'Monkey dust turned me into somebody I wasn't'

A recovering monkey dust addict campaigning for it to be upgraded to a Class A drug has shared how the substance made her "violent and suicidal".

Shannon Cowan said she took cocaine before starting on monkey dust as she struggled to cope with past traumas, including losing a family member to addiction.

Among other psychoactive effects of the substance, the 29-year-old from Biddulph, Staffordshire, said it caused her to smash windows and consider taking her own life.

Sharing her story with BBC Radio Stoke as part of her efforts to have monkey dust moved up from its Class B status which, she said, may yield better support opportunities, she explained: "It turned me into somebody I wasn't."

Monkey dust is a man made stimulant designed to mimic the effects of amphetamines or cocaine.

Cowan said she was "living a life she did not want to live" and struggling with her mental health before she started taking cocaine.

She got involved with people using monkey dust towards the end of 2022 and started taking it herself shortly after.

She said it was very addictive, adding: "The first time I took it, I thought 'wow this is great'. It was an instant high, I thought it was amazing.

"It wasn't long before I started feeling paranoid and I wasn't having a great time. I didn't really like the drug that much myself but I was struggling with my own mental health.

"After that first time, I found it pretty hard to then get away from it."

Cowan said the drug could cause violent reactions, which she experienced in someone to whom she was once close, and then in herself.

"He fractured my eye socket in two places," she said of the individual. "On one occasion he knocked my tooth out.

"If you meet him sober, he is a nice person and not aggressive but, under the influence of monkey dust, the violence was very high."

Of her own actions she said: "On one occasion I went out and smashed somebody's car window – I put a brick through it three times - and I smashed a house window."

Cowan said that at first she found it difficult to get away from the drug, as people would often be at her home either taking it or offering it to her.

"It felt like there was no escape," she explained. "By the end of it, I did leave my house one night to try and end my life because I felt like that was the only way out."

Cowan managed to ditch the drug when she moved out of her home for five months to stay with family. She says she has now been clean for 14 months.

She described giving it up as the hardest thing she had ever done and said there were times she thought she would relapse.

But she said: "When I sit and think about that lifestyle I was trapped in, and how much I prayed to get out of it, I'd never go back. I prefer this life – this is the life."

Cowan is currently working with a drug support service and has been helping other recovering addicts to turn their lives around.

She has also started a campaign, calling on the government to reclassify monkey dust from a Class B to a Class A drug. A petition she started online has reached almost 400 signatures.

She said she was aware reclassification would not stop people from selling or using monkey dust, but hoped such a measure would open up more support for people.

"I have smoked Class A drugs and monkey dust is a lot worse," Cowan said.

"It's not an escape," she added. "You think drugs are an escape but that drug isn't an escape. It'll just leave you with even more trauma than before, like it did with me."

The Home Office said it understood the "devasting impact" of synthetic drugs and was working to "drive down drug use" and stop those who profit from it.

It said it would respond "soon" to a report from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs in February 2025, which outlined the harmful effects of synthetic cathinones like monkey dust.

If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this story, information and support can be found at the BBC's Action Line.

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