MANDRAX

I started in 1998. I started smoking dagga. Doing it with some friends of mine and it was like experimentation. Smoking that was just me and my friends together we were just experimenting. Then I tried mandrax. I just wanted to know what it was like. I was just experimenting. So my friend and I, we got together and smoked mandrax. It's easy to get it, you can get it anywhere. And then I was like smoking twice a week. No once a week. It feels like, first of all, you get like this rush... Just for a few seconds when you have that rush. Then after that you just feel drowsy you feel tired, you don't want to do anything. You don't want to do anything! You feel like everything goes away and you just feel high and it feels good for a few seconds. Your hearing also changes. You hear differently. Everything slows down, like, everything goes really, really slow. I just get money and we were smoking with my friends. You don't need that much money. I didn't decide to go to the Cape Town Drug Counselling Centre. My parents decided that I must go. They asked me what was going on and I told them. They asked me because I was tired a lot of the time and I got worried when I saw how I lost weight. I wasn't interested in anything. They were upset and a little bit worried, but they were fine. And they are fine now. In my school about 40% of the kids use mandrax, I think. A lot of my friends are still smoking, but it was fine that I went to the centre.