I tried Black Mamba and I nearly died

Black Mamba is a legal high, similar to Spice, that is made in the image of marijuana. We spoke to a girl whose experiences with the drug nearly killed her and her five friends. Happy 420.

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It happened on Halloween last year. We were all pretty drunk, and we were having a house party instead of going out. One of my friends who doesn’t know anything about drugs (but tries to be cool), told us he had a really strong joint: this ‘amazing’ joint his friend had told him about. I had a blocked nose at the time so I couldn’t smell the difference. We were all outside and I was going to have a couple of tokes. We had two drags each and passed it on – by the time we reached the sixth person the first was on the floor twitching.

So by that point, obviously we knew something was wrong. I was the third or fourth person I think, the last thing I remember seeing was my friend’s face, looking at it and thinking, “whoah, his face is made of rainbows”. Honestly. Then I was just kind of in a weird world.

It was the most trippy thing ever. I didn’t know what life was. Everything was just shapes and movement and noises. It was like all my senses were heightened. It was weird. I was walking along the courtyard outside the house in slow motion. Everything was in slow motion. Everyone was looking at me and it was like I was on the moon or something.

I was probably in the best state of all of us, really. Out of six of us, four were completely out cold. It was quite scary. They were on the floor. Everyone was throwing up everywhere. I was sitting on a bench but others were on the floor out cold and mumbling weird words. One guy had made up his own TV show, like a chat show, named after him and was singing the theme song. Everyone was going psycho. Everyone was still in their Halloween costumes – I had white contacts in and blood all over my face. It wasn’t adding to the fun of it. It was terrifying for the people walking past. They didn’t want to go near us.

Obviously, someone called an ambulance. Six of us were taken to hospital. We all had beds. I remember being wired up and thinking, “what the fuck is this?” I was in a funny mood. I was probably in the happiest mood of everyone. I was laughing loudly and screaming things really loud like, “wooooo, motherfucker.” One of my friends nearly had a heart attack because his heart rate went so high. The nurses came rushing in. He was next to me but I didn’t realise it at the time. So when they all came in I thought there must be some old man next to me. But it was him. They all rushed in and there was a lot of beeping. But he has some kind of heart condition I think.

We were discharged from the hospital at about 7am. And we were all still fucking high, buzzing off our tits, still in our Halloween costumes, with spew all over us. I got a taxi back and then went to sleep but was woken up around lunchtime by the police coming to my flat. Three of them came and said: “come into the kitchen”. I just thought, “bloody hell I’m sleeping”. I went in and there were three male cops there trying to interrogate me. Bear in mind Black Mamba is a legal high – they tried to give me a bollocking but I told them it was legal and went back to my room. “Why are you here? Nothing I did was illegal. Unless you’re here for a proper reason I’m just gonna go.”

I sound like such a bad ass saying that, but I did.

I would never smoke it again. None of us would. It nearly killed us. It was a mistake to try it, even though we didn’t know what it was. It was terrifying.

As told to Oli Dugmore.