I’m a trust fund baby with the job I’d always dreamed of…but I wasted £500K on a love affair with terrifying PINK COCAINE – the drug that fuelled Liam Payne’s death and almost ruined me

I will never forget the look on my father’s face the day I, aged 32, suffered a drug-induced seizure in front of him. 

His expression was more than disappointment. He was devastated. Staring at the son he’d given everything – a child of utmost privilege, with a trust fund most people dream of – he was tearful and puzzled, wondering how on earth I’d fallen to such a dramatic low.

That night, which resulted in hospital treatment for drug poisoning, was my lowest ebb.

I’d met my father – a hugely successful property magnate – for lunch following an all-night bender involving dangerous quantities of what’s known as pink cocaine – an unpredictable mixture of ketamine and MDMA, dyed bright pink and often scented to smell like strawberries. 

It’s a drug cocktail that’s become an increasing concern among authorities in Europe, including the UK, due to its link to a rising number of deaths – including that of tragic One Direction star, Liam Payne.

Despite having years of practice of ‘playing’ sober, this time I failed. My body was overtaken by an other-wordly force that caused my hands to shake uncontrollably, before my entire body fell to the floor.

It wasn’t the first time this had happened. A daily drug user, I was used to them, and almost begun to appreciate the sensation of being knocked out of myself for a moment.

There was no hiding it any longer. Later that night, at the hospital, the doctors told me the seizures were the result of everything hitting at once: the stimulant load on my nervous system, chronic dehydration, and going days at a time without proper sleep or food. 

I faced an ultimatum from my father – either I move back home in my early 30s, where my parents had 24-hour watch on me, or I enter a rehabilitation programme. By this point, I’d spent close to half a million on drugs.

I relented, thinking that I was more frightened of dying than I was of stopping. It was the first step to regaining my life from the terror of addiction. And now, two years on, I am 26 months sober. I just wish I hadn’t wasted 15 years of my life.

My problem with drugs began at boarding school, aged just 16.

I’d take the train to London on weekends with friends, and stay out until 5am. My drug of choice at the time was MDMA, which would keep me partying for as long as I wanted to. 

The pills flood your brain with massive surges of feel-good hormones, like serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine, making you feel euphoric and full of energy. 

But too much of it can deplete stores of these vital hormones, leading to disabling depression, trouble sleeping and a whole host of other psychological problems. 

At the time, my main goal was always to find a good party. Even as a teenager I knew I wanted to be part of a grungy, debaucherous scene. My father was ambitious and success oriented, but I could never find my own place in that world. Partying was something I knew I could do.  

At university, aged 18, and hundreds of miles from home, something ravenous opened up.  

That’s when the real problems started. 

Firstly, and most importantly, I had absolutely no structure – a must for every teenager vulnerable to mental health problems, I believe. 

My trust fund was large enough that I never needed to get a part-time job like some of my peers. It meant that, in between lectures and seminars, I was at a loss.

It became hard to build a life because nothing was forcing me to. Unlike my fellow students, I could spend 48-hours in bed recovering from an almighty come-down without a fear of consequences. 

In my early 20s I met a man in Berlin and moved in with him. He was the one steady thing I had, and helped to remedy my lack of direction somewhat. But then Covid hit. 

With the world shut down, my feelings of apathy grew stronger, fuelled by the gaping hole that a ban on partying had left in my day-to-day life. 

By the time the world opened up again, the parties came roaring back, and I threw myself into them like I was making up for lost time, taking hit after hit of cocaine.  

Aged 25, I’d picked up some freelance photography in Berlin, to keep me occupied on quiet days. 

However it quickly became my cover; the kind of loose work that lets you vanish for a week and call it artistic temperament. 

Eventually, parents began to get suspicious of my vashing acts, worrying about my whereabouts. To placate them, I made a promise to myself: I was done with cocaine.

Only, my twisted logic assured me that methamphetamine – a potent and highly addictive stimulant – was somehow acceptable.

And then I discovered pink cocaine.    

The name of the substance is highly misleading, because it is not cocaine at all. Most commonly, it’s a mixture of MDMA and tranquilizer ketamine, as well as whatever the dealer has going.

Sometimes amphetamines are added, as well as legal stimulants like caffeine. 

Reports have surfaced of some pink cocaine containing hallucinogens like mescaline and LSD, and sometimes even opioids like fentanyl.

The fact the recipe varies in both substance and the exact ratio is what makes it so dangerous, putting users at risk of seizures, stroke and, at worst, sudden death.

Soon after discovering the high, I was doing bumps to get going in the morning. Within months I was getting through the best part of a gram a day, always topped up so I never fully came down. 

I’d go dark for three or four days, miss shoots, ghost clients. A stylist I’d worked with for years stopped booking me. My partner begged me to stop. I promised him I would, then did it in the bathroom while he slept.

The strangest part was watching myself change. I’d always been the friend who loved everyone. But the drugs hollowed that out. 

I became paranoid and short tempered, constantly lying to myself and everyone else, which only fed the anxiety and paranoia. 

The lack of sleep gave everything a manic edge. I’d talk too fast, laugh too loud, throw myself into plans and conversations with an energy that wasn’t quite real, and then crash into irritability the moment I was alone. I couldn’t sit still and I couldn’t switch off. 

And then came my rock bottom – the day my father and I went out to lunch. 

I wasn’t eager to change; I just wanted the relentless need to be out gone. And so, after a little research, my partner and I discovered Paracelsus Recovery – an exclusive, private psychiatric facility in Zurich.

It’s the only clinic in the world to offer a minimum of 15 dedicated professionals to every patient. It wasn’t just psychiatrists and therapists supporting me, but dieticians, yoga therapists and personal trainers. 

Instead of just detoxing me from the drugs, I was given a fully bespoke recovery plan that was tailored to who I am, and my needs.

Most helpful was my diagnosis of ADHD. It made everything make sense – the restlessness, the apathy that lifted only at full intensity, the way stimulants had felt like finally functioning. I’d been self-medicating for fifteen years without knowing it.

My therapy stopped treating my restlessness as a flaw, and I started to feel comfortable in the feeling of stillness. 

Today, a little over two years after my treatment, my recovery is a work in progress. 

The biggest changes came from psychotherapy – the slow and painful work of actually facing my issues rather than outrunning them. For years I’d measured myself against my father, and come up short. He was ambitious and driven, and I’d assumed that to matter, I had to be too. The drugs filled that gap. 

But therapy helped me realise is that I didn’t need to be as ambitious as him. Once I stopped trying to force myself into his world, I finally had room to find my own. 

That’s when things I actually wanted to do started to appear – and now I’m opening my own design studio, something that’s mine, on my own terms.

I also have a routine that’s pretty rock solid – structure I lacked as a teenager. 

I’ve learned I can hold it more loosely, let a day go sideways, and trust that I’ll be alright. ADHD medication has also been life changing for me. For the first time in fifteen years, I feel like myself.