By Karen Williamson

While most young people know exactly what the choking game is, many have no idea how dangerous the game is. Parents and educators, however, often don’t know what it is until it is too late.

Carrie Draher, associate director of Games Adolescents Shouldn’t Play, or G.A.S.P., spent some time in Cullman this week to educate citizens on choking.

“These are children who are engaging in an activity which they believe is harmless and which they believe is a game. This is called, and it’s known by other names, the choking game,” Draher said. “Children and young adults, as young as 5 and as old as 30, are dying from self-asphyxiation. Asphyxiation produces a brief euphoria about two to three minutes long,” she added.

According to the G.A.S.P. Web site, “The Choking Game achieves a brief high or euphoric state by stopping the flow of oxygen containing blood to the brain. Some children choke each other until the person being choked passes out. The pressure on the arteries is then released and blood flow to the brain resumes causing a ‘rush’ as consciousness returns.”

The choking game is known by many names: the Passout game, Space Monkey, Black out, Flatliner, Space Cowboy and Choke Out are just some of them. It can be autoerotic asphyxia where an element of sexual satisfaction is involved but the two are not synonymous, according to the Web site.

“The euphoria is actually brain cells dying so brain death is occurring every time they engage in the activity. The problem is that they see no risk. They don’t understand the physiology of what they’re doing. Our necks supply all the blood to our brains. Whether they self-asphyxiate with pressure on the neck or hyperventilation, the effect is the same. They lose consciousness” and can die, said Draher.

Draher went to visit her son at boarding school one weekend and had a personal experience with this game.

“On October 8, 2006, I discovered this ‘game’ (It is no game) when I walked into my son’s boarding school dorm room. He attended a college prep high school. I found him hanging dead from a sling, in a noose. It was just a sling strung beneath the top bunk bed. He was on his knees. He was dead. His friend and I lifted him from the sling and laid him on the floor. The young man ran for help. I wanted desperately to believe that this was a horrible Halloween hoax.

Draher picked up her son’s hand. It was blue and cold. His face was mottled blue, grey and purple.

“I grabbed his hand and pulled him forward and said stop. This isn’t funny. His torso rose limp, lifeless. His head lagged behind and violently snapped forward crashing into the desk near the bed, and there was no response. I saw that his eyes were half open, bloodshot, blue and staring blindly,” said Draher.

“ I caught his body as it fell to the floor, and I too fell to my knees beside him. I laid my head to his chest, no heart beat there. I felt for his breath against my cheek, and there was none, no sound, no breath. I pressed my fingers against the right side of his neck, no pulse. I finally realized he was truly dead,” said Draher

At this point, Draher said she screamed for help and screamed in terror.

“I thought I was drawing in another breath to scream again, and instead a most incredible power filled me, and I heard the words share; and though completely untrained in CPR, I covered my son’s mouth with my own and blew in that power that entered into me,” said Draher.

“My son, he began to attempt to breath,” said Draher. A friend, Patrick Davis, arrived on the scene and began chest compressions while Draher continued respirations.

Fifteen-year-old Levi Draher had suffered a heart attack. When the EMS team arrived, it took five or six men to get Levi on a board because his seizures were so severe.

Levi laid in a coma for three days, and family members were given no hope.

But the unexpected occurred, the miraculous really, said Draher. On the third day, nurses told Draher that Levi was trying to wake up. When her son did come to, he recognized his parents; and in the minutes and hours that followed, Levi improved rapidly. On the fifth day, he was moved to a regular floor and was discharged the next day.

On day seven, the mother and son danced at the Marine Corp ball. Levi was in his dress blues. Draher said she cried when they danced looking into her son’s beautiful face. They both knew how blessed they were that he survived.

Levi learned the choking game in 8th grade and played it with friends. In 9th grade, Levi played alone for the first time. He did it three times on his own. Levi told a friend what he was doing. His friend told him to quit and threatened to tell the gunner.

Draher says it’s critical that parents sit down and talk to their kids about the deadly game and urge them to tell an adult if they have a friend playing it.

Warning signs include suspicious marks on a child’s neck, sometimes hidden by clothes, headaches, bloodshot eyes, an unexplained thud in a bedroom or a rope lying around.

Draher said, parents should not allow their children to lock bedroom doors. She always knocks on her kids’ doors and announces herself. Draher did take her son out of boarding school and now is much more involved in her children’s lives.

The G.A.S.P. website is www.gaspinfo.com. Javon Daniel, executive director of Cullman Caring for Kids, was instrumental in bringing Draher to Cullman. Their radio interview can be heard at 9:05 a.m. Wednesday on RJL, 99.9 fm.

Today Carrie and Levi Draher both share their story as God instructed Carrie to do.