Tracey Coulter
Ulster risks a lost generation unless government bans the sale of so-called ‘legal highs,’
This is the face of Belfast teenager Stephanie McKeag, a young girl hopelessly addicted to a powder she can buy perfectly legally in Belfast city centre for as little as £12.50 a bag.
Her every waking moment is spent on working out how she can get her next fix, she has sold her clothes, her mobile phone and other possessions so she can afford a bag of Magic Dragon – a green pouch of power which users smoke to get a hit.
Magic Dragon has reduced Stephanie from a pretty, bubbly, bright, cheeky teenager to a shrunken wreck of her former self.
She is a victim of an epidemic no one wants to stop.
Stephanie who has just turned 16, and her anxious mother have bravely agreed to let us publish her picture in a desperate attempt to highlight the hidden plague sucking the life out of our young people.
“Stephanie has been let down all her life,” said the teenager’s mother Tracey Coulter, “when she needed help it wasn’t there for her, it was only when she became hooked on these legal highs and started to get into trouble that people sat up and took notice.
“I’m just terrified it is too late.”
Stephanie McKeag
Stephanie was only two when her grandfather, Tracey’s father, Jackie Coulter, was murdered in the loyalist feud in 2000. She subsequently lost her father to a drug overdose and she has spent her young life living in fear as loyalist paramilitaries waged a terror campaign against her family.
Their former home in the lower Shankill estate has been attacked on numerous occasions, her mother has been physically attacked, the family has received countless death threats, masked and armed men have smashed their way into their home.
“Is it any wonder Stephanie struggled,” said Tracey, “I pleaded for help but no one wanted to know, even before she started using these drugs I knew she was depressed and struggling to cope.”
It’s only in the last few months that she has been diagnosed as suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. By then she was a regular user and had been self harming for some time.
“Stephanie would disappear for days on end, all I could do was contact the police and hope they picked her up alive.”
Tracey and her kids now live outside Belfast, but Stephanie has continued to travel to Belfast where she runs with a pack of ‘feral’ youths taking drugs.
“I’ve watched as she has destroyed herself, my beautiful wee girl is gone. Her body has shrunk, she can barely communicate. She doesn’t lie about she does, she wants to stop but can’t, she says she doesn’t feel normal and just wants to get away from everything.
“When she’s on this stuff she’s just spaced out, gone, and then she sleeps.”
Magic Dragon gives users a 10-20 minute hit but is highly addictive with some people smoking as much as two packs per day. Users report a dramatic impact on their health including panic attacks, shaking, weakness, thirst, headaches intense nausea and vomiting. The skin changes colour with users reporting a grey sickly pallor and suffering fever, chills and intense sweating.
Food tastes bad and people suffer dramatic weight loss – yet this stuff is freely available in towns and cities across Northern Ireland.
“Stephanie turned to this stuff because she had nowhere else to go, I could see she was suffering from depression.”
Tracey revealed that following the death of her nephew from a drug related condition, Stephanie’s drug use hit alarming heights. She lost her place in school, her she spent her life drifting from one fix to the next.
It was at that stage a desperate Tracey went to court to have her daughter committed to a secure unit.
“I’d already lost my daughter,” she said, “she had assaulted me, she was aggressive, she was missing for days on end. I was terrified she was going to be found dead.”
Tracey admitted she has even planned her daughter’s funeral.
“She hated me for trying to get her into a secure unit, and that was the hardest thing I have ever had to do in my life. I did it because I love her, I know I’m going to lose her if I don’t do something.”
Stephanie spent nine months in Lakewood secure unit in Bangor, even then it took six months for her to be diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but it was too little too late and as soon she was released she went back to her old ways.
And she continued to self harm. Two weeks ago she needed 32 staples to close self-inflicted wounds to her arms.
“What are we doing to our young people, these legal highs should not be sold, shops that sell them should be shut down. My daughter was vulnerable and the only ‘help’ she could get was by losing herself in drugs that she can buy over the counter for just over a tenner.”
Stephanie is currently remanded to a secure unit for the sake of her own health and safety as she faces an investigation into an alleged assault on a police officer.
“Stephanie and hundreds of other kids are lost, they walk around Belfast stoned out of their heads. They are vulnerable and at risk, anything could happen to her while she’s out of her head on that stuff.
“What is she prepared to do to get the money to pay for her drugs.
“Social Services told me it was a phase and that she would grow out of it, but she doesn’t have time to grow out of it.”