A heartbroken Colorado father whose son ended his life with a cheap, readily available online substance delivered to their home in an inconspicuous package is now leading the charge to get the substance banned nationwide in high, concentrated dosages.
Bruce Brown said that in November 2022, when a UPS package containing an odorless, yellowish-white powder arrived for his 17-year-old son Bennett, he believed it was a workout supplement for the competitive soccer player, USA Today reported.
Still curious about the powder’s exact purpose, the Colorado lawyer texted his son that evening to find out. Sadly, however, Bennett would never answer.
The 17-year-old had ordered sodium nitrite, a chemical compound mainly used for food preservation that can be fatal for humans in high concentrations.
Bennett would ingest the powder the day after it arrived but soon after regretted taking it, reaching out to his family that he needed to go to the hospital “immediately.”
Unfortunately, it was too late, and the teen died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.
“My son did not want to die,” Brown told the outlet. “After he took this poison, he went to a family member and said, ‘I need help.’ That’s really common for people who commit suicide.”
The grieving father said his son suffered from long-term COVID, which not only affected him physically, causing the teen to have severe lung problems — leaving him up all night and mostly housebound — but also took a massive toll on his mental health.
Matters only worsened when Bennett lost consciousness, fell, and suffered a concussion, his father said.
He was forced to drop out of Arizona State University, where he was an English major, which further affected his mental health, according to CBS News.
“A symptom of concussion is suicide. I did not know that. Nobody ever told me that,” Brown told USA Today.
“I think that just exacerbated the preexisting sadness that he was feeling.”
Brown later discovered his son had been part of a depraved online forum where people encourage others to commit suicide, where he believes he learned about sodium nitrite.
His son is among a growing number of people who have used the chemical compound to end their lives. If ingested, the powder can cause methemoglobinemia, which prevents red blood cells from carrying oxygen to the body’s tissues, according to the National Library of Medicine.
The lethal dose of sodium nitrite is between 0.7 and 6 g. and acts so quickly that the antidote often can’t help or is unavailable in time.
Sodium nitrite-related suicides have increased in recent years, according to a study published in June by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The study attributes this rise partly to online forums — like the one used by Bennett — which openly discuss how to commit suicide.
“At least 768 suicides involving antidotes and chelating agents (including sodium nitrite) occurred between 2018 and July 2023, set in the context of 268,972 total suicides during that period,” the study found.
The uptick in sodium nitrite-related suicides was found to be “influenced” by “online forums and means accessibility, such as internet purchase availability.”
Bennett’s grief-stricken father is now out to change how accessible the product is to obtain.
“They shipped it in two days to him, and it sold for the price of about $13,” Brown told USA Today.
“That was the price of my son’s life.”
With little opposition, Brown has since championed a bill in July that limits the sale of the compound in high concentrations in Colorado and would require manufacturers to specify on the label that it’s a poison and how to reverse it.
“After grief-filled months, I wondered, ‘What if we could prevent this grief-filled suffering for other families?’ he told a panel of state lawmakers in January, according to Colorado Public Radio.
The Centennial State is now the third in the nation to limit the sale of sodium nitrite.
New York banned the sale of the substance to anyone under 21, and California banned the sale of the concentrated substance to anyone under 18.
Brown is now advocating for the Youth Poisoning Protection Act, according to USA Today.
The bill would ban sales of sodium nitrite in high concentrations nationwide.
The heartbroken father hopes that doing so will spare other families the tremendous grief he now lives, adding there’s “nothing worse” than losing a child.
“The grief is immense. It’s never-ending. There’s not an hour that goes by where my mind doesn’t go to Bennett,” Brown said.
“He was a great kid. He was funny. He was athletic when healthy. He was well-liked. The irony is he never would’ve hurt another person or animal, but yet he took his own life.”
The bill passed the US House of Representatives in May and is now with the Senate.
If you or someone you know is affected by any of the issues raised in this story, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255) or text Crisis Text Line at 741741.
