“It was relaxing, as if I was flying. After that, I lost consciousness. When I came to again, I found myself lying here,” 16-yearold HN told kompas.com last Wednesday.

HN is one of 66 teenagers admitted to hospitals in Kendari, Southeast Sulawesi, last week after consuming drugs containing carisoprodol, a sedative banned in Indonesia since 2013.

Witnesses reported that, prior to being hospitalized, the victims had gone “insane,” behaving in extremely peculiar ways that led some to think they were possessed by demons.

“I even brought my son to a shaman,” said Adi Putra, the father of A, 16, another intoxicated teenager, who was treated at the Kendari Mental Health Hospital, just like HN.

While the incident was initially believed to be limited to Kendari, the Food and Drug Monitoring Agency (BPOM) revealed on Monday that similar drugs have been distributed illegally and on a massive scale in many parts of the country.

A recent BPOM crackdown in Makassar, South Sulawesi, alone found 29,000 tablets of illegal drugs containing carisoprodol.

“When taken in a higher dosage [than typically prescribed for therapeutic purposes], carisoprodol can cause convulsions, hallucinations and other effects that endanger a person’s health or cause death,” BPOM chairman Penny K. Lukita said.

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