GETTING TO THE BOTTOM OF IT

SEVERAL letters in last week's debate (January 13) reactivate some of the
terrible memories of the past 30 years. As a young and academically gifted
teenager, our daughter, in the company of her inner-city peer group, was
seduced and transformed by the hideous flirtation with various drugs.

At the centre of it all, cannabis destroyed her compliant nature and her
intellect, and she became a travesty of her former self. The demands of
voices she heard in her head led her into alcoholism, unprotected
promiscuity, acute poverty, and socially destructive paranoia. Distorted
perceptions of world tragedies become personal hellish threats to what is
left of her sanity and sense of wellbeing.

Into this scene she has brought a dear child. A succession of well-meaning
GPs seem oblivious to the basic cause.

They are unwilling to talk with her parents and are incapable of finding a
consultant who will both understand, and endeavour to deal with the problem.

Name and address supplied