Man turns his life around after Spice drug addiction

Matthew Nuttall was a teenager when he first smoked Spice Credit: MEN Syndication

“You just feel brain dead half the time. They say people look like zombies and that’s how it feels.”

Matthew Nuttall was a teenager when he first smoked Spice with a group of friends. At that point the substance known as Kronic, which he put in a joint with tobacco, was still a legal high. For that reason Matthew believed it would be safe.

But the 20-year-old said the ‘horrific’ high it gave him was like nothing he had ever experienced before or since.

“My mates were doing it so I just thought I would do it”, he said. “It was legal so I didn’t think it would be that bad."

Though Matthew thought he would never take Spice again, he was at that time sleeping rough. He quickly fell back into smoking the drug with friends.“It was a cheap, easy high,” he said.

“I could get a it for about £5 a gram from the shops in town. I was using something called Kronic, which I could get a gram and a half of for £8.”It didn’t take long for Matthew to build up a heavy habit during which he smoked around four grams of the drug each day. By this point he was heavily addicted.

He said: “A gram wouldn’t last that long. I was smoking about four grams a day at one point. I used to go to sleep smoking Spice, wake up, smoke some more and go to sleep again. I was smoking a spliff every half an hour. I was too high to remember what was happening.“When you didn’t have it you really craved it. There were really bad withdrawal symptoms. You just feel so ill. It makes you stop caring and stop thinking about your problems.“I’ve seen people so messed up from it. It’s not the Spice that makes people violent but when they haven’t got it, that’s what makes them violent.“I stopped taking it about three months before the ban. I just went completely cold turkey but people were still doing it around me.”

At the height of his addiction Matthew was homeless. He was living in squats and sleeping rough in shop doorways with his friends.Since kicking their Spice habit they have found a new home and are on the road to a new life.

They all have ambitions to go into higher education and are living in a two-bed house in Harpurhey where they have started to study for their exams.Matthew hopes his experience will warn others away from the drug and offer hope to those in the throes of a Spice addiction.