May 2009

Last Friday William and I spoke at a conference in Buckinghamshire, organised by DrugFam, the charity set up by the author Elizabeth Burton-Phillips. As I drove over to collect Will, I began looking back to when I was merely thinking about setting up a web-site about cannabis to support other families. I realise suddenly that Elizabeth’s name was there from the beginning.

One chilly October evening in 2006, at a fortieth birthday party at the Avenue restaurant in St James’, I had talked to another guest – Baroness Joyce Anelay – about my (very) embryonic plans. I explained that I had only an unclear picture of what I was going to call the web-site nor what exactly would unfold from there. I remember making it clear though that I needed to do something, as a family we had no support with our teenage son’s increasing addiction. We had just excluded from the house again and were nearing our breaking point. In my frustration I was intent on doing something to raise awareness of the effects of teenage cannabis use, unable to fix my own family’s situation.

Over the clatter of plates, cutlery and ever-escalating voices (how come these places are never conducive to talking?), I just managed to make out an invitation from Joyce to tea at the House of Lords, saying I should meet someone she fondly called Freddie – who turned out to be Earl Howe. He had a special interest in mental health, she explained. She said she would also talk to the MP Humfrey Malins about me, and I should see him too. He had written a recent report on cannabis for the Bow Group, which had been well received.

We arranged to meet for tea in a few weeks. Over a cup of tea Earl Howe handed me his business card after writing the name and email of a woman who had taught his children, and who he said had recently lost one of her twins to heroin. He recommended I call her. He said that she was setting up a network to help other parents, and that she was writing a book. That woman was Elizabeth Burton-Phillips.

Now 3 years later, I was speaking at one of Elizabeth’s drug conferences. We have met many times before, our paths crossing almost immediately after my tea with Joyce and Earl Howe, when I met her at a conference on drugs at Wellington College. She was giving an absorbing speech about her family’s experiences with heroin addiction. I had been asked to speak about my family’s experience with cannabis.

Will had rung me at the beginning of last week to confirm he would come to Elizabeth’s conference with me.

‘Really?’ I say, frowning. ‘Are you sure? Great, thanks. That’s wonderful. I don’t think we’re on till just before lunch’

‘Hang on – what do you mean ‘on’, you want me to say something?’

I stop myself saying ‘Well of course I do!’ I find it hard to be forthright with William, I’m so used to him changing his mind, his mood, his behaviour, within seconds. I’ve been programmed over the years, through experience, to expect mood swings and erratic behaviour from him. I can hardly remember a time when that wasn’t the way he operated.

I still can’t get used to him being more stable now, and that inability to trust is often played out in our meetings too. More often than not, when we meet as a family, something is not right. Either he hasn’t got the gift he promised one of us, or he will leave very quickly after we’ve eaten, needing to be somewhere urgently (normally work, but sometimes a friend who needs to see him, or both of the above).

‘Well, look’ I say into the phone, that familiar agitation rising in my throat, ‘Elizabeth’s asked me to talk about Tough Love – about our story, how we excluded you and the positive results for all of us. Be great if you feel you could say something from your side, but if you don’t want to…….’

‘Right. Oh, didn’t realise. Okay, well that doesn’t sound too bad. But I’m coming okay, that’s set in stone then’.

This last sentence was said as if he needed to be able to say those words – like a test he was setting himself up to pass. ‘Set in stone’? I’m still surprised by the phrases he comes out with, something different virtually each time we speak. As if he is catching up with what he’s missed out on in spending such a long time with his mind clogged with skunk. Come to think of it, that’s almost certainly what must be happening. Phew.

I’m pleased he’s coming. A big part of me prefers to present our story together, I’ve got used to him adding his thoughts and insights, otherwise it’s just one side of the story. Will also is very good at speaking publicly, remarkable considering it is about his own pain and guilt. I think it is pretty much of a miracle that the two of us can give these presentations.

I also want him to come in case there are some people there who may be hostile to me. If you have been reading these Diaries you will know that I have had some difficult interactions recently with my ex-colleagues at the TAC charity, since I decided to step down from running the show. I don’t think I’m ready to speak in front of any of them. Not yet. So having Will there will be helpful.

In the past week I have received hate mail – well hate emails actually, from people who I’ve never heard of before and are not on our list of contacts. They refer to conversations that have taken place with someone who has worked closely with me recently, and refer to my ‘greed’, ‘lies’ and ‘inhumanity’ to my son, among other major insults. The mails upset me, as they were presumably meant to – or alternatively they were being used to vent anger and I’m being too sensitive. They are unpleasant and I’m not sure what to do about them, apart from keeping a file of them in case I need to refer to them. They are threatening legal action too for things I have not done. Feels like I’m under siege.

I’ve had scores of nasty emails in the past – mainly from legalisers or dope-smokers who email me, usually in the small hours. Those mails are never well-written; they look like they are knocked off quickly with many spelling errors. These emails I’ve received since I’ve left the charity are from educated people. They are all well-written in their use of language and content, with a style so similar that they all could be from the same person. Now there’s a thought. I shall wait and see; in the meantime it’s good to have a chaperone for my first speech in public for some weeks.

I am always slightly nervous about meeting Will, but it is an emotion that I am getting used to. I considered we should take the train out to Buckinghamshire, but we need to be there at 9.30 am. If I want him to go with me, I’ll need to drive, picking him up first thing, which is what I do.

Early mornings are not good for Will; there was one instance weeks ago when we were both going to the BBC early one morning, in separate taxis. His taxi driver radioed mine to say he was at Will’s address but there was no sign of William – his phone was switched off and there was no answer to the doorbell. And nothing I could do. He answered the door after 10 minutes or so, after which my breathing returned, after having disappeared briefly.

I ring him now from my mobile when I reach his flat. His phone is not switched off this time, it is ringing confidently.

‘Hi darling – I’m here. Can I come in? – I really need the loo’.

‘I’m with someone, so it’s a bit difficult’.

‘Oh, okay, I’ll have to wait till later then.’

I am standing at his door in the rain. Okay, don’t get upset, it’s difficult for him and it’s only 7.30 in the morning, and his girlfriend, who I’d like to meet, is there. Anyway, we just need to get on our journey– I can stop on the motorway and also get a cappuccino. (I realise I’m smiling at the thought that there may be a Costa’s – who is the addict round here anyway?) Shush. Coffee helps, okay?

He comes out fifteen minutes later, wearing a beanie hat against the rain.
A vivid memory of when he was first born comes in; all the babies were wheeled out of the delivery rooms in their perspex cots with little cream cotton ‘smurf’ hats on their heads. We are going to be definitively late in getting to out to Bucks, but he’s here. He gets into the car. His eyes are a clear bright blue, checking them has become a habit. It is good to see him, but I realise I’m hoping he won’t be wearing the hat when we speak at the conference, and ask him about it. He tells me he still hasn’t had chance to get a hair-cut so needs to wear it, but looking over at me removes it anyway which makes me smile.

I remember Will saying, after he too had received a considerable amount of hate emails from cannabis users angry that he had been speaking out about his experiences, that he wasn’t going to make excuses for what he was now expressing about skunk.

‘I tell people – I’m doing this for my mum, and if they don’t like it then they can just go away. It makes me upset, yeah of course, but I’m not doing it for them.’

And here he was again, doing something for me. That’s good, and I would never have believed it possible a year ago.

He spoke well at Elizabeth’s conference, but wanted to leave at the lunch-time break.

‘I need to get back, I’m working later.’

‘Okay, well what time do you start?’ I had been looking forward to chatting to the others there.

He’d been promoted to bar manager recently, he’d told me a few weeks ago and said now that he could choose when he went in that day, but he wanted to get back at the latest around 3 pm. I’m uneasy around him talking about his job, so many times in the past he had said he had a job which had proved untrue. Although we know little about the year in his life when we were didn’t see him, we presume this time that he must be working otherwise he could not afford to rent the flat he had, which was a new conversion and not inexpensive.

He rang me the next week for a chat. I was lying down in our darkened bedroom when Jack handed me the phone. (‘It’s Will for you’). I’d heard the phone go in the study next door, and then Jack saying his usual ‘Oh, hi man, how are you? Yeah, fine, it’s all good.’

I had been struggling with my continued ‘divorce’ proceedings from the charity, and talked to Will about my shock in having to separate myself from something which had been most certainly ‘my baby’. One of the worst things, I whined to him, was that hundreds of names had been deleted from our central database, presumably having been copied first. I couldn’t believe how anyone could be so destructive; especially as one of our volunteers had only just cleaned the list, which had taken weeks. I had noticed the names had gone almost immediately after I had resigned, and secured the remaining names and addresses so that they could not be removed. It meant, though, that I wasn’t able to email all our supporters to tell them I was leaving, and some of these people had been the first to contact me back in 2007 when I began.

I got the list back, ironically, from a supporter who forwarded an email she had received with all the email addresses showing. Whoever had used the list had not ‘bcc’d’ them before sending. It made me smile. There is a theory of the universe that all things return to their source – that everything is on one big loop – with the symbol of the circle exemplifying this. Time is not lineal, therefore, but circular, with no ending and no beginning, eternality in motion.

I was talking to Will about my feelings of loss, and my incredulity at the way things had turned out between us at TAC, when my original idea had been to help support families who were struggling with a cannabis user in their midst.

‘The thing is that I’ve had so much loss in my life, and this whole experience of losing something I’ve been so personally involved in digs deep into me, and hurts so much. I can’t stop thinking about it. These people I thought were my friends. My whole life seems to have been about dealing with loss, my mum and dad and then you, and I don’t know whether I can do this again now.’

‘I really think you need to embrace what happened to you, in your life you know’ Will began saying, movingly. ‘I know it’s been awful, but you need to look at it like it’s a gift maybe rather than a handicap. It’s pretty unique to lose both your parents when you were so young, but that makes you what you are and you are really strong. I know you’ve always said that you didn’t know anyone who had the same experiences as you, and that made you feel weird, but maybe that’s what makes you different. In a good way. It’s like you get your strength from beyond this world. It’s incredible. When I first saw you in the papers talking about me and cannabis and everything, I asked myself if everyone was in the newspapers these days! But they aren’t and I thought – how did she do it?! I couldn’t work it out and neither could my friends. I don’t know how you did it, but you made a real impression and I really think you’re better off out of the charity now. It’s hurtful the way you lost the mailing list, like something teenagers would do to get at each other, but you got the names back so it’s all good. You’ve got to move on now. You will always be the one who came out first and started talking about cannabis in the way you did, that’s not going to change.’

We talked for around an hour, and I could feel peace returning to my unquiet psyche, which was trying to cope with the huge changes in my life. One minute working with a team of people, with virtually no time to myself and on the verge of exhaustion, and the next minute feeling such isolation. Attempting to make sense of the rapid turn-round of events was not easy. We were as a family, too, still coping with the changes around Will and our exclusion of him. And yet now it is so obvious that Will wants to put things right between us, which is remarkable, and I’m grateful. So much.

‘You know in basket-ball in the States’ Will was going on to say ‘the players have to move on after a short time and play with another team. They aren’t allowed to stay with one team too long, even the big stars. It’s the same with you, you need to move now, and although this is not what you wanted, and it’s being forced on you in a way it’s got to be the best thing in the long run.’

Sports metaphors again, often William will relate football to life. He often talks about how hard young players need to reach the top, how focused and disciplined you need to be, and how that applies to us all. And having goals too to aim for. I hadn’t heard him talk about basketball before, and here was a fascinating analogy. Moving on? We discussed the fact that a week after I had resigned from TAC, I had been offered a book deal for the Cannabis Diaries.

‘Yes, exactly, your writing – you’ve got to look forward now – to your book, which will potentially help many more people than before, it could be huge. I’m writing the beginning bit aswell, so no-one can say anything about you exploiting anyone like with the Myerson guy. Things are going to be fine. Believe me.’

Then something made me tell William about an advert for a car that seemed to leap out at me from the huge bill-boards around the airport, last summer, on our way back from Gatwick after a holiday in Sicily.

‘It was an advert for Mercedes-Benz’ I began saying ’A massive photo of their new saloon car – with an unmissable slogan that read something about beauty and power no longer being mutually exclusive. I saw the ad in a magazine, later, and it was about real power, that if you need to prove you have it then probably you haven’t. It read something like ‘Real power is not about adolescent ostentatious display, real power should be effortless’ and then at the end it said ‘But them I’m biased, I am Mercedes-Benz’. Fast, powerful cars often catch my attention in the street, not because I want one just that I can relate to them, like symbols. But I’ve been thinking about this ad again recently, like it can help me at the moment.’

In the middle of my saying all of this to Will, which came out in a jumble because this was the first time I’d spoken about it, I could hear him virtually jumping up and down on the other end of the phone. He began laughing; I’d obviously touched on something important here.

‘Mum! Do you know who did the ads on TV for that? Did you see them? Mum, it was Eric Cantona!! Remember him, came over from France to play here, first to wear his collar up, – he had a hell of an attitude, a spiritual guy too, and he was just right there, a hugely powerful figure and he didn’t care who said what about him.’

Will went on to tell me about him: the scrapes he got into, strutting about on the pitch, sticking out his chest – the exclusions for assault yet coming back stronger then ever. His own person, standing in his own power against adversity, even in a foreign country. And a great sportsman. An appropriate image of strength and power.

Courage, passion, self-confidence and standing up for what you believe in all add up to real power, maybe. It’s not about egoic reactions and arrogance, but the confidence that comes from having sufficient knowledge about yourself, warts and all. Then it is that we have the opportunity to attain mastery over the baser instincts which we all have, even gaining insight into what our individual purpose is. Not forgetting the heart, that limitless reservoir of unconditional love that each of us owns and is a birthright. All of this enables you to be able to stand there, stick out your chest and say ‘This is who I am’. Then, despite what happens in the outside world, and who does what to whom, you will always have a chance to remain at that central point, yet travelling forwards, even in the acutest pain, in the adventure we call life.

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