[belle]

it’s been nearly 3 yrs since i lost my son to heroin , he was just 24yrs old and had everything to live for …
in 2005 my son came to me and told me he was using heroin , i was mortified if only then i had known what a very long heart wrenching fight it was going to be,at first he was smoking it and i was pretty ignorant as to how addictive it really was , i thought this was a phase or maybe i just chose to be ignorant to it, later on that year he came to me and asked me for help i could read the pain in his eyes as he said “mum i am a addict” we went to a drug councilling group but his appointments were months apart and during this time he became more and more dependant , he began stealing from us , shoplifting and eventually ended up in prison, as harsh as this may sound when he was in prison i felt relieved at least he was safe in there away from this evil drug ,
unfortunatly when he was released he began to inject and life just became a whole lot worse he became a different person but still i could see my son in there fighting to get out, people used to say to me why dont you walk away you have to be cruel to be kind he steals from you , this is easier said than done for one he is my son for 2 i could never hate him he hated himself enough ,
its a well known fact that addiction is a illness , but people have a hard time buying this , they believe this is something that the addict chooses to do and they are singled out and often abused in the street , my son was atacked by gangs many times during his journey to hell , i will not make excuses for addicts but there hell is here on earth ,
eventually my sons addiction became worse and he was having to shoplift on a daily basis as he could no longer fund his addiction on petty theft alone .
once again he was sent to prison this time for a lot longer than before and he asked for help and was 100% determined to stay clean , he wrote me such positive letters and was looking forward to seeing his daughter who was just approaching 2yrs old
he wanted to be a dad to his baby girl and i knew then this was the turning point in his life.
upon his release i went to meet him and we spent a fantastic day together talking and remebering his life before heroin took over he was great he looked great and was so positive , he had appointments with organisations related to drugs and had a support network , we had nearly 3 glorious weeks with him and he seemed to be really sorting his life out although he seemed to be really lonely , he lost most of his real friends when he was an addict and most of them were not ready to trust him again , so he spent most of his time with his sister and his nephews and neices
then he dissapeared my daughter spent hrs looking for him ,
when i finally got a phone call it wasnt one i will ever forget
my younger daughter was screaming down the phone that her brother was in hospital my stomach was churning yet i was so calm , in the few yrs he was an addict i became used to the idea that maybe one day i would get this call , however when i reached the hospital nothing could have prepared me for what i saw, amongst the tubes , wires and machinery lay my darling son in a coma , the doctors told me he had been found in a flat and by the time the ambulance and paramedics arrived he had been dead for 25 mins , they worked on him for ages and finally he had breathed on his own but during this time had suffered numorous heart attacks and a cardiac arrest , they put him into a coma and cooled his body slowly then warmed him back up in the hope of getting some brain activity and possibly saving him from some severe brain damage if he woke up ,
unforunatly he never did we were asked to agree to switch his life support off at 2.25pm exactly the same time he was born , we agreed and he passed away peacefully , he took my heart with him , his post mortem results showed he had large amounts of heroin in his body …he went back to his only freind , despite all the heartache and pain i hope he knew how much he was loved and how an irreplacable gap is lft in my world , if only the addict could see how much they are loved , if they could see themselves through our eyes , then there daily lives may not be the hell they live through …….

[rose]

I concur with Star’s thoughts expressed above. My daughter survived the same story path as your beloved son. You did everything you could. Remember the happy memories. Thank Goodness you have your other children. Love Rose.

[Author]

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