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Former elite forces fighter Phil Campion seemed perfect to test mind altering drugs to help army veterans – but it turned him into a "20-plus-stone ex-SAS lunatic".
Phil was trained to kill by the best of the best, and spent 15 years in the British army, ending his career as a member of 22 SAS. With researchers finding that Ecstasy could work wonders for combat veterans suffering from PTSD, it made sense for Channel 4’s Drugs Live to recruit “Big Phil” to test out the love drug.
The experiment didn’t go to plan. Most people who have taken moderate doses of MDMA report experiencing euphoria and a general sense of “loving everyone and everything.” It turned Big Phil into a wild man.
After giving Phil a placebo to test that the effect wasn’t purely psychological, the producers handed him a genuine Disco Biscuit. Phil told podcaster Dodge Woodall that the whole experiment was carried out under clinical conditions.
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Find out more about Britain's most feared fighting force by exploring the Daily Star's SAS coverage here.
“They put you in scrubs and all that,” he recalled. “I looked like 10 pounds of s*** in a two-pound bag – It wasn’t my best telly look, it was horrendous”.
Unlike the placebo pill, the genuine ecstasy “horse tablet” had an almost immediate effect on Phil. Within about 20 minutes, he says, his eyes were like saucers. Phil’s wife Wendy, who had come along to drive him home after the experiment, told him “You are f****d”.
But then Phil, who was gurning like a classic Acid House casualty, started “getting a little bit agitated,” especially when it was time for him to have a brain scan to test the drug’s effects.
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“They they put me in the brain scanner – I’m all trussed up – and I called Wendy and said ‘Wendy … these f***ers are taking the piss out of me’. After the experiment, experts told Phil why the drug had made him so “agitated”.
“Basically, because I'm quite an aggressive person, the drug that was supposed to unlock the love was now unlocking the hatred”. Wendy, who knows Phil and his ways better than most, decided it was time to have a word with the show’s producers.
She told them: “Right you've now got a 20-plus-stone ex-SAS lunatic in a brain scanner who's pretty angry. Have you got any security?”
When she was told that there were no precautions in place, she added: “You better go and stand outside. I’m going to try and get him out of here because he is getting f*****g angry”.
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“The thing was coming in waves,” Phil recalled, “so what I think in my own head is that they're pumping more in there … they're taking the mickey”. He says he felt like he was on a rollercoaster.
Wendy carefully removed the intravenous drip from the now-furious ex-SAS assassin and he was taken into a quiet room to calm down. The show’s producers then asked him a few question to see what psychological effect the drug had on him.
I remember one of the questions was ‘What do you think about Wayne Rooney?’ – it was a bizarre question”.
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Phil furiously told the questioner “he’s an idiot, I hate him!” when in reality, he says, “I’ve got nothing against the fella, I just hated the world”.
“The doctor explained to me that you've got gates in your brain. When you open them the emotions go through that gate. So this drug is designed to open up and let all the nice stuff go through the gate”.
But in a former SAS trooper that has been trained to resist any mood-altering chemicals, the effect was not euphoria, but panic.
“It’s opened up another gate now the other way which is the angry gate… all this stuff's flowing into the angry gate and I’m getting madder and madder.
“I call it ‘Battlefield Anger’ – you’re in complete control of what you're doing but you have absolutely no limits on what you do to people”.
Thankfully, Phil has no plans to attend any raves in the hear future.
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- SAS
- Drugs
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