SAVING MY DAUGHTER

WHEN Imogen Clark first learnt her daughter was ``using'', she belted her.
First it was a slap across the face. Then in anger and frustration she
rained blows down on the back of her cowering, crying 18-year-old.

It was not meant to be like this. They were a normal, close middle-class
Canberra family with two other successful children. ``I'm not very proud of
the next couple of hours,'' writes Clark in her book about the years spent
coping with an addicted daughter.

Now the years stretch out before her, measured by the length of time Jessie
stays ``clean''.

``I would like to be able to write that I gathered her in my arms, soothed
her obvious misery, reassured her that I loved her and that I would do
whatever she needed me to do to help her ...'' she writes. ``But I was
enraged ... how could she have been so stupid?

``I drew back my arm and brought it down with full force across her back,
raining down blows wherever they fell, stopping only when I had no strength
left. She scrambled away from me and ended scrunched up into herself, in the
corner of the kitchen bench.

``I have never felt angry at her since. Desperately worried, inexpressibly
sad and bewildered by the minefield that is a recovering addict's lot, but
not angry.''

That was three years ago and the family was to endure several re-lapses
before Jessie moved to Sydney and the most successful of her detoxification
programs.

When I first meet her, Imogen Clark is sitting in a quiet Canberra cafe
reading about the raging political debate over heroin use in a newspaper. In
black pants and a tailored cream jacket, she looks every inch the
professional taking an afternoon coffee break.

Less than 500metres from the cafe is Garema Place, where teenagers used to
hang out and score hits of heroin before they moved on to somewhere a little
more discreet.

It is not far from where Clark dropped her 15-year-old daughter six years
ago for an evening in the city centre. That night Jessie had her first acid
trip and went missing for two days with a 32-year-old drug dealer. Also
within walking distance is the flat from which Jessie would later deal in
drugs to sustain her habit.

>From an early age, Jessie was a risk-taker. Of the three children, she
would have been the one to bungee jump or parachute. ``She certainly bungee
jumped,'' Clark says with a grim smile.

If Clark had known, she would have been more interventionist from the start.
She thought the weekend with the drug dealer was an aberration that would be
regretted but life would settle down.

There were lots of signals. The dreadlocks, the grungy dress, carelessness,
untidiness and missed appointments. But they did not necessarily alert the
family to drugs.

``I would love to be able to say to you, if you notice this about your
child, do that, but it just isn't that simple,'' Clark says. ``When I look
back on Jessie's career in drugs, it started at 15. We were given very, very
bad advice by the police ... but we thought it would go away.''

There was also the delicate parental tightrope to walk. In despair, Clark
searched for guidance. ``I went to bookshops and browsed and browsed,'' she
says. ``I was too embarrassed to ask; I was looking for `heroin' in the
title.''

But there was no manual on the self-help shelf and, in the early days, she
would not consider support groups for parents of addicts.

Dropping Jessie at detoxification centres, caring for her in week-long
``retreats'' - just mother and daughter - and allowing her to live with a
brother in Adelaide while she straightened out were all part of the process.
To find her using again was always a crushing blow.

``She said all the right things to make me feel better and I did,'' Clark
writes. ``I was convinced of her desire to get her life in order and I knew
that was absolutely the first step.

``But for the first time, I seriously allowed myself to think that she might
just not make it. She might not become one of the 10per cent of addicts who
recover to lead a normal life.''

Now 15 months clean, Jessie shares a house in Sydney with two fellow
recovering addicts, attends Narcotics Anonymous, works part-time and is
studying theatre. She attends NA once or twice a day. Sometimes she resolves
to stop using just for the next hour.

Does Imogen Clark blame herself? ``I don't think there is a mother alive who
wouldn't,'' she says. ``It sort of seems to be the ultimate example of your
mothering failure.''

She now accepts it is Jessie's responsibility and says more lateral thinking
is needed to deal with the seemingly intractable problem of heroin abuse.

Needle-exchange programs, safe injecting rooms and free heroin trials
designed to stop the crime that usually accompanies heroin use should all be
supported. She despairs of the attitude of the Prime Minister, John Howard,
who last week advocated the United States' ``zero-tolerance policy'' on
drugs in schools and drug trafficking.

Howard says heroin trials are not the answer and his Health Minister,
Michael Wooldridge, once a strong proponent of the plan, has come around to
the Prime Minister's way of thinking.

``I think (Howard) is so conservative and so blinkered that he will make a
conservative decision, which is to do more of the same,'' Clark says. ``To
even think of looking at the American model I think is appalling.''

The Premier, Jeff Kennett, has joined the growing chorus of voices for a
heroin trial. And the New South Wales director of public prosecutions,
Nicholas Cowdery, QC, an advocate for legalising and regulating heroin use,
last week called on the Federal Government to take the lead in tackling the
drug problem.

In his view, the issue was used by states as a political battering ram in
the lead-up to elections - the antithesis of sensible debate.

To residents of the Australian Capital Territory, there is a sense of deja
vu. A meeting of Australian governments in August 1997 cautiously supported
the proposed ACT heroin trial, only to see the decision reversed by Howard
after a tabloid and talkback-radio feeding frenzy on the issue.

At that time, Jessie was at the desperate end of her habit but heading
towards her biggest break from the drug. Clark says her daughter rejected
methadone programs and other means of weaning her off heroin and would never
have been a candidate for a heroin trial. But she believes that for some
addicts it is the only chance.

Clark does not think the community is ready for heroin to be legalised and
regulated, but suspects that is the direction in which treatment programs
will eventually move.

``The community's not ready for it yet but it's ready to be raised,'' she
says.

``How do we keep them alive until we can help them? We may never help them.
We may only ever be able to just keep them alive.

``I think Howard is saying that unless the outcome is getting people off
drugs it's not successful, and I think that is a very narrow view.''

Clark will not ask her daughter if she has ever overdosed. She does not want
to know the answer.

``I don't know whether in five years' time Jess will say `I am over that,
it's part of my history,' or she will be one of these people who's going to
NA saying, `Today I'm five years clean.'''

Clark refuses to think about the other options. ``I know Simon (Jessie's
former boyfriend) has overdosed, I don't know whether she has and it's all
too painful to ask.

``I don't want to know.''