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.
Freddie Fenson, 14, from the UK, says he was encouraged by friends to try a widely used vape product — but claims it was secretly mixed with an illegal substance that quickly pulled him into addiction.
Freddie says he started vaping when he was 11. By the time he was 12, he bought a vape through social media believing it contained THC. He later discovered it wasn’t cannabis-based at all, but contained a far more dangerous synthetic alternative.
Within just a couple of months, Freddie says his health dramatically deteriorated. He later collapsed and was taken to hospital, where doctors placed him in an induced coma for two weeks.
He says the vape did not include THC — the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis — and instead was laced with the illegal lab-made drug known as 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.”
His ordeal didn’t end there.
Freddie says the coma left him needing to relearn basic skills, including walking and speaking.
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 known as a highly addictive synthetic drug. In the UK, its use has been linked to prisons in particular, where it has reportedly been used as a cheaper substitute for cannabis.
The US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) warns that spice can severely affect health, and that symptoms can intensify with continued use.
The DEA notes that reported effects include ‘tachycardia (elevated heart rate), elevated blood pressure, unconsciousness, tremors, seizures, vomiting, hallucinations, agitation, anxiety, pallor, numbness, and tingling’.
Freddie says that once dependence sets in, quitting is extremely difficult.
“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.”
He also claims availability is a major issue, saying he was able to find the drug through social media and buy it for very little money.
Freddie says he worries other young people could stumble across similar listings online — and face the same consequences.
“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.”