Among kids, synthetic pot — known colloquially as K2 or spice — is often viewed as a safe, legal version of marijuana. But drug experts and users of the drug themselves have said spice can produce severe side effects.
On the online drug forum Erowid.org, where users can post and catalog their own experiences on a variety of drugs, some users say smoking spice is similar to marijuana — with one user reporting that the experience was “100 percent comparable” to smoking pot. But others have reported panic attacks, disassociation and nausea.
One user reported he’d purchased a packet of spice from a gas station to smoke with a friend.
“I experienced a complete breakdown of coherent thought and my awareness collapsed to a point of confused isolation. I looked over at [my friend] and saw him as nothing more than a hunk of meat emitting sound,” the user wrote. “I had come to the conclusion that I was about to die, which sent me into an even deeper state of terror. … I fell to my knees and began to vomit profusely upon his lawn for what must have been a solid half of an hour.”
– Aubrey Whelan
