingredients are relatively easy to obtain and order online and until recently, they weren't classified as illegal substances. But as they come under legal scrutiny, one by one, they've triggered a domino effect of newer, altered, and more potent versions.
"I think [the drugs] just keep changing to try to circumvent the law," Lindsay Wold, a detective with the Grand Forks police department, told Yahoo Shine. "Anytime we try to figure something out, it changes." Since July, her department has launched an awareness campaign in an effort to crack down on 2C-I's growing popularity with teens and young adults in the area. While reports of overdoses have spiked, Wold says it's difficult to measure it's growth in numbers.
http://shine.yahoo.com/video/channel-4226713/bath-salts-causing-excited-delirium-29514589.html
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