Police have given warning about a new synthetic drug that makes people feel superhuman and is accountable for a series of bizarre incidents in Florida, US.

One naked man tried to kick in the door of the Fort Lauderdale police department as he considered that a mob was following him and trying to kill him. The police said another naked man facing similar hallucinations tried to climb the police station fence and later impaled on a spike. This man was hospitalized and survived.

Other cases the police came across involve that of a naked man who ran through a neighborhood convinced he was Thor and tried to have sex with a tree. A flakka user, Qushanna Doby, has been charged with child neglect when one-year-old baby of her found abandoned in the street. According to the woman, she became unconsciousness after taking the drug and she was able to remember where she had left her baby.

Flakka that gets its name from the Spanish word for a thin, pretty woman also known as gravel. Use of it is spreading rapidly, particularly in Florida, as it costs only $5 (R60) a hit. Police in Florida said that it came there in 2013. The majority of flakka batch is made in China or Pakistan and sent to US illegally in small quantities through the post. Normally, it is sold in crystal form and can be smoked using odourless electronic cigarettes.

"I've had one addict describe it as $5 insanity. They want to try it because it's so cheap. They feel stronger and more sensitive to touch. But then the paranoia sets in”, said Don Maines, a drug treatment expert in Fort Lauderdale.