A man accused of trying to throw his girlfriend off an 11th-floor balcony after smoking synthetic marijuana pleaded guilty yesterday to attempted assault.

"I ingested something that was my own doing. And I need to be at fault for that," Bryan Adam Roudebush, 23, said in Circuit Court yesterday.

First-degree assault carries a maximum 10-year prison term. Roudebush was facing life behind bars with the opportunity for parole for attempted second-degree murder. However, under the terms of a plea agreement, he will be sentenced to five years’ probation, including a jail term of 55 days which he has already served.

Circuit Judge Glenn Kim also lifted Roudebush’s bail and granted him release to a substance abuse treatment center pending sentencing in October.

Honolulu police said Roudebush beat his 25-year-old girlfriend April 2, then tried to throw her from the lanai of their Ala Wai Boulevard apartment.

The synthetic marijuana Roudebush smoked before attacking his girlfriend is a mixture of herbs and spices sprayed with chemicals similar to THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. The mixture is known as "spice," "K2" or "herbal incense."

There was no state law regulating K2 until Aug. 1 when the state Narcotics Enforcement Division temporarily added the chemicals used in K2 to its list of controlled substances. Lawmakers would need to amend state law in the next legislative session to make the classification permanent.