Nicaraguan “Grisi Siknis” Turns Teens Crazy

Last year, at least 65 Nicaraguans suffered from “Grisi Siknis” (crazy sickness), a virus-like malady that sends teenagers - typically those of Miskito descent - into a frenzy before causing them to pass out for long periods of time. When he had this it was called “drunk.”

While the illness is baffling doctors, local healers like “Doña Porcela” use their own concoctions to heal ailing teens. She advises teens to either drink or bathe in her potions, promising they will be healed within four days.

One concerned parent, Lola Emberto, describes her afflicted 13-year-old daughter’s behavior:

For four months, my children were affected. I couldn’t sleep or eat. My daughter was just running around like a maniac. She tore off all her clothes.

One time, she fell into the well while suffering an attack. Other times, she’d run into the bush or into the river and people would try to catch her when they could.

Emberto believes her daughter had been cursed by black magic and that Doña Porcela had been able to rid her of it. 

Anadina Smith, who is of Spanish descent, is one of the few non-Miskito teens to have suffered from the mysterious Grisi Siknis:

One day at school, I felt giddy, and found it difficult to breathe.

Then, I saw something coming towards me - a kind of black man or a dragon that entered me and possessed me.

Other girls at Anadina’s school were also affected.

Professor Pablo McDavis of Uraccan University’s Indigenous Diseases Department explains doctors’ and researchers’ frustration in trying to treat the illness:

We have taken samples of blood from patients while suffering an attack and, in a lab, we can’t detect anything.

Drugs or injections tend to only increase a patient’s aggressiveness. Clinically we can’t detect anything.

It is like an outbreak. If an attack is not contained quickly, it can spread throughout an entire community.

Sounds like they might have breathed in some hallucinogenic crazy fungal spores. Or have hit a bad case of The Dreaded Puberties. Doña Porcela, please ship your medicines to the U.S.

‘She ran around like a maniac’ [BBC]