Kate’s story - cannabis and her son
Scrawled in thick black pen and pinned to my son's bedroom wall were the words: 'I don't want to feel like this -- make it stop.'
I took my once lively teenage son Guy to the GP. A week later, he saw a psychiatrist. I waited nervously outside. When he called me in, nothing could have prepared me for his words:
'Guy is displaying psychotic behaviour, brought on, in all probability, from smoking cannabis.'
I was shocked. Alarm bells rang in my head – my son was a junkie. How had we, as parents, allowed this to happen? I couldn't believe a supposedly harmless drug had done this to my son.
But as we were to find out, the damage was already done.
Guy withdrew completely and two weeks later he overdosed. He was admitted to a Mental Health Unit. Every day I visited him and he would often talk to the air.
'It's the voices,' he said, tapping his temple. My blood ran cold.
After two months, Guy was discharged. He tried to lead a normal life. The thought of mixing with people frightened him and some days he would not leave his bedroom.
I was constantly on stand-by in case something happened. The son I had nurtured was gone; there was a shadow in his place.
Guy took himself off the tablets and was signed off psychiatric care. Six months later, thinking he was on the mend, Guy smoked a joint. It sent him spiralling into another depression.
The doctors advised us that he would need lengthy treatment. One day, after his doctor’s appointment, I dropped him at home, but I couldn't rest easy. Something was telling me to go back. The house was eerily silent. I called Guy's name.
Guy had hanged himself from the bed frame with a scarf.
His face was pale and his eyes bulged. Guy was brain dead by the time he reached the hospital. The only thing keeping him alive was a ventilator. The next day, my husband and I made the heartbreaking decision to turn the machine off. An hour later, he slipped peacefully away.
I find this painfully hard to believe. ''my son was a junkie''
If this story has even a shred of truth in this story, it sounds like the mother doesn't know what the fuck is going on, and is just being spoonfed bullshit by the rehab clinic and psychiatrist. Maybe i'm just too cynical, but this all seems too melodramatic to be true.[/quote]
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