There’s a figure who may greet you during an intense Benadryl trip.
Faceless, shrouded in black with red eyes and a top hat, it ominously lurks in the corner. The Benadryl Hat Man is a shared and recurring hallucination that people report witnessing when taking dozens of the antihistamine at a time. The figure, depicted in Halloween costumes, POV-Benadryl trip memes, and Walmart graphic tees, has become the symbol for a new drug trend that sees young people deliberately taking large doses of the drug, not to ward off allergies, but to get high.
John, a 21-year-old college student who used to trip on Benadryl, never saw the Hat Man. Yet, he says, “I could see how that could happen. It’s [Benadryl] digging in the depths of your brain to find whatever’s making you scared. So, if you’re scared of the Hat Man, I’m sure you’re going to see the Hat Man.” This searching for the unpleasant to reveal itself, while sounding horrible, is, in fact, the purpose of recreational Benadryl use. (John does not want his real name used due to fear of friends finding out.)
When used in high doses, diphenhydramine, an ingredient in Benadryl, functions as a deliriant, a hallucinogenic class of drugs, which appear to be becoming increasingly popular among young people for nonmedical purposes. Unlike psychedelics or other hallucinogens, there’s no real potential for a good trip on a deliriant. According to the people I spoke to, every trip is bad, every trip is brutal, and that’s the point.
In 2020, the “Benadryl challenge” gained traction on TikTok, daring participants to take doses of at least 12 Benadryl pills for an intense trip. The trend, which resurfaces every few years, drew attention to the psychoactive effects of deliriants. “I saw a video about it on TikTok once, so I knew it could be used recreationally,” one user tells me.
With little to no harm reduction information readily available about high levels of consumption, problems began to rise. In May 2020, three Texas teens were treated for Benadryl overdoses in just a week, one of whom was just 14 years old and took 14 pills. The 14-year-old recovered and returned home the next day. In August 2020, a 15-year-old died from a seizure after overdosing on the drug in Oklahoma. In September 2020, the FDA issued a warning for parents to hide and lock up their Benadryl supply, warning of the potential risk of heart problems, seizures, and, less commonly, comas and even death. Despite the warning, the trend seems to have persisted. In 2020, there were 4,618 cases reported to US Poison Centers for Benadryl usage; that number climbed to 5,960 in 2023, according to a study published in Pediatrics Open Science in August. Benadryl and deliriants in general have embedded themselves as staples on the fringes of the American youth—a cheap and easy way to get fucked up. WIRED reached out to Benadryl manufacturer Kenvue for comment. A spokesperson for the company stated, “This behavior is extremely concerning and dangerous,” and encouraged consumers to “carefully read and follow the instructions on the label and contact their health care professional should they have questions.”
John started taking Benadryl recreationally in November 2024, when he was 20, after using it to sleep and then hearing about the potential to trip online. He was depressed at the time and would take 12 pills for a big trip, multiple times a day, with each trip lasting four to six hours. Instead of the Hat Man, John saw eyelash mites, small bugs that form in clusters at the base of your eyelashes, alongside “shadows that would dart across your peripheral.” The trips were also tactile; John would see and feel spiders all over his body, describing feeling a “foreboding tingling.”
The users I spoke to described a range of unpleasant symptoms including a dramatic increase in heart rate, nausea, breathlessness, dry mouth, and severe memory loss. That’s just if the trip goes “well.” But the fun doesn’t stop there. Ryan Marino, a toxicologist and assistant professor at Case Western Reserve University’s School of Medicine, says, “Use of these central anticholinergics does cause amnesia (and impair memory formation) and so may certainly make people feel like they are developing dementia or having cognitive issues.” John felt his neurocognitive function decaying firsthand, having had to drop his college chemistry class when he was taking Benadryl.
Online deliriant communities on Discord and Reddit are filled with users posting trip reports and flexing their highest dosages, sometimes rising to 25 pills per trip.
For John, taking high doses of Benadryl was a form of self-harm and a way to “escape.” “You could be going through the worst thing ever, and it just doesn’t matter,” he says, “because in the moment you’re like, I’m seeing spiders, that’s what matters. I’m so scared of the spiders.”
This escape is sometimes reached with brutal numbness, a complete dulling of the mind. Tom, a 27-year-old user from Europe, explains that once the novelty of the terrifying visuals wears off, users can become used to them, and then they feel nothing. “If someone is depressed and they do psychedelics, their feelings will become more intense, whereas deliriants do the opposite,” says Tom, who didn’t want to use his real name for professional reasons. “They numb all the emotions.”
Deliriants are somewhat of a chemical mystery, Marino says. Drugs like LSD and psilocybin produce “psychedelic effects and particularly hallucinations through your serotonin system,” he explains. “Benadryl does not induce hallucinations that way.” What causes disturbing visions like the Hat Man, beyond a lack of mediation through serotonin, is unknown. “The direct reason for those visuals, I don’t think, is understood really at all,” Marino says.
Benadryl, Marino says, “is not considered addictive in the technical sense. However, the associated behaviors or ways people use them could lead to addiction.” These associated behaviors refer back to the search for escape, Marino explains. “If they are being used to escape reality, people can find themselves using increasing doses or with increasing frequency.”
While Benadryl appears to be the most popular deliriant among youths, the plant datura is another popular one. “Datura is really interesting because the plant grows pretty ubiquitously in Europe and North America,” Marino explains. To trip, “people will consume the seeds, either making them into a tea or just eating them,” he says.
Tom, who’s experienced with both, tells me there are almost no distinguishing qualities between the two trips. However, datura has a different “allure” because it was used by Indigenous people in America in rites-of-passage rituals and rain dance ceremonies. It was also used to practice ancient witchcraft in medieval Europe, with ointments applied to the skin that created hallucinations of flying.
“So it is more of a spiritual drug compared to Benadryl,” says Tom.
Part of the appeal of Benadryl is its accessibility and affordability. Some users refer to it as the “poverty drug” because of its low cost. “I can go down to my one corner store in my town and I can buy 100 capsules of Benadryl for, like, three bucks. You can’t get beer for that,” John says. “It’s not something you do if you have the means to do something else.”
In some ways, high-dose Benadryl consumption seems to be a confluence of subcultures and issues facing Gen Z in modern America. A drug trend popularized on TikTok, but fueled by the desire for escape in a generation plagued by mental health issues. Yet, faced with too great financial instability to even lurch to the escapes of old—like booze and cannabis—some just pop 15 Benadryl pills for a few bucks and meet the Hat Man.
After nearly a year of using and a couple of relapses, John is now sober from Benadryl.
He seems deeply regretful of his time with deliriants and thankful for the loved ones around him who helped kick the habit. Since quitting, he’s had more time to focus on his hobbies of drawing and playing guitar, and continue his college degree. “I can’t ever do that bullshit again,” he says.
“You have to be in a place where you can’t get anything else, and you don’t want to do anything else,” he says. “You have to be pretty far gone to be abusing Benadryl.”
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