http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/420646

Joseph Hall
Health Reporter

Chasing cheap highs, tens of thousands of Ontario adolescents are strangling themselves or each other in what's known as the choking game, a report out of Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health says.

The report says as many as 7 per cent of Ontario students – some 79,000 – between grades 7 and 12 will have played the game, which is often prolonged to the point of fainting and is blamed for at least 82 deaths in the United States since the mid-1990s.

"We knew from press reports that this phenomenon exists" but the great numbers were a surprise along with the fact that many kids as young as Grade 7 were taking part, said Jurgen Rehm, a senior scientist at the centre.

Rehm says the game is all about giving the person being choked the euphoric effects caused by oxygen deprivation to the brain.

"They do it to get a high, very simple," he said.

"As a kid, you do highs very often and you try out different ways to get high and the choking game is one of the cheaper ways to do it."

The latest choking-game data came out of the addiction centre's 30th annual Ontario Student Drug Use and Health Survey, which this year questioned some 6,323 students from across the province.

This was the first time students were asked about the game. Although the data was based on self-reporting by adolescents – who often exaggerate – Rehm said controls used by the researchers ensure the numbers are pretty solid.

"You can be sure that those 7 per cent (of kids involved) are pretty close to reality," he says.

Rehm says no tracking of choking-game fatalities has occurred in Canada and that the cases of kids who end up in hospital are often misdiagnosed as suicide attempts.

"We know from other jurisdictions that once they looked a little closer into suicides by adolescents ... they found out it was, in some cases, the choking game."

Rehm says a similar investigation should be conducted in this province and that educators and authorities should start paying far more attention to the game.

"I think we should know way more about it," Rehm said.

In youth circles, the game has many other names, such as space monkey, the fainting game or suffocation roulette.

Sharron Grant, who lives near Barrie, knows that one outcome of the game is tragedy.

Her son Jesse, 12, died playing the game in 2005 after learning about it at summer camp."

Totally sick. This is not a game.

Whatever happened to good old fashioned whipets...

that's real sad....

Law of Darwin in action

Darwin is dead .

BTW : quel bud ?

Haha kid's and their erotic asphyxiation.

They choke themselves to get high? Why is it always that kid's do such stupid stuff to get high when there is drugs all around them (you don't even want to know about Jenkem...)?

Darwinism at work. The world is better off .

I remember something similar when i was a teenager were one of the bigger boys would hold us younger ones round the chest so tight and restrict our lungs till we passed out.
it never really worked for me so i used to pretend to faint.
its stupid really i have no idea why we did it i guess we just thought we were cool in those days?

They should be cheesing instead.

This was around when i was in school we did it to get sent home by the nurse so we could get out of school and get high my uncle showed us how to do it but why has it gotten so popular now things come and go around here kids are just find out about morning glory seeds.

Sigh. There was a time when children will be yelled at for playing these things

Lol, they were stupid. You don't have to move your chest to breathe...
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As for the OP:
The world is better off.

Over here it's about spraying deodorant on your skin and getting a chemical burn. My friends son just did it and he was lucky he didn't need a skin graft on his whole hand.

OMG