JACKSON, Miss.- Dirty Sprite, Lean, Purple Drank, whatever you want to call it, it’s been around for a while now, but has resurfaced again recently. Not only is the drink dangerous to drink, but it can even be deadly.
The ingredients consist of soda, cough syrup or prescription medications and candy.
Jordan Hillhouse with DREAM Inc. said, “The drink usually consists of sprite, which is where you get the Dirty Sprite name from, mixed with DXM, which you get from cough syrup. You can mix something like NyQuil or some other type of cough syrup and then once you mix it up, your clear sprite turns a purple color.”
People often mixing the drink typically throw jolly ranchers or some other type of candy into the drink to add a better flavor to it.
“It’s harmful because it slows you down. It’s a depressant that slows your heart rate and breathing down,” Hillhouse said.
The drink became popular after famous Houston rapper, DJ Screw, sang about the “Dirty Sprite” in many of his songs. However, the rapper died after drinking too much of the stuff one night.
“You’re mixing nearly a whole bottle of cough syrup, that’s way more than the recommended dosage, which is going to slow your heart rate way down and be dangerous for you,” Hollisworth said.
Teens, in particular, are abusing the drink because it’s easily accessible to them. They can buy all of the ingredients used to make the dangerous drink over the counter.
Locking up any medications you may have at the house, throwing out old prescriptions and talking to your children about the dangers of this drink and drugs are some of the best practices to keep your kids away from the stuff.
