Especially in a group. Chances are they had empathy to begin with, combined that with actual drugs, likely at least weed, and then got a nice dose of groupthink placebo as the cherry on top.

Nah, back before the internet was a thing everyone had access to, and like Wikipedia in their pockets, stuff like this happened for real, especially in small towns.

Like when I was a kid around 30 years ago people told ghost stories and shit as absolutely real. The information bottleneck is so hard to understand if you're young now. Like cable TV was all of your regular entertainment and it sucked then too. Music was whatever was on the radio for most people. If you really wanted to know something niche, you had to go a long way away to a large regional library. If you wanted to buy something but were a poor average person, you went to yard sales and searched the newspaper classified ads. It was like this up until the turn of the century in most places. Dial up internet was so slow that you couldn't load a single full resolution image before you finished, and there was a 50:50 chance you make a new futa friend in the end. It was a different world. People were much more gullible, or rather even a reasonably intelligent person struggled to cite sources and see through the haze.

Maybe not this particular one, but before everyone was judged and persecuted 24/7 by social media shit like this happened all the time.

Speaking of that, does anyone know the deal behind the ‘drug take-back days’ that US police sometimes do? I mean, who actually drops off drugs at a police station?

Not only kids. I would have to look for the papers, but there are enough behavioural studies on how people react when given alcohol. Many people start acting drunk when told that there is alcohol in their drinks, regardless of that being true. At the same time they do not act as obnoxiously drunk when given alcohol without their knowledge. The typical slurring of speech, loss of coordination and associated physical effects come into effect, but the behavioral changes are weaker. Up to the point where they realize they are drunk.

This together with the studies of drunken behavior across the globe has lead some researchers to posit the hypothesis that the behavior while drunk is more of a cultural effect, based on how the culture expects people to act while drunk.

I've heard that you can trick kids into acting drunk by giving them fake booze but telling them that it's real.

Anecdotally, a friend of mine once drank two beers at his 21st birthday party. At the time he weighed 250 lbs. He immediately got "drunk", took his shirt off and fell asleep on the floor. It was amusing to watch for a bit, then it was just annoying.

Decently seen this at parties in my youth, with alcohol free beers

They call me doctor god, good morning how are I'm doctor god