Prince Harry spoke candidly about his recreational use of illegal drugs during a intimate chat with a toxic trauma expert.
The discussion came in a ‘intimate conversation’ about ‘living with loss and personal healing’ between the Duke and Dr Gabor Mate on Saturday evening.
Tickets to the livestream, which cost £17, included a hardback copy of the Prince’s recent memoir, Spare.
The second son of King Charles said marijuana had ‘really helped’ him but that cocaine and alcohol were more ‘social’.
The timing of the discussion is particularly awkward for the palace, coming just days after it emerged King Charles is evicting Harry and his wife Meghan Markle from Frogmore Cottage, their grace-and-favour mansion on the Windsor estate.
Asked by Dr Maté if he saw himself as a victim, Harry said: ‘I certainly don’t’
The livestream costs £17 and comes with a hardback copy of the duke’s memoir
Trauma expert Dr Gabor Mate spoke of the way people used drugs to deal with problems in their lives before asking Harry’s about his reasons for using drugs including cocaine and cannabis.
‘The first one you mentioned, that didn’t do anything for me, it was more a social thing. It gave me a sense of belonging and probably also made me feel different to the way I was feeling,’ Harry said.
‘Marijuana is different, that actually did really help me.’
The prince said alcohol was also ‘more of a social thing’ and complained about peer pressure around drinking.
Dr Mate, who has faced numerous controversies in the past, denied accusations he had been threatened with arrest by the Canadian government for using Ayahuasca with his patients.
In 2011, Health Canada threatened to prosecute the trauma expert if he did not stop using the Amazonian plant to treat addiction.
In the two years before receiving the warning, Dr Mate administered the medicine to between 150 and 200 patients.
The addiction doctor said during the interview: ‘I was never threatened with arrest.’
He also spoke about the side effect of the drugs, denying that they can include vomiting and hallucinations.
He said: ‘You purge with it sometimes, it’s a good thing.
‘It doesn’t give you hallucination – it gives you visions… You think it’s really happening.’
Dr Mate added: ‘I don’t think it’s a panacea for dealing with trauma.’
Harry agreed, describing his own experiences using psychedelics.
He said: ‘It was the cleaning of the windshield, removal of life’s filters.
‘It removed it all for me and brought me a sense of relaxation, release, comfort, a lightness that I managed to hold onto for a period of time
‘For me I started doing it recreationally and then started to realise 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.’
Prince Harry admitted taking cocaine as a teenager, smoking weed and trying magic mushrooms in the home of Courtney Cox in his explosive memoir Spare.
Courtney Cox responded to the claims last week ahead of her induction to the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
She told Variety that the Prince had stayed with her for a ‘couple of days’ and was ‘a really nice person’.
‘I haven’t read the book. I do want to hear it, because I’ve heard it’s really entertaining. But yes, it’s gotten back to me about it.
Prince Harry sat down with trauma expert Dr Gabor Maté for a livestream event about ‘trauma and healing’
Dr Maté told Prince Harry he believes he has Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), which can affect people’s concentration and means they are easily distracted
Prince Harry has admitted using psychedelics – magic mushrooms, psilocybin (the active component of magic mushrooms) and ayahuasca, a plant-based psychedelic from the leaves of a shrub – in an attempt to help him heal from ‘grief’
‘I’m not saying there were mushrooms! I definitely wasn’t passing them out,’ the actress said.
Dr Mate has also faced criticism for remarks made in the past and Harry has come under fire for sharing a platform with him.
The doctor has provoked fury due to his history of controversial comments, including comparing Hamas to the Jewish heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising against the Nazis.
The 79-year-old Hungarian-Canadian Holocaust survivor has also defended Palestinian rocket fire at Israeli civilians and once branded the Israeli government ‘terrorists’.
The ‘intimate conversation’ comes amid concern from the Sussex camp over the recent revelation that they will be asked to move out of their Windsor home – which may be handed over to Prince Andrew.
The couple were allegedly given ‘weeks’ to pack up their British home at Frogmore Cottage after Harry’s memoir Spare hit the shelves in January.
Earlier this week, journalist Omid Scobie claimed that some members of the Royal Family were ‘appalled’ by the decision to evict Harry and Meghan, with the couple also said to have felt ‘stunned’.
An insider allegedly told him: ‘It all feels very final and like a cruel punishment. It’s like [the family] want to cut them out of the picture for good.’
But the couple are not as ‘stunned’ about leaving as previous reports have suggested, believing that ‘if we need to move out, we will get ourselves out’, a source told The Times.
The revelation comes as preparations are taking place for King Charles’ Coronation in May amid speculation that Harry may not receive an invitation.
