Ben Diary of A Heroin Addict - A Mothers Fight

Chapter 5

As I have already said, Ben was desperate to leave home but his GCSE results were poor and he didn’t want to go into the 6th form so he got a placement in Birmingham that only lasted twenty four hours before he landed back home again. Within a week or so he managed to get on a printing course at a college in Leicester. Because of my job working in social housing, I was able to help get him a Housing Association bedsit which was little bigger than my kitchen table!

Ben completed the one year course and got a job as a silk screen printer with a printing company in Leicester. This was in the days before mobile phones and computer networking sites so communication was sparse. Occasionally he’d phone and we’d write to him. Mike probably paid him a couple of visits on route to somewhere with his work but we had no reason to think it wasn’t working out for him. Then one day, I had a phone call at work from his company to say they hadn’t seen Ben for a week – did we know what was happening? I was trying to get hold of Mike when Ben walked through the door, soaking wet and thinner than I had ever known him. He’d also dyed his hair blond but that’s not relevant. He was shaking and visibly upset. “Don’t make me go back Mum, I can’t go back, please don’t make me”.

 

What was his problem? Ben only ever told us what he wanted to tell us and I know he didn’t always tell us the truth so we just had to accept what he said which was “I’m lonely, I have no friends, my bedsit has been broken into and my radio etc. stolen, I’m scared there” and so the list went on. I think they may have been thieves with taste, however, because they didn’t take his record collection. I think the truth of the matter though was that he was drinking heavily and possibly had started smoking cannabis, if he hadn’t started already, and maybe unclassified drugs were now in the frame.

Obviously we couldn’t make Ben go back to his job in Leicester and, with the state he was in, we really didn’t want to send him back and so he came home. The first of many times he’d retreat back into the safety of his family. He was not yet 18.

He was with us then for the next three years and a chaotic time it was with three different jobs, two run-ins with the police, a suicide attempt, a six month spell living with his newly married brother, Sam, and his wife, Jayne, in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and the start of his first real relationship. All three jobs were with printing firms, the first two lasting no more than twelve months and the last even less, just a few weeks. I remember he went off to work as usual to this last position which was situated on the other side of the potteries, possibly a 16 mile journey, when the phone rang. Ben had got so far and then had just frozen, he couldn’t drive any further he was having a panic attack. Mike had to go out and get him. That was the end of that job.

This I think was the first sign of the mental state he was getting into. From then on until he died he suffered from anxiety, depression, paranoia, panic attacks and sleep deprivation – all a result, I believe, of his drugs habit.

Mike and I were at our wits end with him and I came home one day to find him taping up his car in the garage in order to gas himself. He cried, oh how he cried – enough tears for us to paddle in. What were we to do but to call in our doctor who immediately got him a bed in St Edward’s, the nearest hospital that dealt with mental breakdowns. Ben went in offering no resistance but he didn’t get much further than assessment because he walked out a few days later saying “they’re all mad in there”. This coming from someone who had scratched a cross into his forehead!

We had two weddings in the family in 1990. Sarah and Phil were married in Alton in July and Sam and Jayne in Lancaster in August. Joyous family occasions, or they would have been if Ben hadn’t been such a worry. Sarah’s wedding day was glorious weather wise. The sun shone and family and friends gathered to celebrate in our church which is just around the corner from where we live. We have walked that short walk several times over the years. We followed Steffi’s baby son, Joseph’s, tiny white coffin. Joe had died of a cot death and Ben was to have been his Godfather. We have had six grandchildren baptised there over the years and then in 2006 Ben’s funeral followed nine weeks later by Mike’s. Joy and sorrow but even when the occasion was joyous Ben managed to spoil it.

He was at the wedding with his good friend, Max. Max and Ben had been friends for several years, close friends and they remained so for many years. What I didn’t know was that they were both by this time involved in drug taking. Max came to see me a year after Ben died and said he was going into rehab to get clean once and for all, he wanted to live to see his son grown. Sad to say I went to his funeral in 2011 and the coroner reported that Max, an ex heroin user, had turned to prescription drugs to help him beat his addiction and that a combination of drugs taken throughout his life had contributed to his death. Max was interviewed when Sky made the documentary on Ben and it’s very telling that Max says “families, what do families know”.

Ben got a bit stupid at the wedding through drinking too much but the real trouble came later. Mike and Ben had gone to bed but I had stayed up to unpick the hems of the borrowed underskirts that Sarah and my little grand daughter, Abby, were wearing. I was probably on a bit of a natural ‘high’ after all it had been a lovely day and I felt happy that my youngest daughter was now married to the man she loved and had loved since she was 17 years old. It was about 1.00am and I had nearly finished when Ben came downstairs, walked into the lounge and sat down beside me. His mood was ‘dark’, he was very restless and he kept getting up and down. I made him a cup of tea and said he should get back into bed again. As he walked through the door he turned and said, “you will come and say goodnight to me, won’t you mum?” I said I would and off he went. I could so easily have ignored that request as it was some time later before I went upstairs but true to my promise I went in to say goodnight.

Ben had been prescribed anti depressants and he’d taken the lot. I didn’t know how many were in the bottle but the bottle was empty. I tried to rouse him but he was floppy and unresponsive. I ran to wake Mike and together we had to drag him to his feet, down the stairs and into the car in order to rush him to the hospital in Stoke-on-Trent. He was a dead weight, literally. The A & E was quiet as it was about 3.00 in the morning but Ben was creating a lot of fuss and we were called into the cubicle to try and persuade him to let the nurse put the tube down his throat to wash out his stomach. We asked the doctor if he was going to be alright but the doctor wasn’t very sympathetic towards us. “he may or may not recover, we’ll have to wait and see”. Not what we needed to hear. They kept Ben in for 24 hours observation and for an assessment as to his mental health. Mike and I ended up knocking on Sarah and Phil’s door – it was the first day of their new life together.

I remember also our other trip to A & E, to the same hospital, in fact part of the hospital complex that Ben died in. It was a New Year’s Eve, Ben was out of his teens but possibly only just. We had a phone call prior to the midnight hour from a friend that Ben had been out with. They had stayed in the village to see the New Year in and gone to The Wild Duck, a very respectable hotel/public bar very close to home. Apparently Ben had upset someone whilst drinking and when he and his friend left...