With bags full of stolen weed and the satisfaction of somehow managing to outrun the Mongrel Mob, I returned home while Craig headed back to his place. I was feeling pretty pleased with myself. We had taken a ridiculous risk, but somehow we had managed to get away with it.

Or at least, that was what I thought.

When I emptied out my share of our newly acquired bounty, I noticed tiny orange spots scattered across the cannabis. I assumed it was some kind of fungus or mould, but apparently my standards weren't particularly high back then. I'd just risked getting caught stealing the stuff from the Mongrel Mob, so a few mysterious orange spots weren't going to stop me from smoking it.

My more immediate concern was that the cannabis was still wet. Waiting patiently for it to dry naturally didn't even enter my mind. I wanted to smoke it, and I wanted to smoke it now, so the oven seemed like the perfect solution.

I have absolutely no idea what temperature I used or how long I left it in there, but eventually it was dry enough for my purposes. It probably tasted bloody terrible, but free weed was free weed, and that night I smoked as much of it as I could. Craig did exactly the same with his share.

Within a couple of days, the phone rang. It was Craig, and he sounded serious.

"We need to throw it back!"

I had no idea what he was talking about, so I asked him what exactly we were supposed to throw back.

"The weed. We need to throw it back."

I was even more confused and asked him where the hell he expected us to throw it.

As luck would have it, a Mongrel Mob member lived next door to Craig. He told me that he'd been looking out his window while his neighbour was outside attending to his dog. At some point, the neighbour had apparently looked towards Craig and made some sort of gesture.

According to Craig, this wasn't just an ordinary gesture. He believed it was a very specific message telling him that we needed to return the stolen cannabis by throwing it into the man's dog kennel.

I sat there trying to make sense of what he was telling me. I asked Craig whether the man had actually told him to put the cannabis in the kennel. Craig said he hadn't. I then asked whether the man had actually said anything to him at all.

Again, the answer was no.

When I asked how the hell he knew that was what the man wanted, Craig simply told me that he'd been given a signal.

Craig was completely convinced, but I certainly wasn't. Whatever secret Mongrel Mob dog-kennel communication system Craig believed he'd just witnessed, I wanted no part of it. I told him he was crazy and that there was absolutely no way I was throwing my share into his neighbour's dog kennel.

As far as I was concerned, that was the end of the conversation.

A day or so later, Craig called again. This time there was no talk about dog kennels. He was convinced that people were following him and believed they were Mongrel Mob members dressed in plain clothes who were coming after him because of what we'd done.

Then he told me he'd stolen a car to get away from them.

I remember hanging up the phone wondering what the hell was going on. Things had gone from strange to completely bloody ridiculous in the space of only a couple of days.

Then came another phone call. This time Craig was on the highway and in a full-blown panic. He believed he was being chased and was speeding along the road, weaving through traffic and desperately trying to get away from whoever he thought was following him.

I tried talking to him, but there was no convincing him otherwise. Whoever he believed was chasing him was absolutely real in his mind. His solution was to ditch the car he was driving, steal another one and switch vehicles so his pursuers wouldn't know what he was driving.

That was when I realised this was no longer simply Craig being weird or paranoid. Something was seriously wrong.

At that stage of my life, I had no understanding of drug-induced psychosis. I didn't even know what the term meant. I had no idea how drugs, paranoia and possibly a lack of sleep could distort someone's perception of reality to the point where things that weren't happening could become completely real to them.

All I knew was that the Craig I was speaking to wasn't behaving like the Craig I knew. The strangest and most frightening part was the absolute certainty in his voice. He wasn't asking me whether I thought someone might be following him. He knew they were, and as far as he was concerned, he was running from a very real threat.

A day or two later, Craig arrived at my place in a stolen car. I was far from impressed. Whatever chaos Craig had created for himself, I didn't want him bringing it to my front door. I had enough of my own illegal activities going on without a stolen vehicle sitting outside attracting unwanted attention.

More importantly, directly above our heads was my pride and joy: my secret cannabis grow.

I'd put a lot of work into that little operation. Hidden away in the ceiling, under lights and safely out of sight, my plants had been flourishing. Craig knew all about them, and in the state he was in, he suddenly told me that he was going to tell the police.

My heart sank.

Then he added that he was going to tell the Mongrel Mob as well.

That was enough to get me moving.

Suddenly, the ceiling didn't feel like such a clever hiding place anymore. I climbed up and started ripping everything apart. There was no careful harvesting, gentle trimming or time to admire my gardening skills. Plants I'd spent months nurturing were being pulled down as quickly as I could move.

I was devastated. They were beautiful plants, and I'd been bloody proud of them. My little hidden horticultural empire was being destroyed in front of me because I had no idea whether Craig was actually going to follow through with his threats.

Before long, I had a pile of cannabis and another fairly significant problem. I needed to get rid of it.

Leaving it at the house wasn't an option. I didn't know whether Craig would actually go to the police, whether he'd tell the Mongrel Mob, whether he'd forget the entire conversation five minutes later, or whether his increasingly paranoid mind would come up with another plan altogether. I wasn't prepared to hang around and find out.

I stuffed everything I could into the boot of my car and decided it would probably be a good idea to get myself out of the area for a while as well.

Dad immediately came to mind.

Dad had spent much of his life around dr#gs and crime, so turning up at his place with a boot full of cannabis wasn't exactly going to result in a shocked expression followed by a lecture about making better life choices. If anyone knew what to do with it, I figured Dad would.

I pointed the car towards Napier and drove. Every kilometre I put behind me made me feel a little more comfortable. Eventually, I reached Dad and managed to offload what I had.

For me, the immediate problem was solved, but for Craig, things were only getting worse.

By then, the police had caught up with him. The stolen cars had accumulated, along with a considerable list of charges, and he was eventually arrested. He was heading to jail.

Then I heard something that, even by Craig's recent standards, was extraordinary. According to news reports at the time, while being transported in police custody, he somehow managed to kick out a window and escape.

His freedom didn't last particularly long. After everything that had happened, I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised when I heard where police eventually found him.

He had gone home.

Craig was arrested again, and that was the last time I ever saw him.

There was no goodbye and no final conversation. Our friendship simply ended there.

For years afterwards, whenever I thought about Craig, I remembered the craziness of those final days. At the time, I didn't have the maturity or knowledge to understand what had happened to him. I simply thought he'd lost the plot.

Looking back now, I see it very differently. I had watched someone's mind turn against them. The imaginary signals, the people following him and the desperate attempts to escape something that may never have existed outside his own mind were completely real to Craig. He was genuinely frightened and reacting to a world that, for him, had become terrifyingly real.

It should have been a warning to me, but at that age, warnings only work if you're willing to recognise them.

I wasn't.

I carried on with my life, still convinced that I knew exactly what I was doing.

As it turned out, I didn't have a bloody clue.

TO BE CONTINUED…..