Teen Girl Left Foaming at Mouth After Smoking ‘Spiked’ Substance

A 15-year-old girl was rushed to the hospital after suffering a terrifying seizure just moments after smoking cannabis she reportedly bought outside a popular designer shopping outlet in England.

Sophy Smolnicka had been at Cheshire Oaks Designer Outlet before heading into a wooded area in Ellesmere Port with friends on September 9, according to accounts given by Sophy and her mother, Ivana Kodeschova.

Sophy said she believed she was smoking ordinary cannabis. But within roughly a minute, she said she became disoriented, started walking into bushes and suddenly collapsed.

“I was panicking and my heart was beating really fast and I was sweating,” the teenager recalled.

Her condition quickly became much more serious.

Sophy said she began shaking uncontrollably, could no longer speak and had foam coming from her mouth. She also said she vomited material containing blood as her frightened friends called Britain’s 999 emergency number.

The teenager was taken to the Countess of Chester Hospital, where her mother said Sophy was placed on heart monitoring equipment and was extremely cold.

“When I got to the hospital, I saw my daughter being monitored for her heart,” Kodeschova said. “She was very cold and she was given five blankets as her temperature had dropped.”

The Countess of Chester Hospital is the major NHS hospital serving Chester and surrounding communities.

Sophy has since recovered, but both she and her mother believe the cannabis may have contained another substance.

That has not been independently confirmed.

There does not appear to be a publicly released toxicology report identifying what Sophy smoked, and her description of the cannabis as “spiked” is therefore a suspicion rather than an established medical finding.

That distinction matters because severe reactions can occur for several reasons, including unexpectedly potent drugs or synthetic cannabinoids being sold or mixed with products users believe are ordinary cannabis.

Britain’s FRANK drug-information service warns that synthetic cannabinoids can sometimes be added to dried plant material or even cannabis. Those chemicals can produce far more unpredictable reactions than natural cannabis, including vomiting, rapid heart rate, excessive sweating, tremors and seizures.

FRANK also warns that illicit drugs can vary dramatically in strength and contents, meaning users may have no reliable way of knowing exactly what they are taking.

The symptoms Sophy described — including a racing heart, sweating, vomiting and seizure-like activity — overlap with documented reactions associated with synthetic cannabinoids, although that does not establish what caused her medical emergency.

Sophy said the experience terrified her enough to swear off cannabis.

“This has 100 per cent put me off smoking weed again,” she said, explaining that she shared her story with friends and on social media in hopes that other teenagers would take the warning seriously.

She also said ambulance workers told her that a delay of another 10 minutes could have been fatal. That account comes from Sophy and has not been independently confirmed by the North West Ambulance Service.

Whatever substance was involved, calling for emergency help was the correct response.

The NHS advises calling 999 or going to an emergency department when someone who may have taken a harmful substance suffers a seizure, loses consciousness or develops severe breathing problems.

Sophy’s mother is now urging other parents not to assume drug-related emergencies cannot happen in their own families.

“There are no perfect parents who can say, ‘This doesn’t concern us. This will never happen to us,’” Kodeschova said.

She encouraged parents to watch for sudden changes in their children’s behavior, communication and social circles and to know where they are and who they are spending time with.

The incident also comes amid continued drug-enforcement activity across Cheshire. Police have carried out a series of cannabis and other drug investigations throughout the county this month, including arrests and prosecutions involving cannabis supply. Those cases have not been linked publicly to Sophy’s hospitalization.

For Sophy, the ordeal has become a warning she hopes other teenagers will hear before experimenting with an unknown street drug.

“I know what I’ve done and that’s my own fault and I’m not asking for any sympathy,” she said. “I don’t want this happening to anyone else.”