My skunk addict son hacked off own penis
Dad on lad’s psychotic drug hell
A TEENAGE skunk addict chopped off his own penis and stabbed his mum in a psychotic episode caused by the powerful form of cannabis.
The paranoid 16-year-old had gone to bed with a knife, fearing people were living in the walls, his dad said.
In a harrowing interview the father, named only as Nick, went on: “He basically had a psychotic episode and did huge amounts of harm to himself and his mother.”
BBC Radio 5 Live host Emma Barnett asked: “He chopped off his own penis. How on earth did you react?”
Nick replied: “It was absolutely devastating. You can’t imagine anything of that nature happening.”
The dad told how his son became delusional over “two years of hell” as he got hooked on skunk – up to 30 times more powerful than cannabis – with pals. He said: “He became paranoid. He switched from a very bright, bubbly lad to a waste of space.”
The boy had been living with friends in Brighton but moved back to his mum’s house in Southern England just before his breakdown. She survived the attack.
The teenager had surgery but may not be able to have children and still has mental health problems, his dad said.
He reconciled with his mum after a short jail spell. Nick backs Lord Nicholas Monson’s campaign to reclassify skunk from class B to A, which he began after his addict son died earlier this year.
A 2015 study in Lancet Psychiatry found skunk triples risk of psychosis.