Remember how mephedrone became so legal and ubiquitous that eight-year-olds started having it confiscated off of them at school? Well, the neknomination fad has travelled so far and wide that it's begun to trickle down the age-ladder too, resulting in a nine-year-old being hospitalised after downing a cocktail of vodka, whiskey and orange juice procured from a friend's house.
In today's WTF News, Rhiannon Scully, from County Durham, was taken to hospital to have her stomach pumped after being found with her 'eyes rolling into the back of her head' after drinking the concoction, inspired to do so by Facebook contacts. 'When I saw her I was raging, I was upset and angry. I was also scared because we didn't know what would happen at this point,' her mother Michelle has said*. *'I saw her in her uniform with two other friends. I ran to her, she was falling over and she didn't know where she was. She could have been run over, she was riding her scooter at the time.'
Michelle explained that she only found out - from her daughter - that her drunken state was down to the craze, which has so far killed three people, when they were in the ambulance: 'We found out in the ambulance that it was a neknomination. Rhiannon said "them stupid neknominations".'
She added: 'I wouldn't like to see this happen to any other child and I wouldn't wish the feeling I felt as a parent on my worst enemy. 'They need to teach children in schools the dangers of alcohol.'
The neknominate craze, which originated in Australia, sees people drink strange mixtures or extreme quantities of alcohol as a dare, film it, upload it to Facebook and then nominate someone else to do the same. We interviewed one young woman about her experience of it when the phase first started. Before it got this dark.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.