Choking game not much fun

Dan Frazell stopped by one afternoon last week as he was preparing for his new live call-in show on WVOM that aired Sunday night.

Dan is the city’s D.A.R.E. officer and has been for about 18 years, so one can expect that this new radio show, geared toward teens and their parents, will involve some discussions about drugs.

Yet his first show of the season did not involve discussions of heroin, marijuana or alcohol. Instead it focused on a dangerous trend that has left a path of dead children in its wake across the country.

It’s called the Choking Game or the Fainting Game or Knockout or Flatliner or Space Monkey or Pass Out. Since it involves cutting off oxygen to your brain until you pass out – briefly, one hopes -perhaps it should be called the Stunningly Stupid Game.

It has been around for decades, but today’s version has grown even more dangerous, with kids relying on other kids to put pressure on a major artery in order to block the flow of blood to the brain and then releasing it “just in time.” Many of the kids who have died took it one step further by playing the game alone.

A 12-year-old boy died after he choked himself with a plastic-coated bike lock. Another used the tie he wore when he made his first Communion.

The most common age of kids playing this “game” is between 9 and 14 years old.

One teenage girl who was in the studio with Dan described watching another local high school girl allow others to choke her at a party recently. She described the girl collapsing and then having a brief seizure before “coming back to life.”

New Hampshire Chief Medical Examiner Thomas Andrew wound up becoming an expert on the trend four years ago when an 11-year-old boy there died while playing the game.

Thomas says the kids playing this game are in search of a two-part high. The first comes from the light-headedness because of reduced blood flow to the brain, and the second high – the rush – occurs when the pressure is removed and a powerful surge of dammed-up blood is released through the carotid artery in the brain.

Sounds like a headache to me, but that’s because (thank God) I’m no longer 12.

There is no evidence that the game is rampant around these parts, but Dan’s been around long enough to know that if it’s happening elsewhere, it’s bound to happen here eventually.

“You simply can’t ignore anything anymore. We are not isolated up here in the Northeast. Technology has taken care of that. If it’s hot in L.A. today, we’ll be trying it tomorrow,” he said.

Because there have been no tragedies here yet, it may seem unnecessary to discuss the whole issue. Do a few searches on the Internet, though, and you will see just how much tragedy there is associated with this game that so many kids see as harmless and that is played at recess and at slumber parties.

“Parents need to add this to the list,” Dan cautioned this week. “Drugs, alcohol, violence, the Internet, it all needs to be talked about so they don’t learn it from a friend.”

Last weekend my daughter asked to walk to a local pizza parlor with friends after the middle school’s first “fun night” of the year. “Everybody” goes, you know. I allowed it, but found myself driving by to see dozens and dozens of loud, shouting kids spilling into the parking lot.

She got into the car and came home with me. Come to find out, neither one of us was real comfortable with the whole scene.

This week we talked about the choking game.

They say getting old isn’t for sissies. Neither is parenting.