WHEN Liz Brown opened her door on December 23 last year, she thought the police officer standing there had come to arrest her son.
At that moment she had no idea she would be spending Christmas without Lee, her 42-year-old son. What made her devastating reality even harder to comprehend was the fact she had lost her eldest son Karl, aged 40, just two years before.
Liz, 61, from Plymouth, tells Sun Health: “There were presents laid out. Lee loved Christmas. It was the one day we all got together. So we tried to have it. But it was very muted.
“The police officer said, ‘Something very unfortunate has happened to Lee.’ I just thought he’d been taken into custody.
“But then he told me my son had died.”
Lee, 42, had overdosed alone in his room and the news left his mother reeling in shock and overwhelmed with grief, having lost Karl to the same fate.
Lee had struggled with heroin addiction since he was 17, but in recent times, things were looking up and the family were excited to spend Christmas together.
“I couldn’t believe it,” says Liz.
“Lee had just been through a full rehab programme. He really wanted to get his life back. He had a lovely girlfriend. He was doing so well.
“He’d come out of rehab and been put in a dry house. His girlfriend would visit from Exeter.
“But when she left, he’d meet people he knew in town and get pulled back in to using.
“That Saturday [Dec 16], a policeman bro ught him to my door at three in the morning. He’d lost his keys.
“I knew he’d taken something, not a lot, but I told him off, told him to sleep. I went through his bag – which I never did – and found some tablets. I took them out.”
On December 22, Lee asked for the pills back.
Liz says: “I told him, ‘They’re gone.’ He said, ‘I want them.’ I said, ‘You either stay here or take them and leave.’ He took them and went.”
Liz spoke to him later that day.
“He said he’d got into his room, that he didn’t feel like coming out,” Liz recalls.
“He’d play his PlayStation and maybe come over on Christmas Eve. I tried ringing him that night.
“No answer. I thought he’d fallen asleep.”
When she tried again the next day, she still got no reply.
“Me and my daughter had to do the Christmas food shopping. We got back and ten minutes later there was a policeman at the door.”
Lee had died alone.
Liz, also mum to two daughters, Kerri, 39 and Daisy, 25, says: “I don’t know who found him, but I think it was the bloke who looked after him in the dry house at Bournemouth Churches Housing Association.”
‘HE GOT INTO TROUBLE, BUT HE WAS KIND’
THERE is yet to be an inquest into his death, but Liz believes her son died of an overdose.
He had battled addiction for most of his life. But he had got clean before and held down a job for almost a decade.
“He worked as a waiter, a chef, and in a shop. I was so proud of him,” Liz says, adding that a brush with the law led to him losing his job.
“After that, he went back to using. He got into trouble, but he was kind. He looked after people.”
Lee’s brother Karl also faced the same struggles.
“Karl was a prankster,” Liz says. “He was funny. Everyone knew him. He was in the Salvation Army hostel for five years and really wanted to change.
“Growing up near Mansfield, there wasn’t a lot to do. Around that time was when everyone started to find out about heroin where we lived.
“There were a lot of kids who were in a big group of friends who got into it, led by older people. All of a sudden, it was just everywhere.
“They were impressionable teenagers and there wasn’t much to do there at the time – it was all small mining villages.
“They fell in with the wrong crowd and everyone ended up using together.”
How to help someone with a drug or booze problem
It can feel difficult to support someone who is struggling with recreational drug or alcohol use.
It might make you feel worried, frustrated or lonely. But there are things you can do to help.
This might include encouraging them to seek help for the first time. Our page onsupport for drugs, alcohol and mental healthhas information on different support options.
If you are supporting someone seeking help for the first time, you could:
- Reassure themthat it is OK to seek help.
- Help them find out what services are available locally. Turning Point’s website has atool to help you find local services for drug and alcohol use(the tool refers to it as ‘substance misuse’).
- Go to appointments with them, if they would like you to. This may especially help for their first visit.
If they already receive treatment or support, you could help them stick to their treatment plan, go to appointments and meet their targets.
As well as helping them find treatment and support, these are some ways to help someone feel supported:
- Find ways to spend more time together. You could try joining in with any activities that they enjoy.
- Listen to themif they want to talk about their experiences or how they feel.
- Try toexplain how their alcohol or drug use is affecting you.
If you are a parent concerned about your child’s drug use, the charity Adfam hasinformation for parents supporting children who use recreational drugs.
Source: MIND
Karl died in March 2022, aged 40.
Liz says: “He’d gone into detox, but it was too hard for him. He left early. He was supposed to have a phone call about going back.
Then I saw some of his friends saying he was heading back. I thought – great.
Half an hour later, there was a knock at the door.”
Karl had been found dead near the Salvation Army hostel.
“Lee was in a mess,” says Liz, who had to tell him.
“He said Karl was meant to come and see him. I had to tell him that his brother was gone.”
The cause of death was heart damage due to drug use.
Every day, 18 people in the UK die from drugs – 88 per cent more than just a decade ago, according to the Salvation Army.
A COINCIDENTAL ENCOUNTER
LAST Christmas, after hearing the news about Lee, she left the house aimlessly and ended up walking to the nearby Salvation Army nearby, who had given Karl so much support.
She didn’t expect to save a life on the same day she discovered her son had lost his.
Liz says: “I couldn’t sleep. I just needed air. I was walking, didn’t know where I was going.
“Then I saw a man lying in the street, lying on his front. People were walking past him.”
She ran to help and discovered that he was breathing – but barely.
“I had naloxone in my bag, a medicine that rapidly reverses an opioid overdose.
“The boys had told me about it, and the Salvation Army had trained me in case I ever needed it. I gave him an injection in his backside.”
The drug saved his life. Paramedics came, gathered him up and took him to hospital where he made a full recovery.
After they left, Liz saw all the paraphernalia on the floor, so she gathered it up automatically in a plastic bag and took it into the Salvation Army.
“One of the workers saw me, gave me a hug, and I just broke down,” she says.
“I always think, if only someone had been there to give my boys naloxone. But there wasn’t.”
She now carries it with her every day in her handbag, just in case.
What to do if someone overdoses
- Call 999
- Give them naloxone – sometimes multiple doses are required
- Put them in the recovery position
- Stay with them
With the Salvation Army, Liz is campaigning for naloxone, available as a nasal spray or injection, to be more available in communities where overdoses might happen.
Since Karl’s death, every Christmas Eve, Liz visits the spot where he died along with her daughters.
This year will be similar to the last – flowers at Karl’s spot, raising a toast to Lee, and having Christmas at Kerri’s.
Liz will volunteer at the Salvation Army with the aim of giving back to some of the help she has had.
On November 18, she visited 10 Downing Street to hand in a petition on behalf of the church and charity, calling on the Government to recognise drug abuse as a national health emergency.
She wants her sons’ stories to mean something.
“They were good men. They cared more for others than themselves. They made mistakes and they struggled with addiction.
“I want people to understand what addiction really looks like. These people on the streets – they don’t need judgment. They need help.
“No one should ever have to bury a child, to lose two is unthinkable.“I don’t want anyone else to go through what I went through, and that’s why I would encourage more people to get to understand Naloxone and get trained up in it, so that we can save lives.”
When asked how she finds the strength in her extraordinary grief, Liz pauses.
“I don’t know,” she says. “I just keep going.”