Adam’s mum has told how she felt powerless as she watched her son descend into cocaine addiction.
Mum-of-four Andrea says that there needs to be greater support for families whose lives are being marred by drug addiction - and increased powers to refer the user for help, even if they won’t seek it themselves.
She told the Observer that she even wanted to get her son sectioned after he threw himself though the glass of his first floor bedroom window while he was high.
Andrea said: “We begged, pleaded and cried but we couldn’t get Adam to get help. It is difficult to get help, we tried everything, absolutely everything. But they are mind-altering drugs, that person is not making rational decisions.
“We tried to get him to the doctors, to drug charities, but he was a fully grown adult, we couldn’t take him by the hand.”
She added: “Two months before he died he jumped straight through a plate glass window because he thought someone was breaking into his bedroom. The crisis team took him away in an ambulance, afterwards they let him go.
"At that point they should have sectioned him, he was a danger to himself.
“He needed real help, not just pills being thrown at him. We hadn’t been trained to deal with addiction, all we could do was research on the internet but we needed professional help.”
The 53-year-old, who has three other children, also wants greater awareness of the mind-altering effects of cocaine which caused Adam to develop drug-induced psychosis, as well as paranoia and a dramatically reduced attention span.
She has shared a shocking video of Adam ranting while high on cocaine, paranoid believing he is being followed. She said: “It gave him psychosis in the end, he used to see people. The last three months before he died he completely believed that someone was following him.
“And if he had cocaine I was a little frightened of him, I would think ‘does he know who I am?’ even though he would never have hurt me.
“At first they have got the euphoria and then it starts to interfere with their minds, it’s a really powerful drug – that’s why it’s banned.
"Adam definitely didn’t see himself as someone who was addicted. He used to say he’s not taking it excessively and he could cope but I don’t think he could or knew how to stop.”
