The royal explained that he “started doing it recreationally and then started to realize how good it was for me.”
Prince Harry credits the recreational use of psychedelics with giving him a radically different perspective on life.
On Saturday, the Duke of Sussex sat down for a conversation with Dr. Gabor Maté about his memoir Spare, during which they touched on the topic of drug use as a means of coping with past trauma. The royal revealed that his recreational usage actually helped him to heal from the death of his mother Princess Diana, telling Maté, “Marijuana is different [to cocaine]. It did really help me.”
Harry went on to explain his experience with hallucinogenics, “It was the cleaning of the windscreen, the removal of life’s filters—these layers of filters—it removed it all for me and brought me a sense of relaxation, relief, comfort, a lightness that I managed to hold back for a period of time.” He added, “I started doing it recreationally and then started to realize how good it was for me. I would say it is one of the fundamental parts of my life that changed me and helped me deal with the traumas and the pains of the past. They’re unlocking so much of what we’ve suppressed.”
In his book, Harry writes at length about experimenting with an array of drugs, including marijuana, cocaine, and psilocybin mushrooms. He reveals that when he was around 17 he was offered cocaine for the first time “at someone’s country house, during a shooting weekend.” He continued, “I’d been offered a line, and I’d done a few more since,” but he added that it was never “much fun.” However, while the cocaine didn’t “make [him] particularly happy,” it did “make [him] feel different,” which he says was his “main goal.” He also disclosed that he smoked marijuana to relax after moving to America in 2020 with his wife, Meghan Markle.
Harry wrote about doing mushrooms at Courteney Cox‘s house in January 2016 as well, revealing that he was hanging out with some friends in Los Angeles who knew her when they suggested they move the party to her house..
