Making the changes

It’s been an active couple of weeks. The initial meeting of the Talking About Cannabis Action Group took place in London on Friday, and in the two weeks leading up to it I was very busy making preparations. But we are now launched, all of us in the steering group determined to push for the investment in a ‘massive health education campaign’ that was promised but has never materialised. I remember the AIDS campaign in the late eighties, every household received a leaflet through the door warning of the problem, and ‘safe sex’ became something that everyone was aware of, almost immediately it seemed. I think we should do the same for raising awareness about ‘skunk’ –  we are in the middle of a cannabis epidemic and everyone needs to take it seriously. We also need to be teaching children from an early age about the dangers of the stuff, and we as a group are going to look at the most effective way of doing this.

Education about cannabis is central to the whole issue. The knock-on effect of young people taking this so-called ‘soft’ drug on health and on crime must be obvious to everyone, but not enough people are taking the problem seriously. That needs to change.  Young people are the future of every society, and need protecting. They are not in a position of sufficient maturity to make their own decisions about drugs, they need to be guided by sensible adults so that they can reach adulthood in good mental health.

Sadly, this is not the case for my own son who has just rung me saying he is walking around the streets with nowhere to go. He has left the football course he was doing, and I begin to wonder whether he ever went along at all. Knowing what is lies and what is the truth is one of the most challenging things about William.  When I got back from the meeting on Friday, tired and slightly concerned about Lily, our new puppy, who had been on her own for a couple of hours, William rang on the door. What I really wanted to do was to kick off my shoes and sit down with a cup of tea, but it seemed that wasn’t what was planned for me.

In the ten minutes since I’d been in, I had already noticed that Will had obviously been in the house that morning, whilst I was out. Jack must have let him in. I knew he’d been there because a stick of his concealer make-up was left open in the bathroom, and the computer in his room was on. My first thought was that my jewellery had not been locked away – oh, no. But my bedroom door was locked. Jack must have had the presence of mind to lock it when his brother arrived. Unfortunately though, he had taken the key with him, so I couldn’t get in there.

Placing my handbag over my arm, I would now have to take it round with me, usually I lock it in my bedroom, I started to chat to Will – how was he, how was the course going? I asked Will if he wanted to sit in the garden. Breathing deeply, I put the kettle on and made a cup of tea – my friend in everything. I’m drinking too much caffeine and not eating properly, the old refrain starts to ring in my head again. Opening the cupboard I take out the McVities chocolate biscuits - delighted there are any left. The link with my mum again, I begin to catch myself wishing she was here.  

It’s warm, and the garden’s looking good in the sunshine. As we sit down I can feel a heaviness start up in my neck, and try to relax. Will begins talking about how he needs to give up cannabis. He’s looking relaxed, his eyes are clear- always a sign that he is off the weed. Last week he’d come over to the house saying that he had been feeling desperately ill, he had had a virus of some kind. He’d told us that while he was lying in bed with no-one to look after him, he’d realised a lot about his drug dependency and knew he needed to quit cannabis.  I began talking about the drugs counsellor who he had seen a few times, encouraging him to go back to her, and I also mentioned again the Marijuana Anon meetings that I’d thought sounded appropriate.

‘So, when are you going to help me with the web-site and get involved with helping other people, then?’ I began saying.

‘Yeah, well, yeah. Of course, yeah, I’d like to. Think I could be good at that too. You need to get them young, though. All this talk of drug-testing in secondary schools – you’d have nobody left over the age of 13’.

We talked about the possibility of us putting workshops and presentations together for schools, and I looked at Will at that moment and hoped that we were on a new pathway, possibly together, something I had always believed would happen, it was just a matter of when.

One of the people who had been at the meeting that morning, Karen Richardson, who is a drugs counsellor and workshop leader, had asked myself and another mother who was there, if our sons would like to earn some money by giving talks to children on their experiences of cannabis addiction. I told Will about this, we had already talked last week about the possibility of this happening – I’d been so pleased that he may be able now to work with me. Now here was another opportunity to get involved. Will immediately called Karen.

I smiled to myself, and wondered if there might be a happy ending to the Cannabis Diaries after all, or indeed whether I might soon have nothing to write. Guy had said to me after Will had gone after last week’s visit that he was glad I’d decided to write the Diaries.

‘Maybe it’s a matter of ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ for him now’ he said, smiling. 

We both laughed.

‘Dare we think this time, that he means it do you think?’

I tell Will what his father had said and he smiles saying that that was pretty accurate, and that he hoped I’d stop writing altogether. I know it’s been hard for him to have his story published on the net, but I also recognise that he has chosen to modify his behaviour, that much is obvious, knowing that I may write about it in the next few days. It’s the only control we’ve had for a long time! I’ve also always said that it is his gift to write the end of the story.

We talked for an hour or so, with Lily playing around us, and I began to feel tired and wished he would go so I get some time alone. He seemed to be reluctant to leave and I asked him if his claim for housing benefit had been processed and if he had received any notification.

‘Yeah, well that’s a problem and my landlord is at the house at the moment saying that I need to pay him his money. I’ve given him half of this week and now I have nothing left.’

So, he needs money. But we have had a sensible conversation and he’s been well-behaved and seems to be drug-free. I also need him to go now, my eyes are closing as the emotional tiredness kicks in. So, I suggest that I pay his rent for another two weeks, up until the end of next week, so that we don’t alienate the landlord, which is a pattern with Will. We really don’t want to be having to find him somewhere else to live.  His new place is cheap and close by (an advantage for whom I’m wondering now). Most of the times that Will comes to the house it’s when he doesn’t have money, but our relationship with him has been that way for many years. But with him living elsewhere, I feel I can cope a lot better. 

I write out a cheque payable to the landlord. He asks me if I can sub him with some cash until he gets his giro next week. He tells me that he hasn’t been able to sign on, due to doing the football course, so his giro will be late. I sigh, and tell him that signing on has got to be a priority – why are things that are so obvious to everyone else so difficult to understand for him? Then I remember the research about the mental processing difficulties that go with skunk addiction that I’ve been reading. There is the problem of only looking at short-term gain, the inability to plan even for a few days ahead, or to construct goals for the future, and the lack of insight to learn from mistakes that keeps addicts repeating the same nightmarish patterns. There is also the issue of getting cash for drugs, once that’s gained other planning just doesn’t happen.

We didn’t see Will again over the Bank Holiday – another pattern, once he has money we don’t see him again until he’s run out.

He came over yesterday and I asked him if he had run out of cash.

‘You always think I’m here only for money, don’t you. What the hell sort of parenting is that?’

‘Will, I’m asking you because often that is the case.’

He takes a piece of paper from his pocket. I’ve seen one of these before – a whole bunch of them last week on Friday when he came over to see me after the meeting. They are print-outs of jobs from the Job Centre, I begin to wonder if he thinks these bits of paper placed on the kitchen table are the passports to me shelling out cash.

‘I’m going for this bar job, I’ve got an interview but I need money to get there. I can’t do the course anymore cos | need to find a job’ he says.

When Guy comes in he tells Will that he’s not going to sub him any more money.

‘You need to sign on in time, every time there’s been a problem with you getting your benefit, it always seems to be late because you don’t get there on time. You need to sort the housing benefit too, we can’t afford to keep bailing you out, it’s not good for you either. I don’t mind buying you food, but I’m not going to give you any more cash.’

Will’s not happy about this, and returned this morning to plead with me. I asked him to leave, I don’t like feeling besieged in my own home and I’m on the verge of asking him not to come over uninvited. He rang me this afternoon to say he had nowhere to go, and no money, no credit for his phone, the list went on. I listened, but didn’t invite him over. It’s confusing because last night whilst he was here I asked him if he wanted to write something for the web-site, and he sat down and wrote his current view of cannabis which is a negative one, and included his plans to quit. I almost wonder now whether he was doing this so that I would agree to give him money. Today, Wednesday, is the day he normally goes up to college to play football with the team, and I know he went last week even though he’d been expelled, which seemed odd. So, maybe he was hoping to go again today, hence the story about going for an interview. I wouldn’t be surprised – it’s happened many times before.

You never know, though, when someone is going to begin making the changes that they talk about. I’m delighted that he wrote the piece for the web-site, that in itself will have concretised, even if only for that moment, what is in his thoughts and that action by itself can be the precursor for change.

© Debra Bell 2007