A mother has issued a stark warning to other parents after revealing how her 16-year-old son was left in intensive care after taking prescription drugs.
Geordie Brown was discovered collapsed on Carolina Street on Belfast's Shankill Road by a neighbour putting out his bins late on Tuesday night.
Doctors found the teenager to be unresponsive and were forced to put him into an induced coma.
He was moved to the intensive care unit at Belfast City Hospital.
Jane Brown was informed what had happened by police officers who went to her home, just a short distance from where Geordie was found.
It emerged that her son had taken Lyrica, a prescription drug used to treat epilepsy and chronic pain.
The mother-of-three said her "heart sank" when she saw her youngest child in hospital - and she feared she was going to lose him.
"It has been dreadful and it has opened my eyes," she said.
"When I arrived, he was unresponsive. They couldn't bring him around. I was thinking, `Is he going to survive?'
"They told me he would live but I was wondering what way he would be left. These drugs, you don't know the side effects, damaged organs and that. I was really panicking".
While the 16-year-old emerged relatively unscathed from the coma and has since been able to return home, Mrs Brown said she has released photographs of him in hospital to warn other young people using drugs of the potential consequences.
"It's an epidemic," she said.
"It's affecting all young ones. Geordie said that drugs are easier to get than a packet of cigarettes. It's horrible. It really is. It doesn't discriminate, sex, age, religion, and they are killing our kids now.
"I wanted to put the photo out as a warning to try and deter other children. If he went in an entry and collapsed, he might not have been found until the next day and he would have been dead by then. It doesn't bear to think. I'm lucky, the next family might not be as lucky".
Police issued a warning about drugs earlier this month after the sudden deaths of five people in Belfast within days - including a 16-year-old girl, Chloe Hutchings.
A doctor in west Belfast also told how he as been contacted by patients fearing they will die as young people mix prescription medication such as Lyrica with other pills and alcohol.
Mrs Brown appealed to parents "to be careful".
"My heart sank. I was just a nervous wreck. Just seeing your child like that. There's nothing worse".
She also said more action is needed to support community organisations which offer counselling services to young people involved with drugs.
"They need to get the funding sorted. Our children need these places," she said.
"These places are overwhelmed (and it's) months and months to get referrals. These places help them. They are losing their funding and they were set up for kids in need and now there's nowhere to go."
Steven Pollock, co-ordinator of Greater Shankill ACT (Action for Community Transformation), said young people are playing "Russian roulette" taking drugs.
"It's becoming an epidemic, kids are walking the streets like zombies," he said.
"They are getting it initially from people who it's prescribed to then once hooked buying it over the internet or of street corner dealers who don't know what the ingredients are.
"This is resulting in their bodies getting different drugs every time they pop a pill and it's just like playing Russian roulette. The PSNI need to clamp down on these death dealers."
