South Carolina Newspaper the State Thursday July 12, 2001 Teen seeks thrill, almost finds death By CAROL J.G. WARD
and CHRISTINA LEE KNAUSS Staff Writers The
search for a cheap high ended in a life-threatening situation for a Sumter
teen-ager last week. Seventeen-year-old
Brittany Frye and two friends went looking for so-called magic mushrooms in a
cow pasture. What they found and ingested, however, was a toxic variety that
destroyed Frye's liver. She
underwent a liver transplant in Charleston last week. Her mother, Leisa,
donated part of her liver for the transplant, which took place at the Medical
University of South Carolina. Doctors at MUSC say it's thought to be the first
time a living donor has been used for a transplant necessitated by toxic
mushrooms. The
whole experience has been a frightening eye-opener for the girl and her father,
James Frye, 38. "I
just didn't know how this could happen -- how you could get liver failure and
be so close to death just from a mushroom," Frye said in an interview
Wednesday afternoon. The girl ingested a glass of tea made with a handful of
small mushrooms around 3 a.m. on July 2, said Dr. Kenneth Chavin, a liver
transplant surgeon at MUSC. By the morning, she was treated for gastroenteritis
at Tuomey Regional Medical Center in Sumter and released. Twenty-four
hours later, Frye was back at the hospital. The
surgery took all day Saturday. Doctors removed Brittany Frye's liver, which was
3-4 times its normal size, Chavin said. Leisa Frye's liver was divided, and the
right lobe was removed and transplanted. Three
days later Brittany Frye came out of a coma, and both mother and daughter are
recovering. If
there was anything lucky in this incident, it was that Brittany tried her
experiment when she did. "If
this had happened six months ago, she would be dead because we didn't have the
living donor program then," the doctor said. Frye
said the incident scared him, but he never felt angry at his daughter for her
experimentation. "There
are kids who, even if they have good sense, are going to experiment and try
things," Frye said. The
teen and her friends found the mushrooms growing in a cow pasture. The
teen-agers believed an urban legend that hallucinogenic mushrooms grow in cow
patties. In
fact, they turned out to be mushrooms from the amanita family, which contain
toxins that can cause liver damage, Chavin said. "Any
mushroom can grow in a cow patty," said Brooks Metts, director of the
Palmetto Poison Center. "Unfortunately,
this girl had to find that out the hard way." Experimenting
with hallucinogenic mushrooms can be like playing Russian roulette, Metts
added. "If
you get the chamber with the live bullet in it, at best you're going to get
very sick. At worst, you're not going to make it," he said. One
of Frye's friends suffered some liver damage, but it was not life-threatening.
The other apparently did not eat any of the toxic mushrooms, family members
said. According
to Chavin, Frye and her friends had experimented with hallucinogenic mushrooms
before with no ill effects. Magic
mushrooms produce effects similar to LSD, MDMA, Ecstasy or other club drugs,
said Kim Larick, public affairs director with The Behavioral Health Center of
the Midlands in Columbia. They can cause physical and mental relaxation,
fatigue, hallucinations or nausea, Larick said. Some
mushrooms are easy to identify; for others, it may take close examination of
the spore prints. Even relatively skilled mushroom hunters can make mistakes.
"For the novice, it's a crap shoot," he said."... All you need
is one to get into trouble." With
the amanita type of mushroom, even cooking won't destroy the toxin, Metts said.
Besides being dangerous, it's illegal to ingest hallucinogenic mushrooms.
"We tell people if you don't buy it at the Pig, don't eat it," he
said. Even
though Frye's experimentation with mushrooms led to a life-threatening
situation, Metts said teen-agers believe they're invincible. Sometimes it's
difficult to convince them that substances such as alcohol, tobacco or drugs can
harm them, he said. "Other than continuing to preach your case, I don't
know what parents can do," he said. |
Posted on Thursday, Nov. 18, 2004 Clemson student faces felonydrug charges CLEMSON, S.C. A Clemson University student faces felony drug charges after university police say they found marijuana and equipment to make other drugs in his dorm room. Linas Antanas Vaskys, 18, of Sykesville, Md., was arrested Thursday on charges of possession of marijuana and manufacture of controlled substances, Clemson officials said. University police say they found 28.1 grams of marijuana and equipment to grow psilocybin mushrooms, which can be used as a drug. Vaskys has been suspended from Clemson pending a university judicial hearing. Associated Press --http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/local/10216495.htm |
WYFF4.com Posted October 5th and updated on October 11, 2007. Greenville Teen Falls 5 Stories From USC Dorm COLUMBIA, S.C. A college student from Greenville was seriously injured in a five-story floor from his dorm room at the University of South Carolina early Friday morning. University officials said Taylor Cothran, an 18-year-old freshman, fell from his Capstone Hall room at about 2:30 a.m. They said that Cothran fell onto the first-floor roof. A campus spokesman said that a student on the second floor heard a noise and looked out and saw Cothran lying on the roof over the food court. Officials said Cothran was transported to Richland Memorial Hospital where he was admitted in critical condition. On Sunday, his condition was upgraded to fair. Cothran graduated from J.L. Mann High School last spring. He was a member of the high school lacrosse team. One of his high school friends, Daniel Cooper, spoke with WYFF News 4. "When you come back to visit people you graduated with and you hear one of your friends fell out of a dormitory building, it's kind of hard to believe. You're taken aback at first, but then you're like, 'Wow that really happened. It happened to a kid I knew,' he said. "So I'll just be praying for his family and him and hope he gets better soon because he's a good kid and it's horrible that something like that happens to good people." A university spokesman said that the fall appears to be accidental, but the circumstances are "unusual" because the windows of the dorm are small and "don't open all the way." Officials also said that the glass in the window was fully broken out. Campus police and the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division are investigating Cothran's fall. Cooper said, "I knew him through freshman year. We hung
out at lunch. We went on the freshman Florida trip and I was in classes with
him through the years graduated with him. So I knew him a good bit. He was a
fun-loving kid -- you know, fun to be around. Always had a smile on his face.
And it's just hard to realize things like that happen and they happen so close
to home." http://www.wyff4.com/news/14276617/detail.html |
http://www.wyff4.com/news/16435311/detail.html SLED: USC Student's Death In Fall Ruled Accidental POSTED: 10:42 am EDT May 30, 2008M UPDATED: 10:52 am EDT May 30, 2008 Investigators said that a USC student from Greenville had taken hallucinogenic mushrooms and smoked marijuana before he fell to his death from a dorm-room window last October. Taylor Cothran, 18, was alone in his fifth-floor room at Capstone Residence Hall on Oct. 5 when he fell four floors to the roof of the dorm's food court. The J.L. Mann graduate died five days later after being hospitalized in critical condition. http://www.collegesafeblog.com/ |
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