You know, bath salts are supposed to be used for making bath water smell lovely and softening skin. Using salts for purposes other than intended has been a nasty trend lately, resulting in death, dismemberment, and extreme disfiguration.

What is it about these bath salts that makes the user want to eat living things?

A Texas man faces a felony charge after he allegedly bit, killed and ate a housemate’s pet dog while high on the synthetic drug “spice.”

Michael Daniel, 22, allegedly smoked spice in his Waco, Texas home before he assaulted his housemates and then ran out of the house into his yard, where he began crawling around on his hands and knees. He barked and growled at a neighbor and chased him back into his home.

Daniel then allegedly took his housemate’s dog, a medium-sized spaniel mix, out onto the house’s porch. He allegedly beat and strangled the dog, according to Waco Police Sgt. Patrick Swanton, and then began chewing “hunks of flesh” from the animal.

Daniel’s housemates called police and requested emergency assistance, saying Daniel was “going crazy.” Officers arrived at the house to find Daniel sitting on the porch with “blood and fur around his mouth” and with the dead dog lying in his lap, Swanton said.

Spice and related products have often been sold as incense in packaging that says the contents are not to be ingested, but authorities say they are frequently used by consumers to mimic the effects of marijuana and other drugs.

In a “20/20″ investigation that aired in 2011, ABC News found that spice and bath salts were being sold to teenagers across the country with little to no oversight, and many of those young users were showing up at drug treatment centers.

“They think they’re dying,” Louisiana Poison Control Center Director Dr. Mark Ryan told ABC News. “They have extreme paranoia. They’re having hallucinations. They see things, they hear things, monsters, demons, aliens.”

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http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/man-bites-dog-eats-dog-high-spice/story?id=16660512#.T-ukpBee4bI