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.”
