Prince Harry, aged 17, told addicts at rehab he’d ‘experimented’ with cocaine, ketamine & cannabis following loss of mum
PRINCE Harry confessed to taking cocaine, ketamine, cannabis and Nepalese hashish Temple Balls to other users at a drug rehab centre aged 17, a former resident has claimed.
Paul Smith said he and other addicts were left stunned when the Prince visited Featherstone Lodge in South East London with his father Charles in 2002.
Harry was taken there after the now-King discovered his son had been regularly smoking cannabis and drinking alcohol as a teenager.
It was widely reported around that time that Charles confronted Harry, who had confessed to “experimenting” with weed on several occasions at his father’s Highgrove home.
But The Sun can reveal he went further than was publically known and told startled addicts he had taken the Class A drug cocaine and Class B ketamine, a tranquilliser.
And he left them bemused with a confession to taking Temple Balls — which experts have warned are not for the casual drug taker.
It is a form of cannabis which has been cultivated in Nepal for hundreds of years — and is a plant concentrate which produces a much more potent high than regular weed.
Paul, 54, below, has come forward to talk about Harry’s visit after the Duke of Sussex admitted to taking drugs in his memoir, Spare.
He claims: “Harry was so open. He said he’d taken ketamine, cannabis and also cocaine.
“We were stunned. There had been reports of bad behaviour around that time, but this was so shocking. This was a prince. It was incredible.
“He said he’d struggled with the loss of his mother and I could relate to that. I’d also had bereavement in my family.
“He’s a man in line to the throne at a drug rehab centre laying out his soul. It was shocking.
“We had no prior warning, we were just told he was heading in. He said when he was doing these things, he was out of control.
“It was brutally honest. I think he felt happy to speak around us.”
Paul said Harry spent about an hour with him and two other addicts, talking in great detail about his life.
He said that at times he had to “pinch myself” that it was really happening.
He added: “I was a senior resident at the centre at the time which is why I think they chose me. I think Charles wanted him to be alone and talk to real addicts about how bad drugs are.
“He did not even have his security people in the room at the time. I said my name was Paul and I explained my situation.
“I told him that he did not want to end up in a place like this. He talked about taking marijuana, Temple Balls and cocaine.
“He also talked about Ketamine. I was like, ‘Oh my god’ — I told him he needed to rein it in.
“But when all the drug taking stuff came out this week from his book I was shocked. I don’t know why he decided to announce it all now. He said he felt very bad after taking the drugs.”
In the book, Harry admits he took cocaine as a teenager and blamed it on an adolescent rebellion.
He says he was offered the Class A drug during a hunting weekend when he was 17 — and on a few other occasions.
Harry also reveals he smoked cannabis at Eton and he had continued to smoke the drug at Nottingham Cottage, the home he moved into with Meghan in the grounds of Kensington Palace, in 2015.
He says he would smoke a marijuana joint after dinner, adding that he tried to ensure the smoke did not drift into the garden of his neighbour, the Duke of Kent.
Psychedelic drugs had helped him escape into “another world”, he adds, and he describes getting drunk on tequila and taking magic mushrooms with friends in California in 2016.
Harry also admits in Spare that he had lied about his cocaine use when confronted about it at the time of the Queen’s Golden Jubilee in 2002.
He says he was ushered into a small office and asked bluntly if he had taken the drug.
The unnamed member of the Royal Household said a journalist had claimed to have a photograph of the young prince taking cocaine.
Harry denied the claim immediately and told the official to deny it to the journalist.
But in his memoir, he admits to taking cocaine at that time when he would have been 17.