"Faceless, shrouded in black with red eyes and a top hat, it ominously lurks in the corner. The Benadryl Hat Man is a shared and recurring hallucination that people report witnessing when taking dozens of the antihistamine at a time. The figure, depicted in Halloween costumes, POV-Benadryl trip memes, and Walmart graphic tees, has become the symbol for a new drug trend that sees young people deliberately taking large doses of the drug, not to ward off allergies, but to get high."
"John, a 21-year-old college student who used to trip on Benadryl, never saw the Hat Man. Yet, he says, "I could see how that could happen. It's [Benadryl] digging in the depths of your brain to find whatever's making you scared. So, if you're scared of the Hat Man, I'm sure you're going to see the Hat Man." This searching for the unpleasant to reveal itself, while sounding horrible, is, in fact, the purpose of recreational Benadryl use."
High-dose diphenhydramine (Benadryl) acts as a deliriant that produces intense, often terrifying hallucinations with no potential for a pleasant trip. A recurring hallucination called the Benadryl Hat Man—a faceless figure in black with red eyes and a top hat—has become a common symbol associated with these experiences. The phenomenon appears in memes, costumes, and merchandise as a marker of a youth drug trend in which people purposely ingest dozens of pills to get high. The 2020 "Benadryl challenge" on TikTok encouraged ingestion of at least 12 pills and brought renewed attention to the practice.
Read at WIRED
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]