The man (21), whose parents requested for them to stay anonymous, went to the Snotkop performance at the Kosmos Festival at Kees Taljaard stadium on Friday.

Thereafter he asked his dad to show him around Middelburg. The man works for a mining contractor where they are regularly tested for drugs and alcohol.

He has only been in Middelburg for a couple of months and has not found the time to socialize.

The trio went to Amazons where the men had a beer each. Shortly after 11:00 they decided to leave because it was getting crowded.

They went to Die Gat.

The man’s stepmother said that she, her husband and their son danced for a while. They left when he started acting strange.

“He slammed his beer on the table. My husband thought he was drunk.”

On their way to the car, their son came running past them and disappeared around the corner. When they got to the corner, he was gone.

“We drove around for almost an hour looking for him. We eventually found him standing next to the road in Koets Street. There was a car that had stopped next to him.”

A resident came across the young man on his way back from his nightly patrol with the radio group. He recalls that it was after 01:00 and he noticed the man because of his strange behaviour.

“I asked him if he was okay. He said that he was f*cked out of his mind and didn’t know where he was. He kept holding his head.”

The man did not want his name mentioned.

He said that the boy spoke perfect English. His body language seemed like that of someone who was extremely drunk.

“The two did not fit together. I realized something was wrong because although he seemed drunk, his speech was not impaired. He seemed really scared.”

When the boy’s parents arrived, they tried to convince him to get into their car. The boy kept on saying that he does not know them.

With a lot of convincing he climbed in. Soon after they drove off he became claustrophobic. In the process he yanked off his watch and threw it out of the car yelling: “They will find this when they search for me!”

He managed to open the car window and jumped out. Both his parents and the man who discovered him the first time searched for him after he disappeared into the dark.

They traced him running down Oos Street in the direction of the Nkangala College. He collapsed on the lawn of someone’s house after his body just could not go any further.

“His heart was beating like a steam train when we got to him. I was afraid he was going to have a heart attack. His face looked like he had seen a 110 ghosts at the same time.”

The boy started crawling on the ground, clawing the grass in fear.

“We struggled for a whole hour to get him to calm down. In that time he must have gone through six different emotions. In the end he crawled up his father’s leg and started crying like a baby.”

They managed to get him into the car and took him home. His rescuer followed to make sure everything was okay.

“His pupils were very small. At home, everything from the dogs to the plants amused him. He passed out on his bed. We couldn’t go to the hospital because he had no medical aid. I didn’t want him going to the provincial hospital.”

The man, who claims to have expert knowledge of drugs and helps addicts in his free time, says that he is convinced someone spiked his drink with LSD (acid).

“All his actions point towards a mixture of LSD and alcohol. They don’t mix well. If he had finished that beer he probably would have died. If it was eyedrops or Rohipnol he would have passed out and not run around like a madman.”

The next day the boy woke up with a splitting headache and no recollection of what happened.

He told his parents, and the man who came to visit him later that day, that the last thing he remembered was walking through the smoke machine when he came out of the bathroom. After that he said his hearing started to shut down.

The man is back at work. He still has headaches, three days after the incident.

His parents, who do not have money to take him for expensive blood tests, are hoping that his next drug test at work, scheduled for early next week, will shed some light on the matter.

“I thought he was going to die. I have never seen anything like it in my life. Thank goodness for the Good Samaritan who was there to help us.”

•The owner of Die Gat, Vanessa de Bruin, said that she did not have any knowledge of the incident.

“I am very strict about who I allow to enter. Numerous youths who come here from other joints have been refused entry. I do not know much about drugs because we do not have those kind of people here. But I can clearly see if someone is under the influence of something other than alcohol. Those types are not allowed here. As I understand he was found wandering in the streets. What I cannot understand is why his parents did not rush him to hospital.”