There’s No Smoke Without Fire
I tentatively put my foot on the first step of
the flight of stairs. “You be careful, doctor, won’t you,”
comes a voice from the sitting room. Silence. I wait a few
moments and gingerly take a few more steps. I look behind
me and see a photograph framed on the wall. It’s of a family
sitting on a beach—they’re eating ice creams and laughing.
I recognise the adults sitting either side of their two children
as the parents who, at this moment, are sitting downstairs.
There’s a boy, perhaps 12 years old, in the picture, laughing
as well. This must be Tom. I stare at his face in the photo and
wonder when it began to go wrong. Probably a few years after
this photograph was taken, I think.
I hear a noise from the bedroom across the landing and
I make my way over to it. The door is ajar.
“Hello, Tom, are you in here?” I ask softly into the darkness.
I can just make out someone crouching in the darkness by
the bed. Nothing, and then a scream and something comes
hurtling out of the darkness and hits the wall behind me. I
go downstairs and I’m met by his parents, ashen faced.
“He’s not going to talk to me,” I say. “We’re going to have
to section him and get the police to bring him into hospital.”
His mother starts crying while his father comforts her.
“It’s for the best,” he says. It was a slow and insidious
trajectory that resulted in Tom being like this.
His parents aren’t sure when it
started, but both agree that soon
after taking his GCSEs things began to
change. When his father caught him
smoking cannabis in his room, Tom
threatened to move out. I carefully
write down everything they tell me,
but it’s a story I’ve heard so many
times. Then he started using skunk, a
stronger form of cannabis, and things
really started to change. He rarely
came out of his room. In desperation
they called the GP, and he referred
Tom to the mental-health team.
The wards are littered with similar
examples of lives wrecked, sometimes
for a short time, sometimes for good.
I’ve seen dozens of people who’ve
become psychotic using cannabis,
and the number has increased as
stronger forms have become more
widely available.
The libertarian in me thinks that
people should be free to make choices
about what they do to themselves,
and this includes using cannabis.
And then I remember people like
Tom. People aren’t making informed
decisions about the risks because few
people witness the true horrors of
what it can do; the way it can fracture
someone’s mind, strip someone of a
future and devastate a family.
The lives it ruins aren’t on display
for everyone to see. They’re locked
away in mental hospitals, or shut away
in their rooms, while their parents
wring their hands downstairs and a
doctor upstairs wonders when it all
began to go wrong
the flight of stairs. “You be careful, doctor, won’t you,”
comes a voice from the sitting room. Silence. I wait a few
moments and gingerly take a few more steps. I look behind
me and see a photograph framed on the wall. It’s of a family
sitting on a beach—they’re eating ice creams and laughing.
I recognise the adults sitting either side of their two children
as the parents who, at this moment, are sitting downstairs.
There’s a boy, perhaps 12 years old, in the picture, laughing
as well. This must be Tom. I stare at his face in the photo and
wonder when it began to go wrong. Probably a few years after
this photograph was taken, I think.
I hear a noise from the bedroom across the landing and
I make my way over to it. The door is ajar.
“Hello, Tom, are you in here?” I ask softly into the darkness.
I can just make out someone crouching in the darkness by
the bed. Nothing, and then a scream and something comes
hurtling out of the darkness and hits the wall behind me. I
go downstairs and I’m met by his parents, ashen faced.
“He’s not going to talk to me,” I say. “We’re going to have
to section him and get the police to bring him into hospital.”
His mother starts crying while his father comforts her.
“It’s for the best,” he says. It was a slow and insidious
trajectory that resulted in Tom being like this.
His parents aren’t sure when it
started, but both agree that soon
after taking his GCSEs things began to
change. When his father caught him
smoking cannabis in his room, Tom
threatened to move out. I carefully
write down everything they tell me,
but it’s a story I’ve heard so many
times. Then he started using skunk, a
stronger form of cannabis, and things
really started to change. He rarely
came out of his room. In desperation
they called the GP, and he referred
Tom to the mental-health team.
The wards are littered with similar
examples of lives wrecked, sometimes
for a short time, sometimes for good.
I’ve seen dozens of people who’ve
become psychotic using cannabis,
and the number has increased as
stronger forms have become more
widely available.
The libertarian in me thinks that
people should be free to make choices
about what they do to themselves,
and this includes using cannabis.
And then I remember people like
Tom. People aren’t making informed
decisions about the risks because few
people witness the true horrors of
what it can do; the way it can fracture
someone’s mind, strip someone of a
future and devastate a family.
The lives it ruins aren’t on display
for everyone to see. They’re locked
away in mental hospitals, or shut away
in their rooms, while their parents
wring their hands downstairs and a
doctor upstairs wonders when it all
began to go wrong
.
