I was delighted when Dominic Ruffy from the Amy Winehouse Foundation offered to write the foreward to my book. The main reason for writing "Get real mum, everybody smokes cannabis" was to try and help other families to become aware of the dangers of drug abuse, especially in relation to teenagers and young adults.
The Amy Winehouse Foundation was set up to do just that and, along with counselling organisations such as www.12steprehab.co.uk they are really beginning to make an impact on the lives of young addicts. But there is a long way to go.

This is what Dominic wrote: ‘It’s a little odd, reading a book written by a parent who has suffered at the hands of her son through his addiction to cannabis. It’s a little odd because for many years I was that son myself, wantonly tearing my way through my family’s love, affection, money, patience and peace of mind.

And I didn’t even think I had a problem. To tell you the truth I thought my problems started once I had discovered crack cocaine and heroin some 15 years after my first joint of cannabis at a party when I was 14 years old.

Even then I had no conception of the torment and pain I was causing my family, that I had in-fact caused them from the day they realised my life was being controlled by the drugs I was taking.

I couldn’t understand what the problem was when I was younger – “It’s only cannabis Mum” was one of my politer come backs when my back was against the wall as a teenager, usually because I had yet again stolen money from her or my fathers wallet to buy some more weed(a charge I fervently denied by the way).

When I wasn’t feeling so polite – when I was paranoid or tired or depressed – my responses ranged from screaming the house down whilst aptly demonstrating my wide knowledge of profanities, to threatening them with the family air rifle or whatever lay immediately within my reach at that time.

My family had no-one to talk to, no one to share this stuff with and lived a living hell for the next 20 years of their lives.

Those 20 long years later I was sat in my third rehabilitation centre in the midst of a ‘family conference’, and there I learnt that yes, the crack was the most financially destructive drug I ever took, the heroin turned me into a zombie but it was the cannabis, the weed, the skunk that left my mother living in fear of me on a day to day basis. I couldn’t understand that then, but when I look back now with some clarity of mind and a small piece of recovery under my belt, I know that it is true….

Cannabis destroyed me from the day I started taking it. Not only was it my gateway to a life that was to be fuelled by getting high but it was the drug that changed me from a polite, loving if a little wayward 14 year old into a uncontrollable monster.

I couldn’t understand my family’s ignorance, as I saw it, to the facts about weed – its harmless, everybody does it – and therefore I could not connect with the damage I was doing to them emotionally.

That someone has chosen to share her story, from a parent’s point of view, about what it is like living with a ‘me’, is a gift to society that should be welcomed with open arms.

I pray this book is nothing more than a voyeuristic read for you, but if becomes or already is a reality in your life today then now you know you’re not alone, and it is OK to talk.”

Dominic Ruffy
Programme Manager, Drug and Alcohol Awareness,
The Amy Winehouse Foundation

I have read many books that are helping in the fight against addiction. Here are just a few which have made a big impact on my understanding of the disease.
A Million Little PiecesDrinking: A Love Story
Mum, Can You Lend Me Twenty Quid?: What Drugs Did to My FamilyAmy, My Daughter