“I didn’t care how expensive it was, I didn’t care if I had any money left – I just wanted to buy it.”
Rather than doing school work or spending time with friends, all 14-year-old Ben, whose name we have changed, could think about was trying to get hold of the drug Spice.
“I became dependent on it and I felt like a drug addict, I realised I was doing it to feel normal and regulated,” he tells the BBC.
He says he first tried a Spice vape while at a friend’s house, believing it contained THC – the main psychoactive ingredient in cannabis.
Vapes stashed in old teddy bears
What was actually in the vape was a synthetic cannabinoid, a lab-made drug intended to mimic the effects of cannabis.
“After using it [Spice] for a while, I realised the effects of real THC would be different,” says Ben.
“I don’t know why I didn’t realise this sooner but the colour was very artificial – bright blue or red – obviously that’s not from a plant.”
His testimony comes as a new report finds one in six vapes tested across 38 schools in England contain Spice.
The drug can be more harmful and unpredictable than cannabis and can cause dizziness, breathing problems, heart palpitations, psychosis and seizures.
Ben, who is now 16, says he was lucky not to have any immediate adverse reaction, although very little is known about the long-term effects of Spice use, particularly in children.
“I found myself doing it every second of the day,” he says.
“I’d be like ‘oh, you’re not as high as you were 10 minutes ago’, so I’d have another bit.”
He says he used his vape everywhere, including in classrooms at school.
Spice is cheaper to produce than cannabis but has much more potent effects and many people purchasing Spice vapes believe they are getting genuine THC.
Ben’s mum Katie, whose name we have also changed, says she found out he was using Spice vapes from his friends’ parents.
“They [his friends] managed to stop because they knew it was bad but he couldn’t,” she says.
“He used to hide them in the gutter above his bedroom window and in the toilet cistern – I’d cut open his old teddy bears and he’d stashed them in there – my husband and I didn’t know what to do.”
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