Prince Harry's Candid Confession About Using Illicit Drugs In His Teens

The Duke of Sussex confessed to a time when he relied on mushrooms to be happy. He recalls being very sad at seventeen years old, but hallucinating opened his eyes to the truth of his reality.

The Prince said he used drugs to mask his feelings, especially panic attacks. He further describes that while under the effect of these drugs, "only the truth existed." For the Duke, smoking cannabis was therapeutic, and he would do it often in the gardens of Kensington Palace and at Eton. He became an expert in diffusing the smoke so no one around him would notice.

In Spare, he described one of his very vivid hallucinations. It was in 2016, during a trip with his friends to California; he had taken some mushrooms and went to the bathroom to find out that the bin and the lavatory had grown heads and started to talk to him.

Yet, when the effect had left his body, he could still see this other world that he was getting to know, as he called it, "just as real and twice as beautiful." He also wrote about how he would smoke with his school friends. Still, the Prince had to be careful with his party lifestyle as his actions would affect the whole monarchy.

The Duke said he felt hunted, especially by a particular editor, who he said wouldn't stop until his "balls were nailed to her office wall." On the other hand, he grew a liking for cocaine, which didn't make him happy but made him feel different; like he could change the order he was part of.

One time, he remembers, a tabloid threatened him, saying they had pictures of him snorting cocaine. The Prince was panicking, yet, he managed and told his family it was a lie and the picture never got out. Still, he said he felt bad about lying but was proud of his reaction to the situation.

Prince Harry recalls that the first time he tried cocaine was at someone else's country house, where someone offered him a line. He then did it a few more times. Naturally, this was a problem for the image of The Crown since they had had enough of his party lifestyle, yet, they took it as an opportunity.

This helped with King Charles' image. They turned him into a victim who was struggling with a son addicted to drugs, and now he was being described as a "harried single dad coping with a drug-addled child." Previously, the tabloids would only talk about his infidelities.

Now Prince Harry only talks about his encounters with drugs as a part of his past. He no longer relies on elicit substances to be happy, but he acknowledged that his wife, Meghan, had a significant part in helping him go to therapy to get better.