Former bath salt user says graphic Navy PSA is effective - WTVM.com-Columbus, GA News Weather & Sports

There's a disturbing new video going viral, warning against the effects of bath salts. The video is a public service announcement released by the U.S. Navy. We showed the video to a man who said taking bath salts made him paranoid, fearful and starved of food and sleep.

A warning - the video is very graphic and might be tough to watch for some people.

Shown through the eyes of someone on bath salts, the PSA is intense. The user becomes ill, belligerent and very violent. He also has hallucinations, thinking his girlfriend and roommate are demons before he ends up in the hospital.

On their website, the Navy said the campaign's goal is to decrease the number of active-duty service members who use designer drugs.

"It's something that doesn't show up on drug tests, and that you can get away with, and it's cheap, and abundant, easy to find," said Corey James, who told us he used bath salts for about a year.

He said he didn't have any major hallucinations like the ones in the video, but he became very paranoid and antisocial.

"You don't eat or sleep on it, so the paranoia gets amplified from not sleeping," he said.

And we're seeing strange behavior from people on bath salts more and more. In July a man police say was on bath salts was arrested for running naked through several Tempe yards. And a few days after that, another man who admitted to being on bath salts was rescued from Tempe Town Lake.

James said using it took a toll on him, and he thinks these PSAs are an effective way of warning people. 

"People should know to stay away from it because it's so easy to find it and do it," he said.

We called our local Navy recruiting office and they said they don't have any known cases yet of members using bath salts.