Prince Harry is facing having files related to his US visa application made public today in a long-running legal battle after a think tank questioned why he was allowed into the United States after admitting to taking drugs in the past
Prince Harry is braced for the release of private documents related to his US visa application amid a long-running legal row. A judge in America has ordered the release of the documents as part of an ongoing Freedom of Information (FOI) request brought by conservative US think tank the Heritage Foundation.
Harry’s reference to taking cocaine, marijuana and psychedelic mushrooms in his controversial memoir Spare prompted the Washington DC organisation to question why he was allowed into the US in 2020 after quitting as a working royal. We take a look at what he’s said about his drug use in the past…
Cannabis
One drug that Harry admits taking in Spare is cannabis and in the book, he recalls his introduction to it while he was at Eton College. He said: “I don’t remember how we got the stuff. One of my mates, I expect. Or maybe several.
“Whenever we found ourselves in possession, we’d commandeer a tiny upstairs bathroom, wherein we’d implement a surprisingly thoughtful, orderly assembly line. Smoker straddled the loo beside the window, second boy leaned against the basin, third and fourth boys sat in the empty bath, legs dangling over, waiting their turns.
“You’d take a hit or two, blow the smoke out of the window, then move on to the next station, in rotation, until the spliff was gone. Then we’d all head to one of our rooms and giggle ourselves sick over an episode or two of a new show. Family Guy.”
Later in the book, he also recalls rolling a joint while he and Meghan were staying at Tyler Perry’s house after they fled to the US. In the book, Harry recalls how he and Meghan loved Tyler’s house describing it as ‘Xanadu’.
But with security concerns on his mind, he also details how when everybody had gone to sleep, he would find himself walking around the house checking the doors and windows. And in the memoir, he writes: “Then I’d sit on the balcony or the edge of the garden and roll a joint.
“The house looked down onto a valley, across a hillside thick with frogs. I’d listen to their late-night song, smell the flower-scented air. The frogs, the smells, the trees, the big starry sky, it all brought me back to Botswana.” Cannabis has been legal for recreational use in California for those over the age of 21.
Cocaine
In Spare, Harry also spoke about his experiences with cocaine and explained he took it: “At someone’s country house, during a shooting weekend, I’d been offered a line, and I’d done a few more since. It wasn’t much fun, and it didn’t make me particularly happy, as it seemed to make everyone around me, but it did make me feel different, and that was the main goal.
“Feel. Different. I was a deeply unhappy 17-year-old boy willing to try almost anything that would alter the status quo. That was what I told myself anyway.” Speaking about cocaine, at an event with Dr Gabor Maté, he added: “That didn’t do anything for me. It was more of a social thing.”
Psychedelics
Meanwhile, at the same event, Harry also spoke about using hallucinogens, saying: “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. I started doing it recreationally and then started to realise how good it was for me,” he said.
Harry then added: “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.”