Losing my little girl to drugs was my worst fear ...and then it happened

A bright, engaged and happy girl, Kym Chandler had her whole life ahead of her.

Instead, her life was taken by drugs, one of the increasing number of Scots women killed by their addiction, leaving a family shattered by loss and regret.

Her mum Marianne, 53, said her daughter had started smoking cannabis but turned to harder drugs after the death of a boyfriend to an overdose.

Marianne, from Dumfriesshire, said: “Gradually she took more drugs which changed her completely from a bubbly, loving daughter to one with serious mood swings.

“There were confrontations, arguments as the drugs gradually took over her life.”

Marianne says she did everything to get Kym off drugs. “I would turn up at parties where I knew she was and try to haul her out of the house. But she refused to leave,” she said.

“I was distraught at the thought of losing her.

“Sometimes I would look at her and wonder where our lovely child had gone.

“All the good results at school, all her dreams stolen by drugs.”

Kym, who died at the age of 31 at her home in Castle Douglas, had two young children, but was increasingly unable to look after them. Marianne said: “My husband and I took the children because we feared they would come to harm.

“There were times when the baby would be crying in the pram and Kym would be lying completely out of it on drugs.”

By then Marianne was looking after her ailing dad, being a hands-on gran and trying to save her daughter.

“I was terrified that she would die from drugs. It was our worst fear. Then it happened.”

Kym was found dead in her home last April, leaving an 11-year-old daughter and seven-year-old son.

The family have been supported by family drugs support agency Addaction in Dumfries.

“Our granddaughter accepts that her mum died because she took drugs and Kym’s son is too wee to understand.

“They both miss her sorely and it’s a loss we cannot make disappear for them”.

The news was broken by a police officer who came to the family’s door.

“I just broke down sobbing and shouting, as if in some way screaming would make it not have happened.

“We had spoken just two days before and the last thing she said was, ‘I love you mum’.”