A Mother’s Story
Please note: Names have been changed to protect the identities of those involved. Some readers may find the content triggering.
Hello. My name is Sarah. X months ago I lost my only child to addiction. He was 30 years old. I am obviously sad, but I am also furious that this disease took him. As part of my healing I am here today to tell you our story. I need this message to educate, give insight, and remove the stigma around addiction.
My son Dan was a very much wanted IVF baby and was very precious. He attended Primary School and met all of his milestones. He was a really sweet little boy and we were very close. He was reasonably good although he was prone to tantrums a lot. Even then he seemed unable to control his emotions. At Primary School he was considered to have “special needs”, he was partially deaf ,and he struggled to read and write. When he was 6 we had him assessed and he was diagnosed as being mildly dyslexic. Years later I think he also has ADHD. He found concentrating difficult, he was always losing things or forgetting things and his room always looked as though a bomb had dropped in there. At 9 he asked to have guitar lessons and it transpired that he was an excellent guitar player, learning by ear and singing. He often performed and was at his most comfortable when on stage. He shone up there. But, back to the story.
Once he started Secondary School his troubles began. He found school difficult and as a result was excluded a few times, which he thought was great.
When he was 12 a friend told me that Dan and her son had been smoking cannabis together. I has no previous experience of drugs (apart from alcohol) and went into a complete tailspin. Dan was grounded and chaperoned everywhere, however, this was to be the start of his journey. Friends he had known since Primary School disappeared and were replaced by people similar to Dan. He spent almost every school day walking the streets of Rickmansworth with his friends.
Dan quickly began using alcohol heavily when he was 17 or 18. Empty bottles and cans became the normal for me, often hidden and sneaked into the house. Alcohol was stolen from local shops and ourselves and money began to go missing. I would often confront him about his drinking, but he would tell me to “fuck off”. Under the influence of alcohol he was horrendous. He would not keep the noise down, spat at me, broke my finger and put his bedroom window out in temper. I was frightened to go to bed because he would start cooking and making noise so I began to sleep on the sofa, waiting for the inevitable kick off. One night he spent the whole night taunting me and calling me names whilst throwing food at me. Another he poured red wine all over my walls and another, whilst I was trying to film him, he put my phone in bleach. But it was the verbal stuff as well. That really hurt. The language, the blame, it was all my fault. By the time he was in his early 20s I had to call the Police a couple of times to have him removed. Once it took 2 Police officers to wrestle him to the floor to put hand cuffs on and remove him. He would simply ring me the next day and demand I pick him up from the Police station where they had taken him.
He also struggled with relationships.
He was terribly cruel to others as well. Under the influence he would call one of his friends to call them names etc. Girlfriends were treated horrendously, he would break their things or lock them up. Once he beat a girl so badly that he was arrested. Thankfully she didn’t press charges. Another he stole his girlfriends car and drove at 107mph on the M25. Thankfully COVID struck shortly after this event so the Police dropped the prosecution. So Dan escaped jail but by now was out of control. I walked on egg shells around him. I was very frightened of him. I remember hiding knives and scissors and sleeping with my purse under my pillow. Nothing was safe, I even feared for my own safety thinking he might murder me during the night whilst in a rage.
And so this was the story for many years. I meanwhile hid it all from my family and some of my friends. People who I knew would judge both him and I.
One day in 2016 I came home from work. He had been in his room all day and didn’t respond to me when I shouted “Hi”. I went up to his bedroom and he was unconscious. I rang 999 and he was blue lighted to Watford General where he was placed on life support for 3 days. During that time he was unresponsive. The doctors and nurses were not particularly nice, wasting good NHS resources. I asked them to do a toxicology test and was told there was no point. He was either going to make it or he wasn’t, simple as that!. I mentally arranged his funeral and tried to work out what to say to people. I did also think though, “surely if he survives this it will be his rock bottom and he will get well”. He woke up on the third day and it was a wake up call for a few days, but it didn’t last.
Eventually, in his mid 20s he decided he needed help. He started attending AA groups and then agreed to go to residential rehab for 28 days. I remember the relief of knowing he was safe and was able to sleep at night. He came home after 28 days but soon old behaviours were rearing their ugly heads and he relapsed. A few months later he joined an evening rehab group and that was when I learnt that he was smoking heroin. My world shattered once again - people who use heroin die for Gods sake, I thought
Dan struggled to stay clean and began using anything for a hit, Xanax, codeine, opioids, anything he could get his hands on. Money started to go missing from my bank account again. By this point I was constantly finding foils in his room. He didn’t even bother to hide it anymore.
He went back into a residential rehab in 2019, only to leave 3 weeks later and land back at my door with his belongings in black bin liners. I had been in therapy myself at this point and somehow found the courage to tell him that he was unable to stay. I didn’t see him for 3 days. On the fourth day he arrived looking dirty and dishevelled. He said that he had been queueing at a church for 4 hours for a panini. That very day, a friend who he had made at the evening rehab rang my doorbell sensing something was wrong. We made several phone calls and got him a place in a residential centre in Birmingham. I asked him to hand me his phone and told him that if he stepped foot outside of the house he wasn’t welcome back. I also paid for some heroin as he was in a very bad way. If you had said to me 30 years ago, “you will buy heroin for your son” I would have laughed in your face. But I did it to keep him alive until he got to Birmingham. The following morning, at 7.30 that same friend drove him up to Birmingham and checked him in.
The next 18 months were bliss. Dan got clean and well. He worked the programme and eventually moved into a dry house. He made some good friends and would often visit me. I hardly recognised him, he would bring gifts or flowers, he would be polite and respect my boundaries, he always looked so well and seemed do happy. “That’s it” I thought “He’s cracked it”.
18 months later, in August 2022, he arrived back on my doorstep. It seems that he had left the dry house with a girl. They had both then relapsed and the girls mother allowed her home but wouldn’t have Dan. And so the old habits crept in pretty quickly, almost immediately in fact. He began isolating and stopped attending meetings. He hated me and the world, and I hated to see him like this. I got the Local Authority involved, and as he was deemed vulnerable they gave him a flat. I furnished it and made it as comfortable as possible. He hated it. He was once again using, although I didn’t know what, and at least it wasn’t under my roof.
One of his friends from Birmingham had moved to London and in August 2023 told Dan about the charity helping him. Dan, off his own back, completed an application form, was assessed and accepted and on the 25th August 23 he left the flat and went to London. I had to sort out the flat and remember crying when I saw it. It was a shit hole and lots of the things I had bought him were no longer there.
Anyway, I got over that and sorted out the flat. Meanwhile Dan was once again working the 12 Step programme and was clean. He visited a couple of times and once again looked fit and healthy. In October 23 he moved into a dry house, so no more curfews although he still had support.
I last saw Dan on the 17th December 2023 when he visited and stayed over. He was a bit quiet but looked well. He returned back to London the following day. I asked him to let me know what he planned for Christmas. He said he might come up Christmas Eve but then go back to London for Christmas dinner with his friends. I had been poorly the week prior to his visit and he sent me a text every day asking how I was doing. Those messages stopped on the 22nd December.
On Christmas Eve I sent him a message once again trying to establish if he was coming up - no reply. Christmas Day arrived and I felt uneasy so began calling him - each time it went straight to voicemail. On Boxing day I rang a couple of his friends to see if they has heard from him - they hadn’t. That evening I rang the supported housing to raise the alarm. I didn’t hear anything back so I rang again on the following morning, the 27th and spoke to a lady who said they would carry out a welfare check on Dan.
At 2.50 that afternoon two Police officers arrived at my door. As kindly as they could, they told me that Dan had been found dead in his room. That was the day my world collapsed. The Police said that they didn’t suspect anything suspicious but that the coroner was now involved to establish the cause of death. When we finally got the coroners report it had established that Dan had died of an overdose of cocaine and Protonitizene, a new street drug that is 100 times greater than that of morphine and causes respiratory depression. It is similar to Fentanyl and is often mixed with other drugs.
My personal message to you is this: This illness will get you in the end if you let it. It wants to mess with your head, it wants you to isolate, it wants you to not be able to see a future without substances. But there is one. The 18 months Dan had clean were when he was his happiest. He worked the steps, he meditated, he did yoga and he was clean and healthy.
I would like to end by telling you about the real adult Dan, not the addict. Dan was a beautiful soul. He was extremely sensitive but also very empathic and very kind. He just couldn’t transcend the illness. He didn’t believe in himself and his ability. The illness, like an inner critic, always whispering the negative stuff, “you are not enough, you are not loved”. If that inner voice were an actual person I would gladly kill them with my bare hands. Of course Dan was enough, of course he was loved!
The pain of losing him is immense. Please don’t put those that love you through the same thing. At Dans funeral I took the decision to talk openly about addiction in his eulogy. It felt important not to hide it anymore, it felt important to honour him and the illness. As part of my own healing I have decided to talk about Dan to other and to give hope. Please, work the programme, work the Steps. I have met a lot of addicts through my journey and all of them who are still alive have survived because of a programme similar to this and the followship. There really is no other way to keep this illness away.
I was thinking about what Dan might say to you all. I think he would say, “This wont end well if you use, you will lose your life and cause pain to those that love you. It’s a choice really, life or death. Don’t fuck up. I would urge you to grab this opportunity by both hands and embrace it. Be strong, be honest and be open. There is hope.
Thank you for listening.