By Suzanne LevingstonOriginal Source: consumerreports.org
Maya Gold was a remarkable girl.At age 11, after a trip to an animal sanctuary near her home in New Paltz, N.Y., she began volunteering there, and became a vegan, too. A few years later, after visiting a school for girls in India with her parents, she started making plans to volunteer in Nepal before college, working with girls forced into the sex trade. She is remembered—by friends, family, teachers, neighbors—as a curious, caring, joyful girl.So it was not just heartbreaking but inexplicable when, a few weeks after her 15th birthday in October 2015, Maya took her own life.Maya’s descent into darkness “was so quick and unexpected that we could not grab her in time,” Jonathan Kligler, Maya’s rabbi, said in a eulogy that was later published in the tight-knit town’s newspaper.
Looking for answers, Maya’s parents—Elise Gold and Mathew Swerdloff—learned from her friends that their daughter had, just two weeks before her suicide, started experimenting with over-the-counter drugs that contain the cough suppressant dextromethorphan, or DXM.They uncovered a stash of OTC cough and cold products in her bedroom, and discovered that she had been...click here to continue reading
