LONDON — Prince Harry admits in his new memoir to taking cocaine aged 17 but says "it wasn't very fun", according to Sky News on Thursday.

The experience appears to have come after his father, King Charles III, took Harry to a drug rehabilitation clinic to meet recovering addicts, when he was found to have been drinking underage and smoking marijuana.

At the time, the revelations earned him the nickname "Harry Pothead" in the British tabloids but Charles's actions were widely praised as responsible parenting.

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Sky News said it had obtained a copy of Harry's book "Spare" ahead of its publication next week after a Spanish version mistakenly went on sale in Spain.

"Of course, I had been taking cocaine at that time. At someone's house, during a hunting weekend, I was offered a line, and since then I had consumed some more," Sky quoted him as saying in the book.

"It wasn't very fun, and it didn't make me feel especially happy as seems to happen to others, but it did make me feel different, and that was my main objective.

"To feel. To be different. I was a 17-year-old willing to try almost anything that would alter the pre-established order.

"At least, that's what I was trying to convince myself of."

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By his own account, Harry had a hard-partying youth after losing his mother Princess Diana at a young age and credits his wife Meghan with helping to settle him down in his 30s.

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