'HE TURNED AND TOLD ME HE WAS GOD'

For years, Andrew had been smoking joints, hanging around with boys
slightly older than himself in his Worcestershire village. An intensely
bright student who took all his exams two years early, it seemed to do him
no harm. It was on a trip to New Zealand to see relatives that this
changed. He had backpacked around the islands, smoked a fair amount of
dope, made some new friends. 'He came back a different person,' his mother
Pauline recalled. 'At first I thought it was jet lag, but then I realised
this was something different. He turned to me and said he was God, and
could blow out all the windows in our town just by thinking about it.'

At age 17 Andrew became a patient in the local psychiatric unit run by the
Worcestershire Mental Health Trust. He would spend the next two and a half
years being admitted and then discharged.

His father, Peter, was astonished at the ease with which his son could
obtain the drug, even on the ward where he was being treated for
cannabis-induced psychosis. 'I remember one day when I gave him UKP5,
because he had no money on him. We were sitting outside in the corridor
after visiting him, and this guy walked past. He waved a UKP5 at me, the
same one I'd given my son. We'd seen this man walk into the ward with a bag
which obviously contained drugs. The staff didn't want to know.'

Their situation reached a crisis last August, when Andrew disappeared from
his ward. He had withdrawn more than UKP250 in benefits from the hospital
accounts department, and had his passport on him. He went to Paris, and
spent eight days there, sleeping rough, once even walking into a hospital.
On 29 August Pauline received a call from the British Embassy in Paris, who
told her they were putting her son on the next Eurostar train to London,
unescorted, and demanding her credit card number for payment.

Andrew got back home that Friday night. 'He was exhausted, dirty, hungry,
completely wiped out by the experience,' his mother said. Worse was to
come. Against his parents' wishes, a mental health team, two police cars
and three social security officers arrived at 4am on the Sunday to take
Andrew to a private psychiatric ward in London.

'We had begged them to let him sleep because he was so tired. But instead
they completely overreacted, and insisted on him leaving immediately,
arguing that he might be dangerous - yet he's never been violent or
aggressive.'

Andrew was put into the back of a private minivan, with barred windows,
separated from his mother who was in the back of the van, and driven down
to London. Her son is now in a private clinic in east London, but his care
is paid for by the NHS.

The security there is far tighter and every package taken in is searched.
'For the first time, he's having to manage without cannabis,' his father
said. 'What I dread is that he'll come back here and go straight out and
get some again, and the delusions and the voices will start up.'

Their case is the subject of an investigation by an independent official,
who will decide whether there should be a fuller independent inquiry.
Worcestershire Mental Health Trust did not want to comment on the case, on
the grounds of patient confidentiality.

. The family's names have been altered to protect their anonymity.