A grieving father has spoken of the despair he felt after learning the truth about a $13 drug purchase his teenage son made online.
Bruce Brown said the odorless, yellow-white powder was delivered in a standard UPS package to his Colorado home in late November 2022 and was addressed to his 17-year-old son, Bennett, a competitive soccer player.
He assumed it was just an exercise supplement and texted his son that night to ask what it was, but never heard back. According to USA Today.
In reality, the substance was sodium nitrite, a dangerous chemical that has become an increasingly popular method of suicide among young people, which is exactly what Bennett did the following day.
“They shipped it to him in two days and sold it for about $13,” Bruce recalled. “That was the price of my son’s life.”
Bennett Brown, 17, ordered sodium nitrite online in November 2022 and used it to commit suicide.
His father, Bruce Brown, is now fighting to regulate the preservative, which can be deadly in high concentrations.
Bruce, a former district attorney, explained that her son’s mental health began to deteriorate during the COVID-19 pandemic because he was no longer able to attend school in person and became isolated from his peers.
He also began suffering from long COVID-19, having trouble breathing, unable to sleep at night and finding it painful to leave the house.
To make matters worse, Bennett fell and suffered a concussion, forcing him to drop out of Arizona State University, where he was majoring in English, Bruce said. According to CBS News.
a 2018 Survey Concussions and mild traumatic brain injuries have been associated with an increased risk of suicide.
“One of the symptoms of a concussion is suicide. I didn’t know that. No one ever told me that,” Bruce said.
“I think it just exacerbated the grief he was already feeling.”
The teenager was a competitive soccer player, and when the substance first arrived at his home, Bruce thought it was just a sports supplement.
After his son’s death, Bruce learned that Bennett had visited online forums encouraging others to commit suicide.
It also reportedly details various ways in which this can be done.
Bruce now believes it was there that his son learned about sodium nitrite, a preservative used to preserve meat that can be deadly in high concentrations.
Ingesting the powder can cause methemoglobinemia, a condition in which “your blood loses its ability to carry oxygen,” says Dr. Sean McCann of the University of Illinois Hospital at Chicago.
He noted that while it can be neutralised with methylene blue, sodium nitrite acts so quickly that antidotes are often ineffective or too late.
In recent years, sodium nitrite-related suicides have been on the rise among young people due to its easy availability at major retailers.
In recent years, there has been an increase in sodium nitrite-related suicides. According to a study published in June by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The agency believes the increase is due to forums used by Bennett, such as online forums where sodium nitrite is frequently discussed.
Another A study published in January Suicide by sodium nitrite was found to be “an increasingly planned method of suicide among young people,” and the average victim was “a white, male college student suffering from depression and a history of suicidal thoughts.”
The substance is readily available for purchase at major retailers, and according to USA Today, the parents of two teenagers who committed suicide using the drug previously sued Amazon after their children purchased the compound through the company’s website.
Amazon has implemented policies to restrict the sale of highly concentrated substances by October 2022, and a judge dismissed the lawsuit in June.
The boy (pictured with his mother) died on the way to hospital after notifying family.
In Bennett’s case, the boy was able to buy 97 percent pure sodium nitrite for $13.99 from an out-of-state sporting goods store with delivery within two days. Colorado Public Radio reported.
He apparently had second thoughts about suicide and canceled the order, but the store’s website eventually prompted him to buy the item.
The boy then ingested a toxic substance, but apparently became suspicious again and contacted a relative who said he needed to go to hospital immediately.
Paramedics rushed to his suburban home and took him to a local hospital, but he died in the ambulance.
After the boy’s death, Bruce sent a private investigator to the store where Bennett bought the drugs, and the manager admitted he knew people were using the drug to commit suicide.
“My son didn’t want to die,” Bruce said. “After he took the poison he went to his family and said, ‘Please help me.’ That’s typical of people who commit suicide.”
“This was not a well-thought-out act. It was an impulsive act,” continued the former district attorney who has since fought to regulate the poison.
“So if we can use means restriction to disrupt the thought patterns that lead people to dark places, we can save a lot of lives. That’s the goal.”
Bennett’s mental state began to deteriorate during the COVID pandemic, when he was isolated from friends, his father said.
Bruce is pushing a bill to restrict the sale of highly concentrated compounds in Colorado and would require manufacturers to state on the label that they are poisonous and how to make them toxic.
“After a few months of grief, I thought to myself, ‘What if I could prevent other families from having to go through this grief?'” he told state lawmakers in January, according to Colorado Public Radio.
The bill passed with little opposition in Colorado and went into effect in July.
At the time, the Centennial State became the third state in the nation to impose restrictions on sodium nitrite, after New York banned the sale of sodium nitrite to anyone under the age of 21 and California banned sales to anyone under 18 and the sale of concentrated substances altogether.
Bruce described his son as funny, athletic and well-liked.
Bruce is also currently advocating for the creation of a youth poisoning prevention law that would ban the sale of high-concentration sodium nitrite nationwide.
The bill passed the House in May and is currently before the Senate.
“There’s nothing more painful than losing a child,” said the still-grieving father. “Not an hour goes by that I don’t think about Bennett.”
“He was a great kid. A funny kid. When he was healthy, he was athletic and well-liked.”
“The irony is that he never intended to harm anyone or any animal, yet he took his own life.”
If you are in crisis, please call, text or chat to the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988 or contact the Crisis Text Line at 741741.
