Is The Tide Pod “The New Suicide Pill" for Teens? Tide Pod Challenge Health Warning Ironically Leads to Suicide By Tide Pod Among Teens

Is The Tide Pod “The New Suicide Pill" for Teens?

By Robert W. Armijo

Shortly after parents around the country realized that their teen aged children were videotaping themselves putting the colorful cleaning chemical balls into their mouths (a practice commonly known as the Tide Pod Challenge) and then popping them like a zit (posting the footage to the web), mainstream media put various medical experts on camera to denounce the behavior as reckless, foolish and potentially life-threatening.

Now, as a result of that health warning, the rate of suicide by Tide pods among teens went from absolute zero to now becoming the preferred method of doing oneself in.

Further complicating the matter, as reported by suicide prevention hotlines around the nation, is the number callers who used a Tide pod to end their life, but changed their mind, is their inability to speak shortly after ingesting the lethal sphere and making a call to a suicide prevention hotline.

“We know it’s an attempted suicide by a Tide pod because the caller just chokes and gags on the other end of the phone,” said one volunteer operator.  “That and the sound of soap bubbles popping in the  background.”

All suicide prevention centers have been instructed to redirect the self-endangered callers to another outside agency for help.   

“It’s all we can do for them,” the operator continued. “After all, we are a suicide prevention center, not the  poison control center.”


Photo(s) Courtesy of: By Soulbust (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons


Copyright© 2018 by Robert W. Armijo. All rights reserved.

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