Overview

• A 60-year-old man developed progressive symptoms of bromism after replacing table salt with sodium bromide sourced online for roughly three months.
• Within 24 hours of hospital admission he exhibited intense thirst, paranoia and auditory and visual hallucinations, prompting an involuntary psychiatric stay.
• After about three weeks of inpatient treatment his laboratory values normalized and his neuropsychiatric symptoms resolved.
• Treating physicians were unable to retrieve the patient’s original ChatGPT conversation, leaving the precise nature of the AI’s recommendation unverified.
• Newsroom tests of ChatGPT 5 produced explicit warnings against using bromide as a salt substitute, and experts caution that bromide salts remain readily obtainable online despite past FDA restrictions.