-From the Post Gazette, March 21, 2005...
"Kids' abuse of over-the-counter cold medicine on the rise
By Alana Semuels
Sharon Smith found the empty packets of cold medicine and bottles of cough syrup in her son's room, but he told her the medications made him feel intelligent and invincible, just as he had learned from the Internet.
It's just cold medicine, he rastionlized. How much harm could it do?
But, it did not take long for Smith's son to turn from a shy, easygoing teenager into what she calls 'a raving lunatic.' He would drink four bottles of cough syrup at a time , or swallow tablets of Coricidin Cough and Cold, and become furiously angry and violent, breaking things in his house and punching the wall.
Since then, he's been in and out of the hospital, incarcerated twice, and plagued with mental health problems that doctors say might affect him for the rest of his life.
"You can take a sweet, loving child and they become something that you are afraid of..."
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