HOW HEROIN DESTROYED OUR FAMILY

A year after we ran the story of Hannah Mayne's addiction, we reveal
how her mother's health and marriage have been casualties

Carol Midgley In April last year Kate and Hannah Mayne made quite a
splash across these pages. It was a story that they wanted told but
dearly wished that they were a million miles away from. Hannah was a
gaunt but beautiful 19-year-old heroin addict who, despite a loving
family and a life of privilege, had been sucked into the world of
habit-feeding. Her mother Kate, a specialist interior designer, was
desperately battling for help for a daughter who was slowly killing
herself.

In the 18 months since I met them many things have changed, but not
for the better. Hannah has collected her first criminal conviction
(for shoplifting) and is illegally squatting, having moved addresses
six times in the past year.

Kate's marriage to Hannah's father, a financial director, has
collapsed as the reality of their daughter's addiction and illness
took its toll on the family. And, perhaps inevitably, Kate has
suffered a nervous breakdown. It came one day when Hannah, rattling
for a fix, stood outside the family's Georgian home in an exclusive
street in Brighton banging on the doors, throwing her shoes at the
windows, screeching, swearing and begging her mother for money for
drugs.

This was relatively tame compared with previous flashpoints. In the
past the police have had to subdue Hannah with pepper spray after she
went berserk, lunging at her mother with a glass - and she and her
boyfriend once burgled the house, stealing the TV. Every day Kate
dreads the knock telling her that her daughter - who, unknown to her
parents, became alcohol dependent at about 15 - is dead. But for some
reason this incident outside the family home last summer was the final
straw.

"I just went into shutdown," says Kate, 49. "I went catatonic. I spent
the day just walking round the house unable to do anything until my
husband came home and found me." He took her to The Priory Hospital,
Brighton, where she remained for two weeks. The crash had been a long
time coming. For months Kate had lain awake at nights, imagining
Hannah's death unfolding. "I would go through the whole thing from the
knock on the door to the flowers on her coffin," she says. "That was
the only ending I could see. My future was always linked to Hannah's
death. I felt utterly trapped, like there was no way out."

But she believes that the thing that really defeated her and tipped
her into mental breakdown was the bureaucracy that comes with seeking
help for a drug addict. Navigating the redtape surrounding
drug-treatment programmes and housing schemes was a nightmare: however
hard you try, you never get anywhere. There are, she says, petty rules
to follow that are totally at odds with the chaotic lives of addicts.
She felt that she was screaming in the dark and, despite appearances,
those who were supposed to help weren't listening.

Such is the experience of many parents with drug-addicted children.
After The Times told
Hannah's story last year Channel 4 spent the next 12 months filming
her life and her
complex, but still very close, relationship with her mother (Cutting
Edge: Mum, Heroin
and Me, October 23, 9pm). It will leave you in no doubt as to how
enslaved Hannah is to
heroin (she has been dependent for three years) begging and stealing
in Brighton to get
that next UKP 10 for the dealer. There is footage of her injecting
into her foot because
the veins in her arms have closed.

The thing about heroin is that it creates ripples that pull everything
else under. Kate does not want Hannah to blame herself for the
breakdown of her parents' marriage: Kate definitely blames the drug
(she now has a new partner, a businessman, whom she met when he read
her story and offered to fund a rehab stint for Hannah. She now uses
her maiden name McKenzie).

But even the strongest relationship would struggle when shouldering a
daily handgrenade, with holidays ruined, quality time stolen and
finances swallowed (Hannah has been through expensive rehab stints and
has received hundreds of pounds in handouts from her mother ). "It has
cost us a great deal, the financial part being the least of it," she
says.

Kate and her husband separated earlier this year, a not uncommon
occurrence for parents
in their position who find their own relationship being consumed by
addiction in the
family. They had differed about how to deal with Hannah: her father favoured a
tough-love approach, which meant not handing out money when she
needed drugs. But Kate
sometimes found it impossible to resist the desperate screams of her
child, fearing what
she might do to get them if she didn't help. "There is a strong
umbilical cord with a
mother; when the child tugs you feel it and you want to do all you
can to protect them,"
she says. "My husband seemed able to compartmentalise it, rationalise
it. I couldn't."

And it was always Kate to whom Hannah would run. "He was not usually
there in those situations," she says. "It usually falls very much to
the mother. The nature of the beast is that it will identify which one
has the weakness and exploit it. Our experiences of the problem were
different."

This, perhaps, is comparable to a mother who gives her child sweets to
stop a toddler tantrum in the supermarket - anything for peace. An
expert will say that she should not have done that: but they are not
the ones dealing with it in that tense, head-splitting moment. Both
parents, however, remain committed to helping their daughter

Since her breakdown, during which she had cognitive behavioural
therapy (CBT), Kate now recognises the value of tough-love. She rarely
gives Hannah money, having learnt that it makes little difference in
the end. "I had been rehearsing the funeral in my head, thinking that
if I didn't give her money she would die, but CBT taught me to think
that wouldn't necessarily happen," she says.

Should she have been harder on Hannah earlier? "There is no right or
wrong. You don't get a manual on how to bring up a heroin addict. But
what I know as a mother is that I had to do it exactly the way I did
it. I had to work it out for myself. When I heard the experts saying
that you must cut them off I dismissed it because, as her mother, I
thought I knew better. Sometimes I still help her." One occasion came
this week when Kate left a theatre in Brighton to find Hannah waiting
outside. The electricity had gone in her squat and she wanted her
mother to buy her a UKP 7 electricity key, which she did. "The advice
would be not to because by doing so you are helping them to bump along
the bottom," Kate says. "People say 'withdraw and say no'. I say
'How?' I love her. I'm still asking how."

In hospital Kate had time to reflect on another dilemma faced by
parents of an addict: how siblings become neglected. She had been so
consumed by Hannah's situation that her other daughter, Lucy, 18, had
suffered. "The breakdown made me realise how much I was neglecting
Lucy. You can see it only when you step back. But Lucy is an amazing
girl. She has coped with it incredibly well and without resentment. I
have a huge amount of respect for her."

Hannah has never blamed anyone but herself for her habit and cites low
selfesteem as the cause. "I always have the best intentions and things
that I want to do but it never happens. Heroin always comes first,"
she says wearily. When I first met Hannah her mother was furious that
her bank, despite being told of her addiction, gave her a UKP 1,200
overdraft. She spent it all on drugs. Hannah and Lucy attended a
beacon school in Chichester, but while Lucy flourished, Hannah found
it harder to cope with life. She was prone to depression, something
that her mother attributes partly to her being born with
Hirschsprung's disease, a rare bowel disorder that required relentless
medical treatment.

"It's my choice to take drugs, but I would say that if I hadn't
started smoking cannabis then I wouldn't have progressed to other
drugs," Hannah says. "You take speed and say 'I'd never take coke',
then you take coke and say 'I'd never do heroin'. Then you smoke
heroin but say 'I'd never use needles', and it just progresses. Once
you start taking drugs it completely changes your morals."

It is extraordinary how close mother and daughter are given the
circumstances in which their relationship must work. Hannah chose to
leave home last year as her life became increasingly chaotic and she
graduated into the world of hostels. Both have chosen to tell their
story because they want to highlight how hard it is for addicts, even
with well-off, educated, determined parents, to get the specialist
help that is needed. Kate believes that in some cases heroin should be
prescribed to decriminalise the condition and to protect the public;
that we should be building more rehab centres. "We make it so easy in
this country for children to get alcohol and drugs, then when they do
we punish them, not help them," she says.

For now she has resigned herself to the fact that Hannah won't be
getting better any time soon. I ask what has been the biggest loss to
the family. "I think it's joy," she says. "Even if I have a fleeting
moment of laughter I'm brought down again straight away. I honestly
don't think I'll feel carefree ever again. You can't. It's like your
child almost dying every day."