Families of addicts often find out what to do too late. A resource pack aims to change that. Kitty Holland reports.
The shame, the guilt, the fear, the sense of not being able to tell anyone. The isolation.
A distressing sense of powerlessness runs through much of one mother's story about her son's addiction to heroin. The story, which opens a new resource pack for families dealing with this nightmare, makes for touchingly painful but ultimately hopeful reading.
Produced by the CityWide Family Support Network, it is the first such information pack produced by families who have faced drug abuse, for families facing it.
The opening story is a composite of eight families' stories, told by mothers, says Sadie Grace, chairwoman of CityWide.
"We came together to tell our stories and put them together in one, because really the story is almost the same in every family," she says. This mother's story opens bluntly.
"It took us a long time to cop on to what was happening. When your kids are 16 or 17 you make allowances. You kid yourself that it's usual for teenagers to sleep until the afternoon and stay out late. You tell yourself it's normal for them to find new friends. You put their mood swings down to adolescence."
In this tale the mother finds out when the gardaí "first came knocking on the door" telling her that her son had been found on the street, high on heroin. "I didn't really believe them. Not my baby, my boy. It's not possible that he could have been on heroin without my knowing."
She goes on to describe the months of 'awful silence in our house'... the not knowing how to deal with it, the searching for signs but then not really knowing what to look for. "I'd try to get him up earlier. Encourage him to eat more. It was like we were all acting. We thought maybe he'd stopped - self denial is a great thing."
Then the realisation that no-one in the family actually knew anything about heroin, or what to do about it when it took hold of the family.
"And I couldn't tell my friends. I was so ashamed. The isolation and fear is dreadful. I felt so alone... In the end it was him who told us about the treatment options - the counselling, the methadone, the treatment clinics and how hard it was to get into them."
It is nearly always like that, explains Sadie, as the parents initially become almost dependent on the addict for information about the addiction. And there is a danger in that.
"The parent wants to trust the child, to have faith that they can help themselves and all too often the parents are taken in as the child lies, robs and does anything to get the parent off their back. And it is extremely hard for a parent to believe that it's happening."
The resource pack takes the reader through the exhausting process of discovering the addiction, trying to help "sort the problem", the recognition of the limits on a parent's power to "sort" it and the eventual realisation that they cannot sort or control it - that responsibility has to be given to the addict, that only they can sort it.
"At this stage of acceptance the family can begin to think about how best they can support the drug user living in the home or outside the home."
It points out that while so much energy is focused on the addict, other members of the family often are neglected, and indeed the parents themselves need emotional and other support.
In the mother's story she tells how her 10- year-old daughter said at one stage to her: "What do I have to do to get any attention round here, start smoking heroin?"
The pack also guides users through the typical addict's journey towards deciding to stop taking drugs - from contemplating giving up, to deciding to, to giving up and probably relapsing, which the packs warns "can be more devastating for the family than the initial discovery".
And with this honest, ugly depiction of life with an addict, there is the practical. It gives detailed information on the health implications of drug misuse and a section, with pictures, on the different drugs out there - including ecstasy, cocaine, solvents and LSD.
And crucially there is an 18-page directory, with contact details for family support groups and drugs task forces throughout the State along with numbers for useful groups working with such diverse groups as people suffering with depression and grandparents affected by drug use.
The mother depicted in the pack tells how, due to exhaustion as much as anything, she realised she had to "let him be - let him take responsibility". And she found out about her local family support group.She learned about addiction and regained a sense of control over her life and even an ability to laugh again, she says.
For further information and to get a resource pack, contact Sadie Grace or Philip Keegan at the CityWide Family Support Network on (01) 8364849.