http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-40125181/father-skunk-caused-my-son-to-cut-off-his-penis FULL INTERVIEW
Teenage rugby player cut off penis while high on skunk, says father who wants drug made Class A
A teenage rugby player cut off his own penis and stabbed his mother while high on skunk, his father has revealed, as he called for the drug to be reclassified.
The father, named only as Nick because he wants to remain anonymous as his son is rebuilding his life, is backing Lord Nicholas Monson’s campaign to have skunk reclassified from a class B to a class A drug and for the traditional weaker form of cannabis to be decriminalised.
Lord Monson launched his call following the suicide of his 21-year-old son Rupert, who was addicted to skunk.
Nick, speaking for the first time in an interview with Radio Five Live, said his son, a county rugby player, started smoking “weed” when he was around sixteen and a half before switching to skunk because of “boredom”.
That was the beginning of what Nick said his son would describe as “two and a half years of hell” which culminated in a psychotic episode.
His son went from a “very bright, bubbly lad” to a “waste of space”. The teenager became delusional and paranoid, including sleeping “with a tennis racket in his bed because he thought people were living in the walls”.
The first thing I think when I read this story is, this explains why so many people hate and fear cannabis. Absolute fear mongering propaganda and far from accurate. I doubt very much that skunk would make you cut your own penis off. I would like that know if this “anonymous source” was on any other drugs at the time.
The story of the skunk somehow causing somebody to cut off his own penis is not only story on Cannabis this week. I have noticed in recent years how the media try to present skunk as a much more dangerous drug than normal weed but as usual these claims are not scientifically backed up.
The Guardian decide a more sensible and believable approach in their attempts of demonizing Cannabis (again imparticularly skunk.)
I fear skunk has claimed our son – but his siblings come to the rescue
Our house is filled with tattooed and pierced twentysomethings. Guitars are propped against walls. There is loud piano-playing. But none of the children is living the rock’n’roll lifestyle. Megan is teetotal, preferring herbal tea to vodka, and when Lily isn’t at a gig, she likes an early night with a good book. They are all past their teenage rebellions, but close enough to remember the details, and that’s what I’m clinging to because I’m worried about Zac, our youngest.
We rarely get more than a grunt out of him. He has taken to leaving the house without telling me where he is going. Sometimes he stays out all night, depriving his father and me of sleep as we check our mobiles and worry. Zac’s behaviour is ringing alarm bells, so it is a relief to have three interpreters who still speak fluent “teenager”, one of them an ex-stoner. Zac reminds me of his older brother, Jake, when he began to smoke skunk, a drug that I hadn’t heard of before it transformed my smiling child into a red-eyed stranger scowling from under his hoodie.
By the time he was 16, Jake was virtually feral, running with a crowd of teenagers at night, disappearing into dark London parks, refusing to listen to me. I could cry, plead, shout, persuade. Nothing worked.
It wasn’t until Jake left school with no plan, becoming a bike courier, that he realised that he didn’t want this to be his life. He stopped smoking, retook his exams, went on to get a first-class degree and is now doing an MSc. He is the person he was supposed to be before he got derailed by a habit shared by so many of his contemporaries.
Jake sits me down and explains that skunk is about bonding over something dangerous, and that boys are more prone to smoking, especially outsiders, because the drug erases social anxiety, makes people confident and relaxed; all I can think is, of course that would appeal to Zac, why wouldn’t it?
With Jake I was unprepared for his insidious slide into being a stoner, not recognising the signs, such as his tendency to hide in his room and avoid all contact with his family. I mustn’t make that mistake twice.
Ed and I ask Zac outright if he is using skunk. He shrugs. “No.”
I’m not convinced, and when I am putting his T-shirts away, I have a quick look through his other drawers, remembering that that is how I first found the stash of grass in Jake’s room. There is nothing that shouldn’t be there, except a pale, gritty substance that I eventually work out is the calcium he dips wax worms in before he feeds them to his leopard gecko.
“He’s not smoking at home,” Jake says. “I’d know. We’d be able to smell it. And he doesn’t turn up for meals high.”
“What?” I stare at him aghast. “Did you?”
“Yeah,” he admits.
“How did we not know that?”
“I kept my head down to hide my eyes, and I never said anything.”
“Zac doesn’t say anything!” I wail – getting back to the original problem.
Jake shrugs. “It’s different. He’s never talked much.”
Both girls remember Jake’s lost years, too. Megan points out that, in contrast, Zac’s grades are holding up OK. He is not failing at school. He is even doing some revision. He can be found with his textbooks at breakfast, dropping bits of porridge on the pages while he eats. “And if we do discover that he has a skunk problem,” Jake says, “you stop any cash. No money at all. That way he has nothing to buy it with.”
“But he doesn’t, Mum,” Lily says.
“We’ll tell you if we think he’s smoking,” Megan says. “We’re on his case.”
I sit with my head in my hands, all those awful memories coming back: Jake punching a hole in the wall, screaming at me to leave him alone, gaming in a darkened room for hours. “I failed you, didn’t I?” I ask Jake. “I had no idea how to help.”
“How could you have known?” he says kindly. “You did your best, Mum.”
I do blame myself though, for those years when my elder son took the wrong turn and let his future slip through his fingers. We were lucky that he was able to turn it around. I can’t let the same thing happen to my younger son. But it’s different now, I remind myself, it’s not just me and Ed parenting Zac, it’s the whole village.
