Happy & Homeless

Yesterday afternoon I received a phone call from my son that he needs a lift to the emergency room, because he cut his hand badly last night and today noticed that there are big chunks of glass wedged deep within the wound which he can not remove.



Of course, as mothers do, I said I would pick him up and take him to the hospital in 20 minutes. I had to know though, how did it happen? He slipped, while walking,  on the wet pavement and he was holding a bottle.

My youngest was not impressed as it was her last day at home from her winter break, her sister had gone back to her school the day before, so today should have been just about her. Not a fun way for an 8 year old to spend her last afternoon of her holidays!

As I pulled up on the street corner, I saw my son a few yards away, smiling and chatting to another young man. He looked good. My son looked to be enjoying himself, fully engaging in conversation, smiling, laughing. He looked like a good looking young man enjoying himself. He looked happy.
My first glance at my son made me happy. Then reality sunk in and I was no longer happy. I was not looking at my nearly 19 year old son hanging out with his class mate after uni, waiting for me to help him do his grocery shopping before I dropped him at his flat where he shares with other classmates....just a nice hypothetical example, one of many "nicer" alternatives to the truth.

I was watching my homeless son, chatting to his fellow homeless mate who was enjoying a can of cider, standing outside the drug and alcohol clinic, waiting for me to take him to the hospital to get his hand stitched up. This was not right. This was causing me a great sense of cognitive dissonance. This was making me feel edgy. AND he was making me wait, because he was enjoying himself!

Upon arriving at the hospital, he tells the true story behind his injury. The day it happened he had gone to the corner shop and stole a can of extra strong cider and a bottle of wine. He then proceeded to the park where he consumed all of the wine and cider. He was, according to him, enjoying himself and got a bit drunk. This led him to want more, so foolishly he went back to the SAME shop and attempted to steal another bottle of wine. He thought he got away with it, but once outside a man from the shop and a guard dog chased my son down the street. This is when and how my son fell and fell with the bottle of wine which smashed in his hand as he fell. The man caught him, and according to my son, dragged him back to the shop by the scruff of the neck. When my son tried to escape his hold, he threatened to sick the dog on him. Once back at the shop, the manager decided there was no point calling the police since there was no longer evidence that he took anything, it was broken and all over the pavement somewhere. They let him go with the warning that he is not allowed to ever enter the shop again.
           
                                        
                 

Having finished his story, he also told me that his hand was bleeding quite a lot after it happened and he wondered around and eventually went into a church that was holding an evening service. When some of the parishioners noticed the state of his hand they were concerned and offered him tissues. After the service the clergyman helped my son with his first aid kit, and everyone was very nice and helpful, though he didn't think the cuts in his hand were a big concern. All the while when he was telling me this, he was calm, relaxed even smiling and chuckling at times.

As he stood by the car door, very comfortable with the fact that he was going into the emergency room to get stitched up, he did not seem too bothered. I told him that I hope this is not the beginning of things to come. He said that it probably is and that he will probably get into fights and such and receive much worse injuries. I drove away sad, worried, and disappointed.

I reflected on our car journey home, how he was telling me, with his young sister in the back seat, how it is actually good being homeless. He gets a room and taxi. He gets fed decent food every night. There are churches that they go and hang out in to get warm and get light lunches during the day. He has free time and he is out doing a lot of stuff, not just sleeping and sitting indoors all the time like he was at home. He has no one hassling him, and the people don't judge and they are nice.

                                           

Right now being homeless, having a shelter with a special night provision, doing your own thing is an adventure my son is enjoying. I hope he gets housed in the supported housing project (that excepted him in early/mid December) has an opening soon, before this adventure turns into a chosen way of life that my son chooses over an improved living accommodation where he would get support with the intention of moving forward toward independent and healthy living. Something tells me once in a house with rules and boundaries to adhere to, he will look at homelessness as the better option for him. I hope my feeling is wrong.

Sunday, Not So Funday

Generally you would think that a weekend in the life of an 18 year old would be busy and maybe you would not see too much of him unless he was hungry or needed some cash to go out with his friends or wanted to borrow the keys to the car.



Things are a bit different in our house, except the not seeing much of my son part, but that is because he has slept most of the weekend away, as every day. While I write this, it is 6:45 pm and he has still not surfaced. We are about to have dinner...hmm oregano chicken and rice for breakfast son?

His weekend has been one of sleeping during the day. Drifting in and out of sleep on the sofa at night while watching TV. He became extremely anxious on Friday night because he was asked to meet a friend and his friends at the pub. He was anxious because it has been many months since he has done any socialising. After taking copious amounts of opium to calm himself down, the plans were cancelled. Saturday he was meant to meet that same friend at 1:30 pm at the park since Friday's planned fizzled out, but my son slept through the day, until his friend was trying to get some sense out of me, but I was not home. Saturday afternoon and evening he spent feeling guilty and anxious about not knowing what to do about said friend because he did not know what to say. I also tried to talk to him about "things" Saturday. Sunday morning he went to bed at about 7:30 am after more than likely falling a sleep for a bit on the sofa. I came down to see that the sofa was drenched in beer because he probably fell asleep with the beer in his hand and eventually spilled it. During the course of the weekend he has had opium, benzos, barbiturates (phenobarbital), quaaludes (methaqualone in the UK), codeine syrup, alcohol, and smoked some substance in his vaporiser. Saturday he never even got dressed. He talked to no one other than me. He did not go out.



So my son does not live alone of course. I am here and so are his two sisters, 8 and 13 years old. Saturday was OK because I had plans to take my youngest to see a friend and her mom for coffee. While getting into the car when we finished we bumped into another friend of mine and I ended up giving her a lift to work and having another coffee and a chat since she got to work so early! It felt good to be out and be spontaneous and share a few laughs and not being at home!

However, I was disappointed that my other daughter would not come, she is starting to get into this, "I don't want to do anything" stage and I am sure much of this is to do with the emotional stresses at home. Once home though, my energy vanishes and my mood changes. I spent some time on the computer and cooked a nice meal, which unfortunately we at in front of the TV because none of us can really face sitting down around the dinner table together any more.

Sunday has been a very lethargic day for us all. I feel responsible for this in regard to myself and my daughters. Can you believe we woke and came downstairs, I saw the wet sofa cushions and the room reeked of beer. I knew my son had just gone to bed so that he would be out all day. I felt ashamed that he bailed on his friend and no contact had been made. I was disgusted by the mess of ground up opium poppy husks and all the mess from his detailed preparations that were still in the kitchen. I knew we had no plans for the day. We were cold and it was grey and dismal outside. My daughters and I sat down, had breakfast and all of us sat like zombies (either playing on a phone, on the laptop, or watching cartoons. We sat like that for 3 hours, I am quite embarrassed to admit that!



No one understands that the atmosphere in the house is hindered by this constant involvement from drugs and the affects it has on us all. We have all become dysfunctional to some extent or another. The mere fact that I know he is sleeping it off all day and has no life, drains me from wanting to do anything. The guilt in me that even if I would try to have a "normal" life with my daughters while he is locked away in his room either sleeping or taking drugs or doing nothing, alone, alienated, excluded is too much for me sometimes. If he was away from home than that would be less of a powerful deterrent to me, but I do not know of course how I would feel if he was no longer here. Much would depend on the circumstances on where he was and how he would be living.

Finally we all showered and dressed, besides my son, who continues to sleep. We did manage to go into town and do a few things. The low mood in the house remains. I feel I should have within my power as a mother, the head of the household, the only responsible adult here,  to shake myself out of it and get energised with outgoing enthusiasm and teach my daughters to get up and lets enjoy life to the fullest....but I am not doing that and it feeds the vicious cycle of guilt.



Tomorrow though, we will get up and start our day fresh. My daughters will go to school, see their friends, enjoy themselves and come home and tell me all about my day. I will get up too and make sure the girls get to school and come home to make my phone calls and run my errands etc and talk to my friends. We will have appointments, training, clubs, meetings etc during the week, thank God! My son....he will sleep. He will start his week as an unordinary teenager which will be exactly the same as his weekend.

 I know my blog posts can vary from being contemplations to informative to just venting, so I hope you all bare with me if my posts sometimes seem to be random at times, but like the life we are living with an addict our lives and thoughts are on a roller coaster and maybe so to are my blog posts at times!

And if anyone is interested in some of what my son is taking, names some of you might not be familiar with, here are some links. Most bought on the internet. Many times disposed of by me, but always replaced by him, often after the stealing the money from me to do so.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methaqualone

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbiturate

Tolerance

Today I was thinking how and when my son's drug problem began. I suppose his drug use started to become a "problem" when he was 14. I could see the evidence and the drugs in his room. I would search his room when he was in school and dispose of the drugs I found. I could see that he looked high in the morning and I would search him. I found drugs in his backpack at first, then in his pockets, then in his sock, in his trouser cuffs, in his hat etc.. I would plead with him not to be doing this, and I warned him if he would get caught at school he would be in big trouble. While he popped pills and smoked dope at school,  it amazes me why it took the school so long!

A day after his 15th birthday my son and his friends thought it would be a good idea to celebrate with a little smoke of weed at school. My son brought in a wooden hash pipe, his other friend brought in the weed. So at break time they thought behind the P.E. building would be a good place to have a little birthday smoke. Along the way they bumped into another "friend" and the three of them proceeded to smoke weed at 10:00 am at school behind the P.E. building!

I believe that my son's behaviour at school, arriving looking high, unmotivated, falling asleep in class etc, more than likely set off the warning bells and the staff were probably keeping an eye on him, just waiting, waiting to catch him in the act one day.

That they had come. The boys got caught. They threw the evidence in the bushes and the third boy ran.

The boys got excluded for a week and then there was a meeting when I was told that my son was being permanently excluded from school. I remember crying in the headmaster's office begging him not too!

This is why I am wondering, as I did then, is zero tolerance on drugs helpful or is it actually counter productive? I live in a zero tolerance area of the country and there is no conversation when any drug use has been committed by a student, on or off campus...the student will be permanently excluded from school. No consideration on the student's school record, mitigating circumstances, possible personal difficulties, nothing will be enough to keep the child in school.





I think that a zero tolerance on drugs is wrong. It does not stop people from trying, experimenting, using, or becoming addicted to drugs. It is not some all powerful policy that it will  scare people into not doing what, to me is a temptation in life that most of us succumb to at least once in our lifetime.

So in a zero tolerance drug policy within a school, if a student smokes a joint for the first time, or if a student is a regular drug user, or if a student is a drug addict all would be treated in the same manner. This to me is wrong. Only if the student was a proven seller of drugs to other students on campus, that is a different can of worms. The school should investigate not only the incident, but also look into what may be happening to cause any stress in the student's life. They should consider if there are any mental health issues as well as looking at academic record, attendance, social functioning. Of course there needs to be some consequences to the drug incident such as a temporary exclusion, especially if it happened on school grounds, but drug education and counselling should also be given in addition to some extra support for the student and family.

In my opinion making a teenager an outcast and excluding them from their school, their social structure, support system, their home away from home, is just wrong. It will contribute to feelings of social and personal alienation and feelings of low self esteem, which the teen might already be suffering from. This isolation and rejection could possibly be a stimulus for more drug use and perpetuate the problem rather than help it.




In my son's case I truly believe it was the beginning of his downward spiral. He was permanently excluded and while I fought for his unjust removal, the local authority had to provide him with so many hours a week of education. That meant attending a "reform school" (pupil referral unit in the UK). It was a horrible place and after our initial meeting there I said that I want my son to receive at home tuition. I was not going to send my son to a centre in which the teacher could not teach because of constant violent outburst etc..The staff agreed it was not a place for my son.

We received  home tuition with 4 different teachers coming to our home to teach my son in 5 subjects in place of the 10-12 subjects he would be learning in school. I went to the Head Teachers, I went to the Board of Governors, I appealed the decision and took them to an appeal hearing twice. I researched the laws and educational guidance on policy making, I spoke to people in the Local government, I spoke to the Young People's Commissioner, the Young People's Drug and Alcohol Services. I got my son counselling. I had letters written to vouch for my son's character. I disclosed the home situation as well as my father's recent death, all of which affected my son's well being.



It took a year, but in a county of zero drug tolerance, we WON! It was almost unprecedented, with only one other case many many years ago, but we WON! It was a short lived victory because the damage was done. My son had lost his friendship groups and fallen behind in his studies despite some home tutelage. He was indeed excluded from everything and his anxieties started and grew. The school made it difficult when he returned and it was not an easy process at all.

So, who does a policy like that help, no one who will fall off the straight and narrow, not even once...and in my opinion, that would include the majority of teenagers.

Attitudes towards drugs and who takes drugs, really needs to change. We can make that happen!