Drug Dependency Therapy

I wrote, last week, suggesting ways in which to deal with mischief and destruction. Titled Antidotes To Vandalism, the theme centred on the way in which the breakdown in family and community has on young lives, plus the misuse of the internet creating the sentiment that anti-social behaviour might be considered fun.

Looking back at the manner in which I suggested that this might be overcome, I found myself recalling the devastating drug addiction that plied the life of one of my daughters, and the means by which she was set free. Let me explain.

AN INRUSH OF AIR

It must be the most expensive single purchase I’ve ever made on my own. Undertaken in Tenerife, when my sister and I were holidaying without our spouses, we’d booked up to go on a coach outing titled The Blanket Trip, with the firm assurance to one another that we had no intention of parting with a penny. For those of you who are not familiar with such trips, they are, quite simply, a hard sell in a factory, at the end of a free sight-seeing tour. Of course, I now realise, that had I not put my hand up when the audience was asked if anyone had ever suffered back problems or neck and shoulder pain, I would never have made the purchase. Not that I regret that. On the contrary!

Called upon to be the stooge - the person lying on the pure new merino wool mattress, covered with a merino wool blanket – I ended up singing its praises. Especially when I learned that I had been lying, unknowingly, for forty minutes, on two complete table settings of knife, fork, spoon and large white soup bowls, hidden only by the rug. Buy one? You bet I did! Two, in fact. Independent mattresses for our super-king sized bed.

They arrived by post. Yes. You read that correctly. Each mattress was vacuum-packed in polythene and rolled into a cylinder 3ft long with a diameter of approximately eight inches. First we had to slit the outer plastic cylinder, then the vacuum pack. Instantly, there was a loud hissing noise as air rushed into the void in the honeycomb structure of the mattress. We were all on, then, to remove it from the packaging before it became too tight.

IDENTIFYING THE VOID

It set me thinking. In my book, A Painful Post Mortem (a true story, written as a novel in order to protect the identity of those concerned) one of the characters, Claire, having lost her daughter, Katya, to drugs, is mulling over an article she has been asked to put together for a professional journal. Whilst travelling on the train home, she ponders what she has learned. Here's a quote from the book.

Uppermost in my mind is a concept I once shared with the student daughter of a friend. With her parents overseas, she turned to me to ask for advice on whether she should join the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

‘What do you hope to achieve?’ I asked.

‘Well – obvious isn’t it? Nuclear disarmament.’

It seemed to me, I told her, that too many campaigns were waged against things, and too few for alternatives.

‘You can’t stamp out the dark,’ I said. ‘But you can try to shed light.’

Staring out of the carriage window, Claire realises that in the past she has had to apply this same philosophy to Katya when she came home to convalesce after a spell in hospital.

‘Tell me why you started?’ I asked her, sitting on the side of her bed one morning. ‘Why anyone does?’

She gave me a variety of answers: escapism from unhappiness at home; a sense of belonging with others of the same ilk; the initial euphoria and gratification.

‘Just because it’s there,’ she finished.

It set me thinking. Simply removing the drugs was like trying to stamp out the dark. It was a negative. Like weeding a garden but doing no replanting. Or clearing a house of squatters and leaving it empty for others to move in. Useless! Helping Katya, or anyone to kick a heroin dependency, I realised, had to be three-pronged. Because the problem, itself, has three aspects to it. Physiological. Psychological. And practical.

‘You start by thinking that drugs are something you can use, or stop using, whenever you want to,’ Katya told me. ‘You believe you’re the one in control. But before long you realise that, actually, it’s the other way round. The drugs are controlling you. They take you over. And pretty soon you realise that they’ve taken over your life.’

Then Claire recalls observations made by her husband, Richard.

It isn’t difficult to see that procuring the money for the next fix filled the hours of Katya’s day, she thought. To leave the vacuum that Richard identified is untenable; a naïve expectation equivalent to assuming that there will be no influx of water in a holed submarine. Over a period of days, I became convinced that in order to deal with the physiological dependency it was crucial to plug the twin holes of psychological and practical need. Before they imploded!

‘We need to help Katya to find her sense of fulfilment and belonging elsewhere,’ I told Richard, in bed one night. ‘She needs structure; a programme of activities to fill the empty hours of her day.’

‘And her hands,’ he replied.

‘And her mind.’

‘So what you’re saying,’ Richard propped himself up on one elbow, ‘is that the whole business of finding money for the next fix; building and maintaining a relationship with the dealers; buying and taking your fix – all that is a structure, in itself. One that we need to replace with another.’

‘Exactly.’

FILLING THE VACUUM

Which is what put me in mind of what worked for my daughter (I'll call her Tammy). Having grown up in the countryside, she had discovered, as a child, a love of farming. Helping a neighbour with lambing and shearing, she'd found her forte. Not that we would have known during her adolescence! 

Years later, my eldest daughter, having married a farmer, way up country from where we lived, then asked her sister to help with lambing. Having suffered an accident, her husband was unfit, and she, being pregnant, was told to go nowhere near expectant sheep, as this could cause her to have a miscarriage.

Little did we know then that this was to be the remedy for Tammy's dependence on drugs. None, it appeared, were available in the area. More to the point, however, was the fact that, like the mattresses I'd acquired, Tammy's life was no longer an empty void, which she'd attempted to satiate by taking drugs. Instead, it was now filled with purpose, pleasure, family and fortitude. Moving on from all that had gone before, she remained close to her sister, put herself through college, and graduated. It had to be God's doing!

Realising the need to fill this vacuum in the lives of today’s youngsters - if we are to have any hope in keeping them off drugs, and away from the criminal element of society – a friend of mine set up a business long ago. Having links with other charitable concerns, and with some pro Motocross riders, boxers and skaters, the idea was to introduce children to extreme sports; to fulfil a normal adolescent yearning for risk and thrill with an adventure: something wholesome and character-building.

‘We showed that cultivating an interest during the early stage in life, helped people feel good and achieve goals,’ said the founder, Matt Walton. ‘The whole thing was about promoting lifestyle to kids from difficult backgrounds, children who suffered from low self-esteem, kids who were unfit.’

Adopting the moniker A lifestyle for life, the concept retained a cool image with its young members. It may not have suited everyone, of course, but for those for whom it did, it was an answer.

Another friend, Martin Harris – a professional actor and musician – launched a project titled Unleashed Theatre Company. Open to all, the aim of the Drama Group and Choir is to help the homeless, those with addictions, and others with mental health problems. Here's what Martin had to say during an interview.

“As an actor and musician myself, I was passionate about the creative arts and knew how creative skills can empower people to feel a sense of accomplishment, self-respect and achievement whilst also developing techniques that can be transferable to practical interview and social skills.”

When the Royal Lyceum – a theatre that Agatha Christie used to attend – was donated to them, they won an award for a short film, The Rich and the Pure, created during lockdown.

Like the mattresses I purchased, these projects continue to fill the void in many people's lives, bringing them comfort and purpose. As are the charitable events I linked to in my last blog post: They are all well worth joining. A pity blanket trips are all I can manage these days . . .