A Colorado father has shared the despair he felt after learning the truth about a $13 substance his teenage son bought, that he thought was just an athletic supplement.
Bruce Brown said the odorless, yellowish-white powder was delivered in a standard UPS package to his Evergreen home in late November 2022, and was addressed to his 17-year-old son, Bennett, a competitive soccer player.
He thought it was just an athletic supplement, and texted his son that night asking what it was – but never received an answer, according to USA Today.
In reality, the substance was sodium nitrite – a hazardous chemical that is becoming increasingly popular amongst youths to end their own lives, which Bennett did the very next day.
‘They shipped it in two days to him and it sold for the price of about $13,’ Bruce recounted. ‘That was the cost of my son’s life.’
Bruce, a former district attorney, explained that his son’s mental health started suffering during the COVID pandemic, when he could no longer attend school in-person and became isolated from his peers.
He also started to suffer from long COVID, and had difficulty breathing that would keep him up at night and made it uncomfortable to leave the house.
Making matters worse, Bruce said, Bennett fell and suffered a concussion that forced him to drop out of Arizona State University, where he was an English major, according to CBS News.
A 2018 study found an association between concussions and mild traumatic brain injuries with an increased risk of suicide.
‘A symptom of concussion is suicide. I did not know that. Nobody ever told me that,’ Bruce said.
‘I think that just exacerbated the preexisting sadness that he was feeling.’
After his son’s death, Bruce learned that Bennett had visited an online forum where people encourage others to end their lives.
It also reportedly details various methods to do so.
Bruce now believes that is where his son learned about sodium nitrite – a preservative meant for curing meats that is fatal in high concentrations.
When ingested, the powder can cause methemoglobinemia – a condition ‘in which the blood is stripped of its ability to carry oxygen.’ Dr. Sean McCann, of the University of Illinois Hospital in Chicago, said in a press release.
He noted that it can be counteracted with methylene blue, but sodium nitrite acts so quickly that the antidote often can’t help or is not available in time.
Sodium nitrite-related suicides have increased in recent years, according to a study published in June from the Centers for Disease Control. The agency attributes its rise to online forums like the one Bennett used, where sodium nitrite is often discussed.
Another study published in January found sodium nitrite self-poisoning to be ‘an increasingly used planned suicide method among young people,’ with the average victim ‘a white male student with a known depressive disorder and a history of suicidal thoughts.’
The substance is easily available for purchase from major retailers, with the parents of two teenagers who died by suicide using the drug previously suing Amazon because their children purchased the compound through the website, according to USA Today.
By October 2022, Amazon instituted a policy limiting the sale of high concentrations of the substance, and this past June, a judge dismissed the lawsuit.
In Bennett’s case, the teenager was able to buy sodium nitrite with 97 percent purity for $13.99 with two-day shipping from an out-of-state sporting goods store, Colorado Public Radio reports.
He was apparently having second thoughts on taking his own life, canceling the order – only for the store’s website to prompt him to buy it anyway.
The teen then ingested the toxic substance, but was apparently again having doubts – reaching out to a relative and saying he needed to go to a hospital immediately.
Paramedics then rushed to his suburban house and transported him to a local hospital but died in the ambulance.
Following the teen’s death, Bruce sent a private investigator to the store Bennett bought the substance from, where a manager acknowledged that he knew people were using the product for suicide.
‘My son did not want to die,’ Bruce insisted. ‘After he took this poison, he went to a family member and said, “I need help.” That’s really common for people who commit suicide.
‘It is not a well-thought-out act. It is an impetuous act,’ the former district attorney, who has since fought for restrictions on the poison, continued.
‘So if we can employ means restriction in order to interrupt that thought pattern which leads people to the dark place, we can save a lot of lives. And that’s the goal.’
Bruce has championed a bill limiting the sale of the compound in high concentrations in Colorado and would require manufacturers to specify on the label that it’s a poison and how to reverse it.
‘After grief-filled months, I wondered, “What if we could prevent this grief-filled suffering for other families?’ he told a panel of state lawmakers in January, according to Colorado Public Radio.
The bill passed in Colorado with little opposition, and took effect in July.
At that point, the Centennial State became just the third in the country to put limits on sodium nitrite, after New York banned the sale of the substance to anyone under 21 and California banned the sale to anyone under the age of 18, as well as the sale of the concentrated substance in all cases.
Bruce is now also advocating for the Youth Poisoning Protection Act, which would ban the sale of sodium nitrite in high concentrations nationwide.
It passed the House of Representatives in May and is now in the Senate.
‘You lose a child, there’s nothing worse,’ the still-grieving father said. ‘There’s not an hour that goes by where my mind doesn’t go to Bennett.
‘He was a great kid. He was funny. He was athletic when healthy. He was well-liked.
‘The irony is he never would’ve hurt another person or animal, but yet he took his own life.’