Kerry Walsh’s son Michael** took his own life in the early morning hours of April 13 at the age of 31, leaving behind a partner and two children.

Kerry said her son became a changed man when he began smoking a legal alternative to cannabis.

Alarm bells began to ring about her son’s behaviour in late 2012, when Michael showed up unexpectedly at her house after a work trip to Queensland.

“He was in an anxious and paranoid state and was hearing strange things,” Kerry said.

Michael, who lived in the Hunter Valley, told his mother that “someone followed me all the way to Queensland and back”, and that he’d believed that “they” were talking about him on the police scanner.

Kerry said she was shocked when he told her he’d pulled his car apart, thinking someone had placed a listening device in it.

Unbeknownst to Kerry, Michael had begun smoking large amounts of synthetic cannabis, a drug she said she wasn’t even aware of.

“I don’t know when he started on that synthetic stuff. I never knew when he was on it,” she said.

Kerry recalled a time last year when he had brought a bag around to her house, telling her it was okay because it was legal.

“I didn’t know much about it then. 

“I thought if it’s legal and in shops, it can’t be that bad.”

In 2011 Michael had beaten a marijuana addiction which had begun in his teens, booking himself into a Wagga Wagga rehabilitation centre for nearly a month and coming out clean – a changed man.

A visibly brighter Michael travelled to Tamworth to tell his mother he was starting a new life.

“I noticed such a big difference. He said it was the best he’d ever felt and he wanted to start up his own business. 

“He’d wised up.”

Kerry said she believed it was then he’d started buying the synthetic form of marijuana, with more than 200 forms of the product legally available in stores across Australia.

Just three weeks before Michael’s death, he visited Kerry with his partner and children, buying a packet of synthetic cannabis and a pipe from a Tamworth tobacconist.

“It was just this small packet. I smelt it and it didn’t smell like normal marijuana. I thought, ‘well, he’s an adult’.”

Michael smoked the contents of the packet over the course of the day, with Kerry saying she kept a close eye on his behaviour.

A day later, she said Michael erupted into a frenzy, yelling and screaming at his partner when he ran out of the substance.

“He was screaming at her, ‘why didn’t you get me more pot?’. 

“I’ve never seen him like that. He had a temper on him but I’d never seen anything like this. 

“I was trying to calm him down, but he was right in my face, yelling and spitting at me. 

“I was shaking and crying.”

Kerry said Michael stormed out, leaving his upset partner and children with her.

“His partner told me then that he was addicted to the synthetic stuff and all his money was going on it,” Kerry said.

“She said to me, ‘I’d rather he smoked normal pot’.”

Angry at her son’s behaviour, Kerry said she had a short phone conversation with him two weeks afterwards.

Telling him she didn’t want to speak to him, she said goodbye and hung up the phone without their usual farewell.

“He always used to end a phone conversation with ‘I love you, mum’,” she said.

It was the last time she was to speak to him.

On April 13, workmates found his body at the Hunter Valley machinery hire business he’d worked at for the past 11 years.

Early that morning, Kerry said she picked up the phone to hear her daughter on the line, crying.

“She just said: ‘he’s dead’. 

“I’ve never cried so much in my life, I was just howling.

“It’s the most horrible feeling.” 

Kerry said in the day’s after her son’s death, she started looking at online forums in Australia and overseas, finding out a wealth of information and personal stories relating to synthetic cannabis.

“All these stories, deaths ... it was horrible to find out. Reading about that Traynor boy who overdosed in Gunnedah, that scared the hell out of me.”

Kerry said a growing awareness came over her while she was reading similar stories, believing Michael’s use of the synthetic products had tipped him over the edge.

She began an online blog, pouring her feelings out through words and started a petition.

The day after Michael’s funeral, she rang John Laws, saying she was so upset she barely recalled the conversation.

“I know I said to him: ‘I buried my son yesterday ... and I want everyone to know about this problem’.”

A few days later, she walked into the Tamworth store where Michael had bought the product less than a month earlier, asking to speak to the manager.

“I told him ‘my son was addicted to this stuff and he took his own life’.

“I had everything in my head I wanted to say to him,” she said, before emotion overtook her and she fled the store, leaving the man with a copy of her seven-page blog.

Kerry said she believed stockists of the products had a moral obligation to the community, but were motivated by monetary gains.

“Would they let their sons and daughters, their grandchildren smoke it? 

“They’re making a profit on something that costs people’s lives.

“I think they’re as bad as pushers on the street corners.

“It’s greed, pure and simple.”

Kerry said her son had always considered that suicide was a “cop-out”.

“I had no idea he was feeling that way, none whatsoever,” she said.

“He was absolutely against it.”

Kerry said some of her family members had suffered from depression, but although Michael had gone through periods of mild symptoms, he had always pulled himself out of it.

“He’d been through some hard things in life, but he was okay.

“We’d just talk about it and get it out in the open.

“I believe synthetic cannabis was responsible for my son’s death. 

“It tipped him over the edge. 

“Maybe some people can be smoking this stuff responsibly, but I don’t think you can. 

“It’s mind-altering stuff.”

Others have come forward in the weeks since Michael’s death, Kerry saying that friends had approached her, worried about their own children.

“There’s a lot of well-known people here in Tamworth who know someone who this is a problem for, too. 

“I need to talk about it. I want to talk to everyone I can about it. 

“I’ve never felt more passionate about something in my life. 

“I don’t want anyone else’s children dying from this stuff.”

Lifeline: 13 11 14

**not his real name