A pale, hallucinating, overheated body shambles toward you -- and he looks hungry for human flesh. Is he a zombie, or something else?
We make plenty of connections between bath salt incidents and the impending zombie apocalypse, but a small group of video producers are proving that zombies and bath salt users have a lot more in common than we thought.
Courtney Gordner had a hand in making the video above for Clarity Way Rehab to show just how dangerous synthetic bath salts can be.
"The side effects of bath salts are zombie-like because when you have increased dopamine levels mixed with lack of sleep and all of the other crazy side effects, your central nervous system doesn't work properly -- you don't feel pain," she told HuffPost Weird News via email. "[Bath salts users] aren't really there, they are just a body walking around."
Of course, bath salts aren't actually known to induce a deathly need for human meat, but they do have some zombie-like effects, Gordner says. The video cites Forbes, DrugAbuse.gov and Huffington Post when describing the symptoms: paranoia, fear, hallucinations, restlessness, the inability to sleep, hyperthermia, fluctuations in mood and horrible attention span.
"Bath salt hallucinations are not bright and colorful like many drug-induced hallucinations are portrayed in the media," the narrator says. "Rather these hallucinations are typically dark and threatening because the bath salts are causing your body to react as if it's in danger."
In the summer of last year, the term "zombie apocalypse" was trending at the same time as a handful of violent bath salts cases were reported. A Florida man tried to bite cops while high on a brand of synthetic bath salts called "Cloud 9." Alexander Kinyua reportedly ate his roommate's heart and brain right on the heels of the horrifying face-eating story out of Miami. That said, Rudy Eugene, who allegedly chewed off a good part of a homeless man's face, wasn't on bath salts at the time.
But are bath salts making zombies come to life?