Hi Danman83,
The question “how did it start?” for my son is one I can’t answer. He was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time in the company of the wrong people. Unfortunately my son had always been one of life’s followers never a leader. Easily persuaded, easy to manipulate & coerce. I’ve always tried my best to teach him to be his own person, to stay out of trouble and when the need arises say “no” but unlike his sister he has always got himself into scrapes right from being a little boy. His sister has always been a little more guarded with her life and she has a strong sense of what’s right or wrong. My son hasn’t. Very easily led and from what I know it started with the one spliff and has escalated every since. My son is at his happiest when all is right with his world. A slight hiccup and he ‘escapes’ into his drug fuelled haze and each time its dragged him lower and lower into the pits of his addiction which causes more ripples and problems (debt, unpaid rent, move after move to different flats etc). He cannot sustain or rather doesn’t feel inclined to do a job. He has pursued so many new hobbies and interests only to become disinterested. There is no longevity with anything he does as he swings from one awful situation to the next. He’s had a full medical team and his little family there to help him. He had readily accepted that help only to turn and give ‘the finger’ to us all and carry on. His drug support team tried, his rehab professionals (so far) have tried but still he carries on, refusing to engage and returning to the bosom of his dealers and his drug fuelled existence. And that’s it in a nutshell, an existence. I find it difficult to understand how any addict could want this rather than screaming out “no more!” but I’ve got to the stage where I know he’s got to reach the decision himself to stop and to embrace the help that’s being offered. So sadly more and more doors are closing and I fear for his future and his very life. Appealing to my local MP achieved his placement at a top rated North West clinic last year and as I’ve mentioned before once he went through detox, counselling etc he looked wonderful 2 months later. Happy, smiling, lucid, chatty. I had my son back! Only 2 weeks after release ( having been set up with a furnished flat and a support network) he relapsed with an almighty BANG! Wow the fall back into his life of drugs was rapid. He refused to go to his support network, CPN, family, everyone. Last Christmas he disappeared for 10 days over the holiday. I don’t know to this day where he was. I was inconsolable. I rang everyone who knew him, hospitals, police, the prisons even the mortuary at one point. Eventually he put a note through our door saying he was sorry but he had relapsed badly. His latest absence lasted 2.5 months without contact until he surfaced again the other week.
If I could I’ve have him sectioned under the Mental Health Act but he’s (a) an independent adult and (b) doesn’t present as being ‘ill’ enough (more brilliant play acting by my son when the need arises).
I would love for him to be in long term residential care – safe, fed, away from drugs and suppliers but that’s never going to happen. He doesn’t self harm and seems to just about eat enough to sustain himself but little else. He has slipped the net and has become another sad statistic. The help is there but he has to show commitment to change and be sincere with that commitment not just use rehab as a “holiday” from his days using. Others talk of reaching “rock bottom” before seeking the help he needs. I think he has more than reached that stage but this desperately sad and tragic life is still preferable to him. So I wait and hope and pray. I can do no more but to always be there (after so many others have deserted him) for him.