Don’t Do What I Did

This is the story of how I accidentally smoked spice one night and thought I’d lost my mind in the process.

For those of you unfamiliar with spice (K2 in America), it is a manufactured drug which was originally marketed as a sort of synthetic alternative to weed. However it soon became clear that the resemblance to weed was in appearance alone and in actual fact the effects of spice were a lot, lot heavier. If you live in a city and you walk through the centre of town, the chances are you will see at least one person crashed out in a doorway, or halfway through falling down but somehow still walking. I joke, but the effects are pretty devastating and things only look set to decline even further, thanks to spice’s price, as well as its popularity on the streets and in prison.

My encounter with the drug came about as I was walking from the pub to a party one night in Bristol. I had been after a bit of weed all night, purely to put me to sleep when I eventually made it home, but I didn’t have enough cash to buy a whole bag. We were walking along Stokes Croft, which is a much-loved melting pot of graffiti artists, homeless people, students, hipsters, drunks, freaks and weirdos in central Bristol. There is also a lot of spice. We were outside the off licence, waiting for some friends to reappear with their liquor, when a man asked me if I had any filters. I did and I was also still after something to smoke, so I asked him if he had anything on him. He replied saying he only had a little bit, but was happy to sell me a spliff’s worth. That would do me fine, so the exchange was made. Now admittedly buying drugs on the street, from people you’ve never met, in the middle of an area like that, at 2am, might not be the smartest idea I’ve ever had, but I was also pretty fucking wasted by that point and was transfixed by the idea of getting a smoke by any means necessary. So this seemed like a godsend. He gave me a little bit of something green and leafy, kept the rest for himself and then we headed on towards the party. I kept getting drunk and then walked home at about 5am, so by the time I got back I was so tired, I didn’t even need a smoke and I fell fast asleep.

That was fine though, because the following night I stayed in and thought I would have a nice little bedtime spliff before having to get up for work the next morning. So after stuffing my face with food and watching a few hours of terrible TV, I unwrapped what he’d given me, which turned out to be about a one skin’s worth of shit weed (I was still in the dark at this point). But I rolled it up anyway cos there is no way I’m letting weed go to waste, then headed over to the window to spark it up. I didn’t think anything of the taste, or lack of, I just thought it was shit weed. But then about five or six drags in, I started to shake quite violently. And this was all over my body, not just my hands. That was when the alarm bells started ringing, but my nerves overtook any sort of rational thought and so I wasn’t even considering the fact it might be spice. Instead I decided to lie down and ride out whatever was going to happen next. Now I’ve taken a fair few hallucinogens in my life and as a result, I have had a few bad experiences too. But this was something entirely different and you will understand why in a little while. Also, when you factor in that I was on my own and this was totally accidental, that just exacerbated everything. One of the most important factors in any sort of trip is the feeling of safety and comfort.

So I lay down on my bed and I remember thinking to myself that I’m just going to wait until I stop shaking, then I’ll be back to normal. No dice. What happened next is made up of sketchy memories and vague images, but I remember enough to know that I never want to go through it again. I had the feeling that I was still lying down, but it also felt like I was on some sort of track and whatever I was travelling in was getting faster and faster. It was the sort of track that a model railway would run on, or a Scalextric, so there were very sudden switches into different lanes and it was getting up to a ridiculous speed. I could also feel the presence of some other people in the room. I say people but when I tried to look at them, I couldn’t really make out anything more than their shape and some sort of twisted grin spread across their faces. It was unsettling to say the least, but I couldn’t do anything about it because we were still all speeding along this strange track. It was still getting faster and I could feel my heart rate getting faster at the same time, to the point where I genuinely wondered what would happen once it got to a speed I could no longer handle. Would my heart just keep going? And if so, what would happen then? The conclusion I reached was that my heart would most likely not be able to cope and I would die.

As it turns out I don’t remember much else after getting to that point, that is until I came round again. And that is when possibly the weirdest bit happened. I was obviously still on my bed and it’s also worth mentioning that at this time I was staying at my stepdad’s flat, which is the same place I grew up. It was even the same room I had when I was a kid, so I knew every fucking inch of this place. But when I came round, I had no idea where I was. I was looking around at everything in the room — the clothes, the curtains, the walls, the odds and ends, but nothing made sense to me. That’s when I started to panic. I was racking my brain trying to remember what had happened because I had a vague memory of simply having had a quiet night in, but then I could not understand how I had ended up in this room. I have been known to go out late at night in the past, so then I wondered if that’s what had happened and I’d ended up meeting some strangers and going back to their house to get wasted. But all I was wearing was tracksuit bottoms and a t-shirt. Plus there was no noise coming from outside the room, which just made it all more eerie. At this point I was pretty freaked out and my thoughts started to get darker. Had someone taken me somewhere while I was fucked up? I was too sketched out to open the door because I was still shaken by what had happened on the ‘trip’ and I had no idea what I’d find on the other side of it. For those of you who don’t know me, I also suffer from very bad bouts of anxiety and this was like a million triggers all at once.

This must have gone on for about half an hour before I wondered if I had my phone with me. I found it next to me under the duvet, which made me feel a lot better and then I noticed it was on charge. Then I looked at the charger and realised it was mine. Then I looked round the room again and suddenly everything was mine — my clothes, my books, my laptop, all my stuff! It was such a fucking relief, so much so that I started laughing and didn’t stop until my face hurt. Then I went to bed and fell sound asleep. Now as I said earlier, I’ve done a fair few trips in my time and I’ve had some extremely odd and unnerving experiences, but never have I not wanted to experience something ever again as I did that night.

Lord knows how these people survive on the streets, while smoking it all day. Its so cheap and so potent and it makes people so unpredictable, I dread to think what the long-term effects are going to be, given how messed up the short-term ones are. So the morals of the story for me are never buy drugs off people on the street when you’re drunk and never ever go anywhere near spice.