Teenagers in Victoria looking for an easy, legal high, have started downing cough medicine, with at least five overdosing in the past two weeks, according to the Vancouver Island Health Authority.
Workers at Victoria's Specialized Youth Detox centre are getting daily calls from parents, relatives and teachers as 14- to 18-year-olds swallow products containing dextromethorphan (DM or DXM).
"This is such a new thing for us," said Raegan Scott-Haspect, co-ordinator at the youth detox centre where teenagers trying to break addictions from crack cocaine, alcohol and marijuana are the norm.
Only two weeks ago, Grade 9 student Sarah Hackett started the Facebook group "DXM Is Not Cool!" after her friends began popping up to two dozen pills at a time.
"A lot of my friends started doing it. I couldn't count, there's so many," said Sarah, 14. "Since this drug started, it's ruining lives."
Sarah's friends tell her big doses of cough medicine make them feel drunk and giggly. Those who chug-a-lug cough syrup are "robo-tripping" or "robo-dosing" while those who those who take the pills say they're "skittling" because the pills resemble the fruit candy.
Lynn Mason said her granddaughter and a female overdosed two weeks ago after taking tablets of Coricidin.
After her release from hospital and a three-day stay at home, the 14-year-old entered a detox program but on Monday ran away, Ms. Mason said.
"Right now we're all pretty scared," Ms. Mason said. "This is not something parents or grandparents want to go through."
Cough medicines containing DXM can be sold only at pharmacies. The drugs cost about $8 for 20 tablets or $10 for a bottle of cough syrup,
Ms. Mason has been lobbying for medicines containing DXM to be restricted to sale by prescription, or at least moving them behind the pharmacist's counter.
The province's College of Pharmacists has responded by identifying the area in Victoria where the drugs are being bought. Letters will be sent to the designated pharmacies asking them to put DXM medicines behind the counter, said college registrar Marshall Moleschi.
But those looking to get hammered may not be so easily thwarted.
"It's amazing how many kids sit and research what they can use legally. They want to get a safe high," Ms. Scott-Haspect said.
DXM has been used cough medicines since the 1970s. Chemically similar to morphine, it works well as a cough suppressant in recommended doses. At high doses it becomes a central nervous depressant, similar to ketamine, an animal tranquillizer or PCP (phencyclidine), both used to get high.
Side effects include dizziness, hallucinations, vomiting, irregular heartbeat and a body rash, A dissociative anesthetic, in high doses DXM causes slowed breathing, brain or liver damage, stroke or death.