Three Santa Paulans overdose on jimson weed

August 15, 2003
Santa Paula Police Department

Three Santa Paulans are lucky to be alive after drinking a tea made from what they believed to be a natural hallucinogenic, the flowers of datura inoxia, also known as jimson weed, which caused all three to be hospitalized on Tuesday, according to a SPPD spokesman.

By Peggy KellySanta Paula TimesThree Santa Paulans are lucky to be alive after drinking a tea made from what they believed to be a natural hallucinogenic, the flowers of datura inoxia, also known as jimson weed, which caused all three to be hospitalized on Tuesday, according to a SPPD spokesman.Commander Mark Trimble said city personnel were already chopping down jimson weeds, which sport a trumpet shaped white flower, near Santa Paula Cemetery in an effort to avoid any further overdoses that left two people in critical care units of local hospitals.Santa Paula police were called to a residence in the 1200 block of East Ventura Street Tuesday at about 8:30 p.m. where they found an 18-year-old male “acting violently, kicking at things that weren’t there; he appeared to be having a seizure and was bright red, like a lobster,” said Cmdr. Trimble.Officers summoned Santa Paula Fire Department EMTs and an ambulance whose personnel discovered that the youth’s temperature was over 104 degrees.As the youth was being transported by ambulance - he had to be restrained with leather straps to the gurney - to Santa Paula Memorial Hospital, a neighbor approached the officers and said her 18-year-old female and 16-year-old male relatives were acting strangely.Officers found the 16-year-old boy in an upstairs bedroom where he was conscious but unresponsive, hot to the touch, had bright red skin and “appeared to be reaching for unseen objects in the air. . .”Officers called for a second ambulance and then a third when the boy’s 18-year-old sister, who told officers they had brewed flowers she called “Hell’s Bells” into a tea mixed with Kool Aid, became disjointed during the interview.
She was also transported to SPMH and her brother taken to Ventura County Medical Center.Officers also questioned a 14-year-old neighbor who said someone had given him the flowers that were used for the toxic brew.The incident is just the latest in a series of similar medical calls within the last six months, according to a SPPD firefighter.Cmdr. Trimble said that all three were expected to be released from the hospital in a matter of days.Some people grow jimson weed as a decorative plant, he noted, but “somehow, someway, kids found that if it is boiled it has a hallucinogenic property like peyote. . .and it grows wild all over the state.”There is a “real possibility using this can be fatal, mostly through the type of overdose associated with LSD with a very high body temperature and can kill you or cause brain damage. I really hope this serves as a wake up call to kids and their parents to talk about the dangers of these kinds of things. There is no way to measure the effects of this, how much of a high and how many toxins will enter your system. These three kids were lucky. . .I could be talking to you about three fatalities.”



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