Boy, 12, left in coma after buying vapes laced with 'spice' through social media
A teenage boy was left fighting for his life after purchasing what he thought was a normal vape, which ended up taking over his reality.
14-year-old Freddie Fenson, from the UK, says he was influenced by friends to purchase a popular vape, leading to him becoming hooked on an illegal substance it was laced with.
Freddie, who began vaping at 11, says he was just 12 years old when he bought a vape on social media that he thought contained THC, only to find that it was filled with its dangerous synthetic counterpart instead.
Two months later, he revealed he collapsed, and was rushed to the hospital and placed in an induced coma for two weeks.
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As it turns out, the vape didn’t contain THC at all – which is the psychoactive compound found in cannabis – instead, it was laced with the illegal lab-created drug, spice.
“That drug, that took over my life. It took away my money, took over my health," Freddie said in an interview with ITV.
He added: "Literally not even like two months of smoking every day, I landed in a coma, and my lung collapsed."
But that wasn’t the extent of his trauma.
In fact, the coma led to Freddie being unable to do basic things, like walk and talk.
He explained: “I spent two months in hospital, and I had to learn to walk again, to talk again, eat again, literally restart my life as a kid.”
Spice is an incredibly addictive synthetic drug, which saw its prevalence rise in the UK prison system as a way for inmates to get high without spending more money on legitimate cannabis.
According to the DEA, spice can have a profound impact on a person’s health, with symptoms becoming worse if abused.
For example, the DEA explains a person can expect to experience things like ‘tachycardia (elevated heart rate), elevated blood pressure, unconsciousness, tremors, seizures, vomiting, hallucinations, agitation, anxiety, pallor, numbness, and tingling’.
For those who become addicted, though, it’s hard to stop.
“Spice for me made me do whatever I could to get it," Freddie said. “It sounds crazy, but I even stole money from my dad to get it.
“I may have only done that once, but that time I stole was the lowest point I ever went.”
The problem, Freddie says, is how accessible it is to purchase them, with him claiming he drug was found on social media for very little money.
To this, he said it was a worry of his that it could go on to impact other children.
“I feel like the thing for me is the kids that are randomly scrolling, and they end up coming across something like this, and they think ‘what is this, I’ll buy it and try it,'" Freddie said.
“That’s what is scary because then they could end up hooked like I was, so I really want to speak out to try and stop it from happening to other people.”
Britt Jones