PAPER SHANE: MY
I started at 14 and plotted post office armed robbery
I’M A Celebrity star Shane Richie first began using drugs when he was just 14.
The telly favourite smoked cannabis and suffered side effects so bad he feared he was going to die.
To this day, he still has vivid memories of the incident.
Shane, 56, said: “Growing up, I was well aware of the drugs scene, but the first time I tried a joint myself was at a Christmas party in 1978 when I was 14.
“A joint was being passed around nonchalantly and eventually it came to me.
“I took a drag and for a minute I thought I was going to lose all control of my bodily functions.
“My head was floating so high that I couldn’t work out if
I was enjoying it or whether I was going to die.”
A year later,
Shane started dabbling with the potent hallucinogenic LSD.
It left him convinced he could fly and on the brink of killing himself.
Recalling that incident, he said: “I went to a party in a flat above a carpet store and I was given a tab of the stuff.
“Some of the carpets were stored in the spare room and I remember unravelling one and opening the window, thinking I’d got myself a flying carpet. “Luckily, someone dragged me back from the window ledge and I never touched the stuff again.
“Of course, people had told me not to do it and warned me it could have that effect, but warnings weren’t enough for me. “I needed to know for myself what it was like. I needed to put my hand into the fire.” After Shane began taking drugs, his life quickly spiralled out of control.
By 16 he was homeless and became involved in a plan to hold up a post office with a gun. Recalling the plot, which hi h was d dreamed d up b by one of f hi his friends, Shane said: “He had it all planned and I was completely up for it, talking through the details again and again, until suddenly from nowhere he pulled out a gun.
“To this day I don’t know if it was real or not.
“I just remember panicking.” Shane decided he would have nothing to do with the raid but still got into trouble with police when, moments later, he was arrested for begging and charged with vagrancy.
Writing in his autobiography, he added: “I often think back to that night and how differently my life could have turned out.
“If I had held up the post office and been caught I’d have ended up in jail and my career in showbiz would have been finished before it had even started.
“But what’s most frightening of all is the realisation that the only reason I backed out was because I panicked.”