‘We have to take a stand against skunk’

Psychotherapist and author Julie Lynn Evans is on the

front line of a war against skunk – the powerful strain of cannabis which, she says, risks turning today’s teenage users into psychotic wrecks

Psychotherapist Julie Lynn Evans has seen at first hand what skunk can do to vulnerable teenagers



The voice on the end of the phone didn’t sound panic-stricken, but the more Julie Lynn Evans listened, the more it was obvious that the caller’s needs were exceptional and urgent. As one of the UK’s foremost psychotherapists, Lynn Evans had no immediate gaps in her diary, but could, she explained, visit one evening.



Novelist Julie Myerson fuelled the debate when she wrote about her son Jake's addiction to skunk

And so it was that she found herself sitting in

the South London home of the now notorious Myerson family.

For three hours that night, she assimilated the details of a private family crisis with which we have

all become familiar: Jake Myerson had been a straight-A student destined for Oxbridge; skunk addiction had made him menacing, unmanageable and morally erratic.



His parents, novelist Julie Myerson and her playwright and journalist husband Jonathan, had endured his stealing, violence and chaos for three years before issuing their ‘tough love’ ultimatum: give up skunk or be barred from the family home.



It came as no surprise to Lynn Evans, who has spent 20 years working with troubled adolescents, that Jake had opted for the latter.

When she thinks back to that night, Lynn Evans’s enduring memories are of the Myersons’ fear, guilt and desperation. Julie’s articulate voice on the phone had masked her true state of mind.



‘She was a mother on the edge – exhausted and broken. She wanted me to see if I could bring Jake back and get him into rehab.’

Lynn Evans couldn’t promise either of those things. ‘But I was able to confirm their reality – that Jake wasn’t inherently bad, but that he’d been caught in the grip of a vicious drug.



'Skunk had turned him into someone for whom nothing and no one were sacrosanct. That is what it does – it is one of the most distorting drugs I have ever come across.’

Psychotherapists do not normally talk openly about the conversations they have with their clients, but Julie Myerson’s decision to write about Jake’s drug abuse in her book The Lost Child has meant their case is far from normal.



And Lynn Evans, too, is a controversial figure. Four years ago, she sparked an outcry when she said she would rather her children smoked heroin than skunk. Back then, it seemed a reckless remark; today you could argue it was remarkably prescient.



‘Skunk is one of the most distorting drugs I have come across’

‘Obviously, I don’t want my children smoking heroin either,’ she explains, ‘but my point was that while you can be cured of heroin addiction, the psychosis and schizophrenia caused by skunk may be permanent. You can undo the damage, as long as you haven’t hit psychosis.



'That is why we have to take a stand against this drug – before it is too late. I have several clients who will be on antipsychotic medication for the rest of their lives. For them, there is no way back.’

Lynn Evans, 52, is a divorced mother-of-three – Lucy, 22, Sam, 20, and Harry, 18 – who began her working life as an A-level history teacher. She discovered early on that she was good at handling ‘naughty children’, probably, she admits, because she is something of a maverick and mischief-maker herself.



At 30, shortly after having Lucy, she decided to retrain as a therapist and found herself drawn again to wayward teenagers.



Her work with families – she practises in a large shed in the garden of her West London home – has embraced a range of issues, from separation and divorce (she has just written a book on the subject, called What About the Children?), to anorexia, self-harming, binge-drinking and, inevitably, drugs.



It was through her children, rather than clients, that she first became aware, around eight years ago, that something new and sinister was happening. ‘Lucy had some friends to stay,’ she recalls, ‘and the following morning I found one of them huddled in my shed, looking completely deranged. Her skin was a greeny-grey colour, she had huge, dark rings under her eyes and she wasn’t making any sense.



'I woke up everyone in the house and demanded to know what had been going on. They told me she had been smoking weed – but I could tell that whatever she had had was much more dangerous than hash as I understand it.’



Lynn Evans handed the girl, who was 15, over to

her parents and advised them to seek expert help. (The girl subsequently had therapy and made a complete recovery.)

In the ensuing months, several teenagers exhibiting similar symptoms appeared in her consulting room, having been frogmarched there by their parents. ‘One had dropped out of university after developing full schizophrenia, another had a psychotic episode at 15, another was hearing voices.



'I had five cases in quick succession – children

who had become paranoid, violent and uncontrollable after smoking what they thought was cannabis but was quite clearly something far more powerful.’

Lynn Evans had no evidence to back up her intuition. ‘I was seeing at first hand the result of what was happening out there, but it is only later that science

catches up.’



Within the past couple of years, data has come in thick and fast. According to a recent report from the Royal College of Psychiatrists, more than 80 per cent of those being treated for their first episode of psychosis had used skunk.



In 2007, The Lancet reported that cannabis users are 40 per cent more likely to develop psychotic illnesses than non-users. In the past five years, the number of people needing emergency treatment for cannabis misuse has doubled.



Although these reports use the umbrella term ‘cannabis’, the reality is that 80 per cent of cannabis seized in Britain today is skunk – which experts regard as a more dangerous substance.

The reason for this is a seismic shift in cannabis production. Until the late 1990s, the cannabis market was dominated by resin smuggled in mainly from Morocco. But tighter border controls led to dealers cultivating cannabis in the UK instead. They picked up on a trend first developed in California, of crossing two varieties of cannabis. The new hybrid was nicknamed skunk because of its distinctive, pungent smell.

The dealers farmed indoors using intensive horticultural techniques. One consequence of this was an increase in potency. The degree of ‘high’ a user gets from cannabis depends upon a chemical called tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).







Five years ago, the THC levels in skunk were thought to be 20 times stronger than the old imported cannabis. Scientists have now discovered that British-grown skunk has only slightly raised levels of THC but much lower levels of another chemical called cannabidiol (CBD).



‘The crucial thing about CBD is that it has anti-psychotic properties – it counteracts some of the effects of THC,’ says Lynn Evans. ‘The fact that it has been drastically reduced explains why we are seeing such a devastating fallout from skunk use.’

In the past five years, Lynn Evans has treated, on average, five teen clients a year – boys and girls in equal numbers – who have been caught up in the skunk phenomenon. They range in age from 12 to 20.



‘Very few young people beyond 20 would touch skunk,’ she says. ‘By that age, they know where to get other stuff if they want it and skunk is deeply uncool. But 12-, 13- and 14-year-olds don’t know any better. Kids want to smoke dope; they take what is on the streets, and at the moment that is skunk.’

No parent should underestimate the power of peer pressure. Lynn Evans tells me about the craze for ‘hotboxing’. ‘They crowd into a room, tape up every crevice so there is no ventilation, then lie down together, smoke skunk and inhale the vapours. It’s naughty, they are home alone, and they do it for the thrill of getting away with it.’

Ask Lynn Evans to define the traits of a skunk user and she talks of ‘children who are vulnerable’. Many have experienced some form of trauma or live with uncertainty. ‘Children who have been abandoned or gone through the stress of their parents’ divorce, or who have witnessed tension and fighting at home and for whom the world is an edgy place, might like skunk because it numbs those edgy feelings.’



There is another significant factor among her skunk-using clientele. ‘Four children I have worked with who have full-blown psychosis had learning difficulties – dyslexia, dyspraxia or mild Asperger’s syndrome – which probably made them feel uncomfortable and emotionally vulnerable at school. It will also have left them exhausted because children with learning difficulties have to work three times as hard as other children. They see skunk as an escape valve – a way of getting some rest.’

None of this explains why Jake Myerson started using skunk, and Lynn Evans cannot provide the answer because, although she has remained in contact with his parents, she has never met him. ‘And if I had, it would have been confidential,’ she says.



What she can say is that Jake’s behaviour was typical of an out-of-control skunk user. The reason she went to the Myersons’ that night, rather than have them come to her, was because his parents had hoped to persuade Jake to meet Lynn Evans and accept some help. In denial, he refused.



That denial is, Lynn Evans confirms, part of the skunk syndrome. ‘They feel untouchable. They have no sense of consequences. Their behaviour is entirely destructive. That is the stamp of this drug and it is why I hate it so much.’







One criticism of the Myersons has been that they took too relaxed an attitude to their son’s dope habit. But, Lynn Evans points out, ‘They didn’t know what they were dealing with. Even three years ago, no one was saying skunk was a complete no-no.’

Lynn Evans shares the laid-back attitude of many of today’s parents who themselves dabbled with cannabis in the 1970s. ‘I would legalise normal dope tomorrow. I don’t think it is any worse than white wine. It doesn’t frighten me, but skunk does. To me, they are two completely different substances.’



It is, she says, a catastrophe that cannabis was downgraded from class B to class C in 2004, just as skunk was becoming widespread. The government recently upgraded it to class B again. ‘I don’t blame the government – they didn’t know what was happening on the streets.



'But now they should be thinking about how skunk can be distinguished from cannabis, and until some answers can be found for cannabis regulation I’d like skunk categorised as a class A substance.’



‘Skunk users feel untouchable. They have no sense of consequences’

Our interview is interrupted several times as Lynn Evans fields calls about a 17-year-old client who has spent a week in a detox treatment centre and is threatening to leave.



‘His father died when he was ten, his mother has lost control, and I am telling her she must practise tough love otherwise he will be straight back on the streets and smoking skunk,’ she says. ‘It is an incredibly difficult thing for any parent to do.



'But if I had a child who was keeping the family awake at night, lashing out, disturbing the neighbours, refusing to go to school and taking my other children down with him, I would do exactly the same.’

Maybe the toughest element of tough love is accepting that there is no guarantee that it will bring the skunk user to his senses. ‘For teenagers who think they are invincible, it can be part of the adventure, especially if parents are paying their rent and sending them food parcels. They live in squats or bedsits and escape the pressure of school and exams.’



Lynn Evans has several clients for whom tough love was a bit of a lark. Today they have full-blown psychosis. ‘They are on antipsychotic medication, which numbs their senses. They don’t have sexual relationships because they are not capable of them. They have no job and I’m really there now to hand-hold because there is nothing more I can do.’

Jake Myerson is clearly a long way from that point. ‘He’s bright, good-looking, charming and his brain is still intact,’ says Lynn Evans. ‘And now he’s a cult hero to dope users. I hope he gives up skunk before he does real damage to his head.’

What About the Children? by Julie Lynn Evans is published by Bantam, price £12.99. To order a copy with free p&p, contact the YOU Bookshop on 0845 155 0711, you-bookshop.co.uk



