I-Dosing - Teenagers getting "digitally high?"

LAKE MARY, Fla. (WOFL FOX 35) - There’s a new trend sweeping the internet among teenagers. ‘I-Dosing’ is a new fad which uses ‘digital drugs’ that some claim can give people a ‘high’ by actually altering their brain waves.

Indeed videos posted on YouTube seem to show young people reacting to the strange sounds they downloaded from one of several sites that offer the repetitive drone-like audio tracks.

From a teen girl reacting in panic to another young man shaking to still others listening with hoods over their heads, hundreds of videos are now popping up with several getting nearly a million hits on YouTube.

In the comments of one video called ‘Shroom’, one user commented: “just listened to this... at the beginning I began to see some blinking light (while eyes closed), then the pitch went up and I began to feel that I’m sinking into my chair...as the pitch went down I began to feel confident, and very relaxed, and I don’t want to stand up from my chair and I don’t want to say any words...”

Some of the sites that cater to I-Dosing promise listener’s effects from binaural beats that seem harmless ranging from tracks to help lose weight, stop smoking or even help falling asleep. Other sites however have tracks with names such as ‘Gates of Hades’. And promise they can ‘powerfully alter our mood’. The tracks are most often a mix of nothing more than the same sounds played over and over; some are pleasant, others can be quite abrasive.