A young father who plunged 300ft from a cliff to his death is believed to be the first Briton to die after taking the new legal designer drug 'Ivory Wave'.
Michael Bishton, 24, was pulled from the sea by fishermen off Whitecliff Bay near Bembridge on the Isle of Wight on Saturday, days after he began taking the mind-altering drug.
His body was found just as his girlfriend discovered she was pregnant with the couple's second child.
The chef had been suffering paranoid delusions after buying the drug - which is being openly sold as 'soothing' bath salts for £15 a packet.
The drug - also known as Ivory Coast or Purple Wave - brings euphoria but the high is followed by hallucinations, paranoid delusions and acute agitation that can take three days to wear off.
In recent weeks, dozens of young people have been hospitalised nationwide after dabbling in the drug.
It has been dubbed the new Miaow Miaow, or mephadrone, which was banned this year after being linked with a string of deaths in the UK.
Mr Bishton's mother Tami said that he appeared depressed on Thursday night and claimed he was going to see his doctor before vanishing.
He had been suffering from paranoid hallucinations after buying Ivory Wave on Tuesday.
'He thought people were trying to get him and he was running around with a pool cue, trying to protect himself,' said Ms Bishton, 42.
'I tried to stop him taking any more but he bought some again while I was at work.'
'I cannot believe you can simply walk into a shop and buy something that induces madness for £15, which is nothing these days.'
His girlfriend Sammy Betts, 21, had just found out she was pregnant with their second child. Mr Bishton leaves behind his 14-month old daughter, Alesha.
Ms Betts posted a message on Facebook on Saturday which read: 'Does anyone know where Mickey is? Just found out I'm three weeks pregnant.'
Hours later she and Ms Bishton had to identify his body. He was found wearing his favourite England shirt and had suffered major injuries.
Police are probing his death but it is not known whether he deliberately jumped or accidentally fell from the cliff.
'I never got the chance to tell him he was going to be a father again,' said Ms Betts.
'He would have been so excited, pleased and happy.'
She said Mr Bishton had recently lost his job due to his drug-taking.
'There was a big change in him when he took these drugs.I saw him acting madly three times. He would be running around thinking people were in the house and talking to people that weren't there.'
A spokesman for Hampshire Police confirmed a man's body had been pulled from the water by a fisherman at 2.20pm on Saturday.
'A post-mortem examination to help establish the cause of death will take place in due course. The death is not being treated as suspicious at this time,' the spokesman said.
'Police are preparing a file for the Isle of Wight coroner.'
Six people were admitted to hospital in Cumbria last week after it was believed they had used the legal high drug Ivory Wave.
Many of those taken to West Cumberland Hospital in Whitehaven were suffering with extreme agitation and visual and auditory hallucinations, said North Cumbria University Hospitals NHS Trust.
Last Wednesday, police seized 'numerous' substances including Ivory Wave when they raided four addresses in Whitehaven and Workington.
Two Whitehaven men, aged 55 and 29, were arrested on suspicion of supplying class B drugs and then bailed as tests were carried out on the substances.
Dr Kate Wilmer, consultant cardiologist at West Cumberland Hospital, warned the symptoms witnessed were 'much worse' than the effects of the banned drug mephedrone.
She said: 'People are coming into the hospital in an extremely agitated state with acute paranoid psychosis. If you try to give them anything to help them, they are convinced you are trying to harm them so we have had to completely knock out two or three of them in order to treat them
'All have had a very fast heart rate so we have been monitoring them in the critical care unit for about 12 hours. The drugs are getting out of their system but it is taking two to three days for the agitation and psychosis to wear off.
'I have never seen anything like it, it is really awful.'
She added the initial symptoms shown could be the 'tip of the iceberg'.
'What we don't know is whether this could cause long-term psychiatric problems for these people,' she said.
No similar cases had been reported at West Cumberland Hospital before last week and none have so far been seen at Cumberland Infirmary in Carlisle.
A trust spokeswoman said: "We had another five cases at the weekend but we were better prepared at how to deal with them and all of them were later released to undergo home-based care."
Police issued their own warning following the arrests by drug squad officers last week.
Detective Inspector Jason Robinson, of West Cumbria CID, said: 'What these incidents show us is that young people in west Cumbria are continuing to put their future and their lives at risk by taking drugs.
'We know that many so-called 'legal highs' often contain class B controlled drugs (such as mephedrone and BZP) and the risks and consequences of getting involved with them are serious.
'People wrongly assume that a substance is safe because it is currently legal, which couldn't be further from the truth. The fact is that people who take substances like Ivory Wave are taking serious risks - no-one knows what the drug is mixed with or the long-term effects that it can have.
'The only safe option is to avoid drugs and legal highs altogether.'
NHS Cumbria's director of public health, Professor John Ashton, said: 'As with all so-called legal highs we need to be careful that we don't concentrate too highly on one specific substance. Instead, we need to get the message across to people that taking drugs of any kind, whether illegal or so-called legal, is a risk.
'There is no regulation for either illegal drugs or legal highs so people do not know what they are taking, what chemicals they contain and/or what effects could be. The ingredients and strength of each substance can also change from batch to batch as drugs are cut differently.
'We need to educate people of these dangers so they can make the right choices. One of the most important messages we must get across is that it's vital that if anyone does take a legal high or illegal drug is that they should not mix it with any drug or substance, particularly alcohol, as the consequences cannot be predicted.'
