Wyoming: Please Do Not Attempt This Viral TikTok Cooking Challenge

Every week there is a new viral trend on social media. The issue is, some of these can be dangerous.

This week, the new viral TikTok trend is the "Sleepy Chicken Challenge", which is marinating chicken in NyQuil or other over-the-counter (OTC), cough syrups and then cooking it.

According to an article by Forbes (and a now deleted TikTok video), one the effects of cooking the strange concoction over the store is becoming sleepy.

These sleepy chicken social media challenges aren't new, but have started going viral in the last few days. There have been TikTok videos showing the challenge as early as January of this year (2022), however, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is warning against participating in this challenge and other ones like it, due to safety concerns, which are not just harmful, but can potentially cause death.

In a recent video posted by the official FDA YouTube channel, they stated:

Social media trends and peer pressure can be a dangerous combination to your children and their friends, especially when involving misusing medicines. Nonprescription drugs are readily available in many homes, making these challenges even riskier. OTC drugs can pose significant risks if they’re misused or abused. Warn your children about the dangers of misusing medicines.

Check out the actual video below for more details.

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This wouldn't be the first potentially dangerous TikTok challenge to make waves this year. The FDA previous warned about an OTC allergy challenge stating:

An earlier TikTok challenge urged people to take large doses of the allergy medicine diphenhydramine (sold OTC in many products, including some under the brand name Benadryl) to try to induce hallucinations. Prompted by news reports of teenagers needing to go to the emergency room or, in some cases, dying after participating in this challenge and taking too much medication, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned the public about the danger of high doses of diphenhydramine.

In this social media age, that often targets our youth, in addition to monitoring what your children are consuming on a daily basis, also conversate with them about the dangers of over-the-counter medicines.