GCSE PSHE / Citizenship: Rose's experience of taking legal high drugs

I was being taken in to A&E fearing for my life. I thought I was going in to a coma and I didn’t even break the law.

I’m Rose. I’m 18 years old. I live in a small village and I like to play the guitar. I think someone else would describe me as happy, bubbly, a bit of a dreamer.

It was a weekend in the summer and I wasn’t expecting to be doing anything but then one of my friends called me and asked me to go to a festival that was happening in town. I was just expecting to have a dance, have a good laugh. I just thought it would really be a good day. We were just walking to one of the stages and then we bumped in to a bigger group of people. When we were all together one of the guys that I kind of knew just started rolling up a joint. He started offering it around so I asked him what it were and he said it was a legal high called Pandora’s Box.

Because it was legal I thought that it was OK to smoke it and because everyone else was doing it I thought that it was all right.

I just took a few drags and it just made me a bit lightheaded and a bit giggly. We were just dancing, having a laugh, everyone was having a good time. It lasted for maybe about an hour.

Voice over:
Legal highs are synthetic chemicals, which produce the same or similar effects to illegal drugs in Rose’s case cannabis. These drugs can affect the cardiovascular system, particularly the way in which we control blood pressure. Reductions in blood pressure along with the effects on the brain may be the cause of Rose’s light-headedness.

Rose:
After we were dancing, the same guy that gave it to me before came over and started rolling another joint. It got passed around and everyone was smoking it. I asked what it were, and then one of the other people said it was Pandora’s Box. So I just thought, yeah, I’ll do it. I smoked it and about 30 seconds later I started to feel really, really sick.

It just felt like whatever I had taken started to take over my body and like take over my senses because no one else reacted the same way as I did, I was absolutely terrified. One of my friends stood up and asked if someone would come to the toilet with him. I got up and started trying to follow him to the toilet.

I looked down and it felt like the floor wasn’t underneath my feet any more. It felt like my legs like weren’t attached to my body anymore. Everything was just rushing past me like a motorway. I couldn’t see; everything was a big blur.

Not being able to feel my own limbs was like, the most terrifying thing that had ever happened to me in my life.

Voice over:
The effects of Legal highs are unpredictable, and they can affect different people in different ways. In Rose's case it disrupted the function of the cerebellum, which controls the body’s coordination, and explains why she had difficulty walking. They can also cause blurred vision, and possibly affect the visual pathways of the brain that interpret images from the eyes, causing Rose to feel things were rushing past her.

Rose:
I realised that my friend had disappeared and gone somewhere else. But I didn’t want to turn back to go to the other people because I didn’t want them to think that I was overreacting. So I just carried on walking… I felt like that I couldn’t stand up any more. I just thought I really need to sit down or I’m going to fall over. I felt that I was drifting in and out of consciousness. And every time that I closed my eyes I felt that maybe I weren’t going to open them again.

I thought that at one point that I were gonna maybe die or maybe go in to a coma.

I think I was extremely vulnerable where I were, especially because it was away from everybody and I was on my own. The next thing I knew there was two paramedics in front of me checking my blood pressure. I was drifting in and out of consciousness for about an hour. And the paramedics decided that my condition got so bad that they had to call an ambulance and take me to A&E.

Voice over:
It’s likely that whatever Rose took, altered the concentration of various neurotransmitters in her brain responsible for co-ordinating messages across the brain, and to the rest of her body. They may have increased the function of GABA that normally slows down the brain but decreased the function of glutamate that normally speeds up the brain. This, combined with effects on the arousal centre of the brain, known as the reticular activating system, may have caused her to lose consciousness.

Rose:
When I got to A&E, my parents were there and they were terrified. I hugged my mum and she started crying. I was in A&E for maybe about 3 hours. And the effects wore off so my parents drove me home.

A couple of days after, some people messaged me and told me that I was overreacting and that I was being stupid. It made me feel kind of upset, that they didn’t believe that the experience I had was real. And that they thought that I’d fake that.

Looking back on that now it makes me feel kind of stupid for trusting the people that gave it to me and I felt stupid that I’d put myself in that position with like all my family worrying about me.

Because it said legal I thought it was OK.