{"id":5291,"date":"2009-11-11T22:32:48","date_gmt":"2009-11-11T21:32:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/?p=5291"},"modified":"2009-11-13T13:04:31","modified_gmt":"2009-11-13T12:04:31","slug":"classic-blog-experience-of-a-mother-of-two-young-heroin-addicts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/2009\/11\/classic-blog-experience-of-a-mother-of-two-young-heroin-addicts\/","title":{"rendered":"Classic Blog: Experience of a mother of two young heroin addicts"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n[This blog, first posted on 20th May, 2009 has had over 1100 visits]
\nWe found my 20 year old brother dead of an overdose. He had just kicked the habit so tolerance was low. He started a job and the first payday was his last.
\nMum wrote this after I got clean. Copy and use it anywhere it can be of use.
\nWhat is it like being the mother of an addict?
\n(Experiences of a mother of two young heroin addicts)
\nSheer horror! I just could not exaggerate the chaos drugs cause in a family.
\nIt sort of creeps up gradually, after the disbelief that it really can\u2019t be happening to your boys. You think that it is something that only happens to other people\u2019s kids. You know, the type that don\u2019t have any parental control.
\nWell, all of a sudden, it\u2019s your turn to be judged. You just know that everyone thinks that you must have been a bad parent. You even jump on the bandwagon yourself and keep asking yourself where you went wrong, with a long list of \u2018if only\u2019s\u2019.
\nBut the real hurt comes with watching the ones you love and have cherished turning into the low life everyone despises \u2013 even they themselves.
\nYour heart breaks as they become a physical wreck: thin, gaunt, grey, full of cigarette burns they didn\u2019t feel, with only two things on their minds. Where to get the drugs, and how to pay for them?
\nThe realisation doesn\u2019t come all at once and it takes a while before the stealing from your purse begins. But it is inevitable \u2013 even though you\u2019ve convinced yourself that they wouldn\u2019t do that to you.
\nFrom then on, the inconvenience of having to hide every penny starts. Not just because you don\u2019t want to lose your money, but because you don\u2019t want to become part of the problem by financing their habit. You can\u2019t even give Christmas presents in case they sell them to buy drugs (not that Christmas will ever be the same again).
\nThere is so much lying, scheming and deceiving that it is impossible to know the truth or to believe anything. Obviously, you cannot allow drugs to be taken in your home; so with the threats of them being made homeless, come all the promises of giving up, and you just have to believe it, because what else can you do?
\nGiving up on them does not seem like an option.
\nComing off heroin, they need a lot of help to have any chance of success, so they now become a full-time job. You feel yourself withdrawing from the outside world and dreading visitors calling, while they \u2018cold turkey\u2019 on your couch and leave the fires on all night, and burn holes in your furniture \u2013 surrounded by bottles of pills to get over the withdrawals, most of which are also subject to abuse.
\nThen of course there\u2019s the naltrexone (which is your only weapon to stop them taking heroin) \u2013 but it\u2019s not long before they develop several ingenious ways to hide it, spit it out, or some other way to look like they\u2019ve taken it and put you off your guard. Always one step ahead!
\nYou live in a constant state of stress, trying to catch them out, wondering which drugs they might be taking, always hoping your suspicions are wrong. But sooner or later the needles and paraphernalia start to appear and you know you\u2019re going round the same old cycle again.
\nThere\u2019s something demonic about the whole thing; the thought of your son sticking a needle full of poison into himself is excruciatingly painful. You just wonder: what has happened to my family, my life?
\nYou feel too ashamed to tell anyone and so you become very isolated, fearful and helpless. Then \u2013 just in case you had a little pride left \u2013 you (and probably all your friends) see your son begging in the street. Your child, begging? Can it get any worse? Unfortunately, yes.
\nThe most horrific part of it all: the overdosing.
\nNow you watch your son on the point of death, wondering whether the ambulance will arrive in time, trying to keep him alive in the meantime, watching him turn blue, and the life trying hard to leave the worn out, abused body.
\nAfter regular arrivals of ambulances outside your house, you start to leave the house by the back door. And just when you are starting to get complacent about the whole thing, you are hit in the face by the reality of a dead son.
\nAnd while you grieve for your precious one who lost the battle before he\u2019d barely got into it, the other son is stealing your money to buy more drugs. The dead brother, the near-death experiences of his own, seem to have no impact at all.
\nSo afraid that he will die, too, we go looking for him, and find him, and drag him out of public toilets, but he goes off anyway. Maybe that\u2019s the only way he can deal with the situation.
\nA few more overdoses down the line and I\u2019m completely neurotic about leaving him in the house, for fear of coming home to a corpse: it\u2019s been too close, too many times. I have to come in slowly, listening for a noise, or for evidence of signs of life \u2013 too scared to look properly.
\nOnce I came home to find him tangled up in the telephone cord \u2013 followed shortly afterwards by an ambulance and the police, who had presumed he\u2019d died while calling 999. Another time, while fighting for life, a loud, shrill, almost inhuman noise was coming from him although his mouth was clenched shut. That was the time the ambulance crashed on the road just before arriving. Of course, he was oblivious to all this trauma.
\nEvery time he left the house it was a worry. It seemed a bit na\u00efve to trust him even though I really wanted to. Always on your mind is \u2013 is he getting drugs? Where has he got the money? Will he overdose and die? Then the cycle starts again, the cold turkey, the getting better and then back to the drugs again.
\nWe wanted to help him stop so badly, and in the early days we really thought that if we could keep him off the drugs for a couple of weeks the habit would be broken. We tried shutting him in but he escaped through a very small upper window (that\u2019s how thin he\u2019d become).
\nIn desperation we\u2019ve followed, chased, begged, threatened, bribed, but nothing ever seemed to make a difference for long. To us, he was a sick child, but really he was a grown-up with free will, so we were helpless. All we could really do was provide a safe environment for the times when he wanted to try and get better, and swallow our own heartbreak and anger.
\nNext came the hope of going to rehab. This created its own tensions with trying to get funding (we didn\u2019t know there were any free rehabs then), getting a place in the detox at the right time to go on to a room in the rehab, and hoping that he would not go off the rails in the meantime.
\nWhen it finally all fell into place it was a relief beyond imagining \u2013 only to have our hopes dashed again when after months of waiting, he only stayed a few days.
\nGiving up still wasn\u2019t an option, so after getting funding again and his returning for three months, things were at least improving for a while, and we were all getting a much-needed break.
\nHe left early and relapsed, however, but had a few more attempts at rehab. Although he never completed much of the program there, they certainly seemed to help \u2013 even though (until the last time he went) he relapsed every time he left and usually overdosed before he got back home.
\nThinking back, I know I underestimated the power of the drugs, how evil they are \u2013 the hold they have and how difficult it is to get off them. The personality change and the times he let us down, seemed almost out of his control.
\nA turning point came when he reached a new low while injecting crack cocaine. I had always thought my money was safe as long as it was on my person, and that he would never hurt me, however much he was under the control of the drugs \u2013 but things changed.
\nHe prised my bag out of my hands while I was screaming and begging him to stop. I was hoping something would click in his mind and he would realise what he was doing, but he just had a blank look in his eyes. I was absolutely devastated.
\nFor the first time, I felt frightened of him, and called the police, hoping they would find him before he got more drugs \u2013 knowing that that was where he was headed. But they didn\u2019t know where to look as there were too many dealers in our small town.
\nI didn\u2019t press charges just in case it was a one off, and thank God, it was. It was the turning point in his recovery and for us. I knew everything would have to change after that: a line had been crossed and everything would have to change one way or the other.
\nI think, looking back, it may have been the best thing that happened \u2013 his real recovery began here \u2013 but it didn\u2019t seem like it at the time.
\nI\u2019m so thankful we didn\u2019t give up on him \u2013 but most of all I am so thankful he didn\u2019t give up on himself.
\n(S. died of a heroin overdose in 1999, aged 20; T. has now been clean for nearly a year and is rebuilding his life)
\nPS. Where was God in all of this? I can\u2019t write this story without mentioning the strength God gave me when I most needed it. It was the times when I really thought I couldn\u2019t take anymore that He really helped me through, sometimes by using other kind, helpful people and their prayers.
\nOne person in particular was like a gift from God. Also I believe it is only by a miracle that I still have one son alive. God kept on giving me hope in what seemed like a hopeless situation, but then that\u2019s what God is like. I just can\u2019t imagine how those without him cope.
\n\u201cThis beautifully written and moving piece of writing can also be found as a pdf. Mark has asked us to use it wherever it might be of use. So please copy and pass on to other people. It may help someone else.\u201d DC
\nSource: Community Blog Wired in to Recovery. Nov.2009<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[This blog, first posted on 20th May, 2009 has had over 1100 visits] We found my 20 year old brother dead of an overdose. He had just kicked the habit so tolerance was low. He started a job and the first payday was his last. Mum wrote this after I got clean. Copy and use […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-parents"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5291\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}