Teen's tragic diagnosis after getting addicted to nangs: 'I can’t walk'
The teenager has now been hospitalised indefinitely from the aftereffects of her addiction to nitrous oxide canisters.
A teenager is warning others against using nangs after getting addicted and now possibly not being able to walk again.
For Molly Day, 19, it started at end-of-year school celebrations with friends and turned into inhaling one to two 1.3-litre canisters of nitrous oxide each day.
"It got to a really bad point where I didn’t want to do it with my friends because I didn’t want to share… I just wanted it all to myself," the Perth teen told A Current Affair. "I just got hooked very quick, I just couldn’t stop."
Molly would easily buy the gas canisters — typically found in whipped cream cans — through buy now pay later apps and then pick them up from tobacconists and convenience stores. Now she's thousands of dollars in debt from her addiction.
"I was basically getting it for free. I didn’t think of the repercussions because I wanted it so bad," she told the program.
Teenager hospitalised for deadly addiction
Things took a turn for the worst a few weeks ago when Molly could feel tingling in her legs and drove herself to hospital, where she now remains with little feeling left from her waist down.
"Two weeks ago, I was a perfectly healthy walking girl and now I can't do anything for myself. I can't walk, I can't control anything," she said to A Current Affair. "I am very scared I'm not going to walk again... Please, please, please listen to me. Just don’t do it."
Her mother Nicky Day, who is an emergency nurse, urged the government to "open their eyes" to how deadly and easily accessible the drug is.
"As an emergency nurse, the hospital puts us through training as registered health professionals to be able to give that drug, and yet these kids can just go and buy it," she said.
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She also told the program she "had no clue" her daughter was addicted and urges other parents to see her story as a warning.
"Please parents out there, have a look at this, have a look at what they’re doing. Look at their cars, talk to them, let them see what the damage can do," she said.
Nitrous oxide gas canisters were reclassified as a poison in September last year and cannot be sold to people under the age of 16-years-old.
with NCA
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