Pass-out game

Rogg clawed at the rope as Erik hung, limp but still alive. When she could not undo the intricate slipknots, the single mother ran outside into the rain, screaming for help. But it was too late. Erik was brain dead, and at the hospital the following day, Rogg removed her only child from life support.

Hundreds of families have endured that same nightmare. In the U. More than 1, children and teens died from accidental hanging and strangulation from to , according to the CDC. And advocates fear the problem may be worsening. Without the safeguard of a fellow player, what was intended as a momentary high can easily turn fatal. The federal government no longer studies Choking Game deaths, so there is no recent national data on the problem the CDC declined to say why the deaths are not tracked.

Many coroners are not trained to identify it, so the deaths can often be misclassified as suicides, according to several coroners across the country. Many schools are reluctant to raise awareness about the dangers of the Choking Game, fearing the lesson could backfire, teaching students how to play the game instead.

Brain cells begin dying within minutes of blood and oxygen deprivation, and if the carotid arteries in the neck are compressed by a rope or a belt, it can lead to irreversible brain damage after five minutes, says Dr. Five states added questions about the Choking Game to their risk assessments between and , and the results showed many middle school students were familiar with it.

Levi Draher had already played the Choking Game three times when he slung a climbing rope across a bunk bed frame at his boarding school in Harlingen, Texas and leaned his neck into the rope on Oct. Draher, who was 15 at the time, had learned the game through friends, who were playing it too. Draher expected to roll over and fall off the rope once he passed out, but his body stayed put.

He says he was lying on the rope, unconscious and not breathing, for about 15 minutes before he was found. He had a heart attack and spent three days in a coma as his organs failed. Despite the odds, Draher emerged from the coma and recovered, though he suffers from short-term memory loss and has motor skills damage, including tremors in his hand. Draher urges anyone who will listen against playing the Choking Game. Fourteen-year-old Carson Steele used his cell phone to take videos of himself hanging by a belt inside his bedroom closet in Rock Hill, South Carolina in Carson died on June 18, His parents and twin brother found him hanging inside his bedroom closet with a belt wrapped tightly around his neck.

Carson, who had aspired to become a U. Marine, had been playing the Choking Game for at least two months and had recorded himself at least four times, his mother says.

In December , YouTube announced it would amp up efforts to stop the spread of potentially dangerous videos by hiring more people to scour its website and take down videos that threaten child safety, including Choking Game-related footage.

On Dec. A YouTube spokeswoman did not specify how many of the videos pulled were related to the Choking Game or provide more recent figures. Anti-Choking Game advocates say children also post how-to videos on other platforms, including Facebook and Snapchat. On Nov. Snapchat, an app that sets itself apart through the impermanence of its video and photo messages, did not comment.

On Aug. Pope sent her two youngest children, 4-year-old Jackson and 6-year-old Mollie, to fetch their brother and tell him to get ready for dinner. Garrett had taken the cloth belt off his school uniform, tied it around his neck and then hung the other end from the top of one of his bunk bed posts. He just had a smell to him.

I remember screaming a scream that had never come out of my mouth in my life. Pope cried as she loosened the belt, gave her son CPR and called Jackson and Mollie were sitting inside the room, watching. That is until the coroner investigated and determined it was the Choking Game.

The pass-out game is a deadly game that is played by a person crouching down to the ground with his head down, breathing deeply for about 30 seconds, then standing up very quickly. Do not play it. While teens and children who participate in the pass-out game do so because they hope to experience a momentary high, the lack of oxygen can have major adverse effects, including brain damage and death.

Though there are a few slightly different ways that the game is played, each method is designed to bring the same result — a high from asphyxiation. In some instances, children and teens play the pass-out game by choking one another or by using a rope.