Elizabeth (not her real name) goes on, “About 5pm I knocked on his door and he didn’t answer. We have a respect thing in our family about closed doors. We don’t just barge in. So I said, ‘TC, I’m not just going to stand out here knocking. I’m going to have to come in.’
“Still he didn’t answer, so I was getting worried. So I unlocked the door – I have a key – and he was just … His eyes were spinning. He was actually asleep, and when he woke up his eyes looked just terrible. So I said, ‘What’s going on?’ He said, ‘Oh nothing. I just fell asleep doing my homework.’”
Elizabeth reminded him that supper was at 6, but when he came down, he barely ate anything. She had a chat with him that evening, and told him she was concerned he was “taking something”.
“He said, ‘Mum, I’m not. I’ve got exams, I’m a bit stressed, that’s all.’ Every part of me wanted to believe that.
But the signs were strange. TC was usually a “recalcitrant monosyllabic teen, but suddenly he was being very helpful. He wasn’t abusive. He was actually being too bloody nice to us all. He wasn’t aggressive. He was suddenly a lot chattier, so the signs were not necessarily ‘negative’.”
He also lost his appetite. “This kid who normally ate us out of house and home suddenly was ‘No, I’m just not hungry. I ate earlier’”
Elizabeth just knew something was wrong: a prickling at the edge of her mind that caused her eyes to narrow and her brow to crease ever so slightly. TC had denied taking drugs. But was he?
The next day, however, TC seemed fine and went off to school. “That night we flew overseas and I was concerned about him on the plane. He slept the whole way – more like passing out than sleeping. One of the air hostesses asked, ‘Is he alright?’”
“So as soon as we arrived there I sought out a doctor and got him tested. He submitted to the tests quite willingly, which made me hope that I’d been wrong, though all my instincts were telling me that I wasn’t.”
The results came back clear: there was methamphetamine in TC’s blood. The boy didn’t try to wriggle out of it. He admitted smoking crystal meth, known in Thailand as ya ice, which he’d obtained with friends from school.
He was taken out of school to be under close parental supervision. But his friends are still there. Elizabeth is very concerned; her son was one of a group, “who else is using drugs, and have not been detected by their families?” This is her greatest concern. She is aware that the school recently ran random drug tests on others in similar age groups (14-15 years old) and hopes that this may help raise awareness and communication between parents, teachers, caregivers and children.
Elizabeth and her husband Jim have been working hard to get TC to understand the danger he was in – possibly still is. He’ll be going back to school soon. “Before any of this happened, we had made a decision to move him to a new school that suited his future interests” and when he is there they plan to have him drug-tested at random intervals.
TC accepts this, Elizabeth says. In fact, she believes it may even be a relief; he will now be able to say no to drugs without looking like a wuss. When tempted, he can say, “Can’t do that – my parents have me tested – I never know when.”
Elizabeth and her husband are doing everything they can to get TC past this without his entire future being ruined, but at the same time making him understand that they will absolutely not tolerate anything like this in the future.
She firmly believes that TC’s entanglement with ya ice had nothing to do with the family or pressure at school. His parents had already caught him experimenting with smoking and beer. The ice, she believes was also experimentation with a little peer pressure. Not even that, really. More like peer bonding.
After the positive test she asked him, Why that drug? TC, she says, replied, “Well we didn’t mean to buy it. We wanted some pot but they didn’t have any.”
Getting the means to smoke the drug was easy enough. The glass pipes needed to smoke ya ice are – as in most countries – readily and legally available in Phuket, in places such as Central Festival or Big C.
The high, TC said, felt good. “He felt euphoric and strong and very pleased with himself and the world,” Elizabeth recalls him saying.
His parents have since made him read a lot of material on the downside of meth use: the swift addiction, the paranoia, the psychotic episodes, “meth mouth” with its loss of teeth, blurred vision – the list goes on through schizophrenia to suicidal depression and the risk of heart attack or stroke through overdose.
She believes that, “In our case, TC’s behaviour [on Ice] was markedly changed – though I still battled with following my instinct. What if I had got it wrong? Would I lose his respect forever? Ultimately we had to concede that now was not a time to be his ‘friend’ or give him the benefit of the doubt, it was time to firmly be his parents, and trust that our instincts would either reveal (as it sadly did) that we were correct, or not. If not, we felt, then we would still have opened the discussion, would still have shown that we were observing and that it mattered to us, very, very much”
She believes he had smoked the highly-addictive drug just two times, but is concerned that, without intervention, for many kids the situation could be worse.
“After what’s happened in the past few weeks, he knows we watch, we care. And while there may be consequences, he can come to us. Where else can kids go if they have experimented with an illegal drug and something goes wrong for them, or their friends? ‘Being there’ for your kids is not the same as condoning.”
Elizabeth called The Phuket News to tell her story because, she says, she feels that other parents need to know and look out for similar problems in their own children. There are two messages she wants to get across to all parents.
First, “Everyone seems to think that the methamphetamine problem in Phuket is all about teenage Thai gangs. But it’s not. It’s not all about motorbikes and drive-by shootings.
“It’s like the archetypal alcoholic,” she says – the drooling stumblebum shambling along the streets with a bottle in a paper bag. The reality is that many alcoholics are highly successful people who manage to function perfectly well.
It’s the same with meth. The stereotype is nothing like the reality.
That reality, in Phuket, encompasses young adolescents brought up in loving, nurturing families and studying in excellent schools.
Second, crystal meth is everywhere. Parents need to be especially vigilant. “Watch your kids. Be aware that it’s available, much more easily than you might think. Be aware that your child’s behaviour might actually improve to a certain degree. It might not be what you expect.
“What may be a recalcitrant, moody teenager might suddenly say brightly, ‘Look, I tell you what, I’ll get that washing up done before I go off to school tomorrow’ and sure enough, the washing-up’s done.
“That was the way that TC suddenly changed. He suddenly had a way of being busy. There was nothing particularly bizarre about TC’s behaviour – no staggering like you get if your kid’s been drinking, no smells. All we had to go on was our instinct, that this, essentially, was not him.
“Parents should trust their instincts.
“If your kid is behaving even slightly different, don’t be afraid to have them tested. ‘You can say [to your child], let’s just rule that out of the equation, shall we?’ If it’s not ruled out [as a result of a positive test] then work together.
“I think most parents would notice a difference in their child. But I’m just frightened about how tricky it may be – not everyone follows a pre-set behavioural pattern when it comes to drugs, not all behaviours are ‘text book’ or what you may find on google search – so it’s whether parents or carers are actually going to make the link between the change in their child’s behaviour and something serious. I don’t want to say ‘be afraid’, but please, please be aware.”
- Alasdair Forbes
* In Phuket parents can have their children tested for drugs at any of the major hospitals – Vachira Phuket, Bangkok Hospital, Phuket International or Mission Hospital. The results of the tests will be kept strictly secret under doctor-patient confidentiality rules. At least one parent must, of course, accompany the child.
* In Thailand, the law does not distinguish between a minor and an adult regarding Class A drugs.
* Methamphetamine does not distinguish between a minor and an adult when it comes to addiction or overdose.