TEENS RECOVER FROM POTENT JIMSON WEED COCKTAIL

Three Boys Remain Hospitalized After Drinking Mixture That Included Plant
Whose Seeds Can Cause Hallucinations, Convulsions.

RANCHO CUCAMONGA -- A 15-year-old boy was released from the hospital
Friday, but three of his friends remained under medical supervision,
two days after they stirred orange juice, bananas and jimson weed into
a hallucinogenic brew and gulped it down.

"He became totally incoherent, then he became violent and began
hitting people," said the uncle of the boy released Friday. "He was
laughing and talking to himself. He saw the overhead light in the
hospital and thought it was a TV. He just stared at it for hours,
watching TV."

Three of the boys went out to a field near their Rancho Cucamonga home
Wednesday afternoon and picked 16 jimson weed flowers, then took them
over to a friend's house and mixed them up in a blender, San
Bernardino County Sheriff's Det. Steve Wolff said. "This little
cocktail was going to make their day," Wolff said.

The orange juice and bananas were for flavor to mask the pungency of
the plant, also known as stink weed. They added ice "to make it kind
of a Slurpee," Wolff said.

A fourth friend wanted no part of it.

"He was the intelligent one," Wolff said.

The three boys drank it. Two of the boys went home and their parents
found them having hallucinations within an hour of drinking the
mixture. The third boy started hallucinating at the friend's house and
was dropped off at a nearby American Medical Response office.

Two of them ended up in San Antonio Community Hospital in Upland and
one was taken to Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Fontana.

The one boy's uncle, who asked not to be named, said four friends went
to visit his nephew Thursday, then went home and tried the mix. One of
those friends also ended up in the hospital, he said. Wolff said he
had not heard of a fourth victim, but San Antonio Community Hospital
officials said it had three patients, and Kaiser officials said it had
one.

Dr. Gerald D. Pallay, an attending physician in Kaiser's emergency
room, said jimson weed poisoning is relatively rare, with roughly six
to 12 cases in the Inland Empire every year.

A person who ingests the weed ends up "mad as a hatter, dry as a bone,
red as a beet and blind as a bat," Pallay said. The victim is
generally confused, dehydrated, flushed and has dilated pupils, he
said.

Patients are given intravenous fluids as doctors wait for the drug to
run its course. In severe cases, an antidote can be given.

Wolff said a fatal dose would be about 10 milligrams of atropine.
There are three to six milligrams in 50 to 100 seeds, Wolff said.
Though the entire plant is toxic, the seeds are the most potent part.

Pallay said that while symptoms can be severe, a fatal dose is
unlikely.

"I've never heard or seen anybody die from this," Pallay said. "But
theoretically it is possible."

Jimson weed has a long recorded history, Pallay said. Cleopatra used
it to seduce Julius Caesar. And Native Americans, who used it in some
rites of passage, gave the weed to English settlers at Jamestown, Va.,
which explains why it was originally known as Jamestown weed.

The plant grows wild in desert areas and can be recognized by its
white trumpet-shaped flower. The pods open up in the fall, when the
seeds have the highest concentration of atropine and scopolamine,
which affect the central nervous system.

The weed is not addictive. Emergency rooms tend not to see cases for
long stretches of time and then get a pocket of three or four kids
using it together.

Because of the Inland Empire's dry climate, jimson weed is much more
common here than in Los Angeles County, Pallay said.

The hallucination "is the only pleasant effect the kids are looking
for," Wolff said. After that, patients ride a roller coaster of
convulsions and dementia that can take days to completely wear off.
Results are entirely unpredictable.

"It's a crapshoot, for something that isn't going to be that
pleasant," Wolff said.

The two boys who remained at San Antonio Community Hospital on Friday
were listed in good condition. Kaiser declined to release the
condition of its patient because of his age.

The boy who was released was still "a little out of it" Friday, his
uncle said, and his mother was looking into taking him to a
psychiatrist.

"They think they found an inexpensive high, but eventually it's going
to kill somebody," the uncle said.

"It's not a drug, it's a poison."