Hitting the bottle

Local teens getting high on cough syrup

Lodi students are getting high with an old drug that's found a new popularity — cough syrup.

An uptick in overdoses in the last couple of months concerned a Lodi firefighter enough to send an e-mail about it to other firefighters, as well as Lodi police.

The e-mail, sent by a firefighter who was off duty Tuesday and unavailable for comment, says that medical and fire crews have seen an increasing number of teenage overdose calls in the last couple months.

Sometimes the teens are unconscious, and some appear to be having seizures. Most were vomiting with high temperatures, requiring ambulance rides to the hospital, with lights and sirens.

When consumed in large amounts, or mixed with alcohol and other medications, the active ingredients in cough syrup make a kind of high, with hallucinations included.

"It's like getting faded," said Lodi High School sophomore Ben Roget, using modern lingo to describe getting drunk or high.

Added fellow sophomore Ryan Ono, "It's sizzurp," who clarified that it's a reference to a popular rap song about mixing cough syrup with either vodka or soda, then adding one Jolly Rancher hard candy for flavor.

He and other students sitting in the shade Tuesday at lunch didn't say they've drank cough syrup, but they know plenty of teens who do. Some go drink it in the parking lot on lunch break, Roget added.

In the past three years, Lodi High Assistant Principal Heidi Reyes has issued five suspensions to students caught drinking cough syrup on campus — two of them to the same student. At Tokay High School, Assistant Principal Deanna Morrell said no students have been suspended for the violation.

Asked Tuesday, teens didn't know of any friends who had suffered medical troubles after drinking cough syrup, except for one student who slept through an entire class after lunch. But sophomore Erik Anenson, 16, had heard that too much medicine could damage the kidneys.

One of the main ingredients in cough syrup is Dextromethorphan, often called DXM or DM for short. It's also used in antihistamines and decongestants — like Nyquil or Robitussin that are available in many drug and grocery stores.

Overdoses of DM can lead to vomiting, breathing troubles, hallucinating, seizure and even a coma, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

Though teens have heard a bit about the risks, that doesn't necessarily stop them. Based on just what they've heard, the teens said their peers who do drink syrup pay more attention to things like avoiding sleep-inducing cough syrup, or "the p.m. kind," as Roget put it.

"The kind makes a difference, too," he said. "The Target brand's not as good as the Nyquil brand."

But Kirven Philips Jr., a 17-year-old junior, disagreed, saying that cough syrup purchased at the 99 Cent Store is just as good.

If students are caught on campus with cough medicine, they are subject to a five-day suspension, Reyes said. She suspended one student twice for the same violation, and that ultimately served as a wake-up call for the student and family.

In many cases, taking any kind of drug to change the mental state means that there's something wrong at home, Reyes said.

Putting the blame on cough syrup makers, or getting stores to lock up the medicine, probably won't do much good because there's always a new way to get high.

"It's been going on for decades and decades," Lodi High Principal Bill Atterberry said. "We're back to sniffing glue — it's a cheap high."

Contact reporter Layla Bohm at layla@lodinews.com.