I was about 18 was the first time I smoked cannabis, I didn’t really enjoy it, but because I started a new job, I wanted to fit in, so on a night out I felt I had to try it. 

I didn’t really like it much, but I had some anyway, and that was it really. As time went on I had a few more here and there and I got into a point where because my life seemed to be “boring” I just used to get “wasted” all the time with mates and I never even noticed myself getting …

Hello Debra, I just caught you on GMTV this morning.  My son started cannabis at the age of 14 he is now 27.  He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia when he was 17 and has been sectioned under the mental health act on 14 occasions.  I believe it was cannabis that triggered the illness i firmly believe that.  He is such a loving and warm deep person and we have such a bond but when he becomes ill it is so devastating.  I have lived a life of what I call my live of a constant grieving process.  When you …

I’m sitting here in my office trying not to let my colleagues see the tears in my eyes after reading your diary. They are tears for you and your family and tears for what happened (and could have happened) to my daughter and to our family. So much of what you write strikes a chord that I don’t know where to start. With the bright, clever and loving schoolgirl, a talented violinist, who once told us she couldn’t live without her ballet? Or with the demented and depressed teenager, who had given up on life, who was often incapable of …

Hi my name is jay; I also have a son who is hooked on skunk; it also started when he was 14. He was a bright teenager doing well at school when he started smoking cannabis. It quickly escalated to the stronger skunk. We noticed money missing he denied it was him we also had to drop it because we had no prove. Then his brothers wallet went missing he blamed his friend who was in the house with him at the time. Three days later I found the wallet under his bed minus the cash. I knew then it …

I read your diary in the daily mail this morning. I have just stopped crying – My beautiful son Matthew started smoking cannabis at, I believe, about 13.  All through primary school he was a lovely, happy little boy. The decline began when he started at our local Secondary school. It’s reputation was and still is abysmal, but there was nowhere else for him to go. If I could sue the local education authority for a life ruined by them, I would.  At 13, he became involved with a paedophile step-parent of a fellow pupil. This went on for at …