Bath salt using sailor faces trouble

PORTSMOUTH, Va. (WAVY) - A local sailor is in the hospital after a severe negative reaction to using bath salts.

"Some people are coming in with days to weeks of psychosis - these are reactions that don't normally happen from small amounts of other drugs," said LCDR Todd Parker, Assistant Department Head of Emergency Medicine at Naval Medical Center Portsmouth.

Parker said suicidal ideation is just one reaction to bath salts - a cocaine, methamphetamine, and ecstasy simulator.

The Naval Medical Center Portsmouth Emergency Room doctor did not treat a local 26-year-old patient Sunday, but is well versed in the dangers of bath salts.

"What we do know is that it does cause hallucinations and altered mental status so you may do things to yourself that you wouldn't otherwise do for a variety of reasons," said Parker.

Hospital officials said someone brought the local sailor to the ER Sunday. He was paranoid and delusional. He also had a fever, elevated heart rate, high blood pressure and tissue damage in his nose and mouth.

"This is a designer drug that's created in a lab designed to skirt drug laws and it's simply not safe in any way," Parker continued.

Some of the small packets of concentrated bath salts caution users against a very stimulating bath, but users aren't bathing in these salts and it's what they don't warn against that's really troubling.

"Why you're getting the weeks of psychosis from even small doses I don't think anyone has an explanation for," said Parker.

Hospital officials have not said when the sailor will be released.

The Navy has not said what disciplinary action this sailor will face.

Anything used for the purpose of getting high is on the military's zero tolerance policy.