Inside Justice

We must try harder to stop agony of drug deaths, says Karyn Mccluskey

Itexted a close friend the news that someone we know well was in hospital. A reply came back, “I wish I’d done more, I wish I’d tried harder.”

I wish. The response was about regret and the desire to improve the life of a fellow human being who had endured some serious life challenges.

Shortly after this column appears, there’ll be headlines about the number of people who have died as a result of drugs with new figures due to be released.

But although drugs and addiction might be the most visible symptom, many die of hopelessness, trauma, neglect and missed opportunities, it’s what lies underneath many of the lives lost.

Each one of these souls might have had a family who loved them; who tried at every opportunity to ‘do more’ and ‘try harder’; who used every tactic in the many books about how to help those in addiction.

But their families might have felt rebuffed or that they never quite managed to help their loved ones out of the pit of despair. These families and friends will have lots of ‘I wish…’ moments, about opportunities they believe they missed, or when their patience was tried to the extreme and they feel retrospective shame about the turn of events.

I write ‘they might’ have a family, for addiction tears families asunder. It destroys bonds between mothers and sons, fathers and daughters and every other permutation of family and love. Addiction leaves a legacy of hurt and devastation.

It’s why steps eight and nine in Narcotics Anonymous seek to repair these bonds and to take responsibility for the harms done to others whilst in the grip of a drug that consumes everything, to make amends.

Many do recover and families are repaired and renewed, but only if people are provided with opportunities to manage and recover from their addiction.

Families bear the brunt of so much of the harm of addiction. The tears of those families could fill a sea. Some of the saddest funerals I have attended were for those who overdosed, where the members of the congregation all asked each other what else they could have done.

To sit in meetings that families affected by drugs attend is to listen to experts in addiction. Schooled by their experience, these families know it all: the signs of addiction, the opioid replacements, the services, the recovery, and the relapse.

They know what support they need as families, the endless attempts to access services on behalf of their loved one and the frustrations of bureaucracy, waiting lists and the worry of what happens in between making it onto a list and the appointment. Will their loved one be alive to make it?

Organisations such as Scottish Families Affected by Alcohol and Drugs (SFAD) are critical to ensuring these families are not forgotten, amplifying their voices at government level. Amid the range of offers on their website is a bereavement service. It will have been used frequently this year and probably next.

There will rightly be calls for us to try harder, be better and up our efforts to prevent so much unnecessary pain – try multiplying the number of deaths by ten, for those who are left behind, thinking ‘I wish...’

Karyn Mccluskey is chief executive of Community Justice Scotland