Mum Can You Lend Me Twenty Quid - Elizabeth Burton-Phillips

After reading ‘Wasted’ by Mark Johnson, I came across this book which takes the perspective of a mother when it comes to the effects of drugs. It read as a down-to-earth, stark account of a mother’s tough love battle with her twin sons in an effort to save them from harm. As a parent, Elizabeth Burton-Phillips questioned her upbringing of her sons to pinpoint where she herself had let them down. Through accounts from her husband, Tony and other significant people, she trails the path Nick and Simon took and the vicious circle the world of drugs they had become embroiled in.

My personal experience when it comes to drugs is through my job, which is my main catalyst for reading this kind of material. I work with people whose lives, for various reasons have become intertwined with drugs to the extent that their need for this substance takes precedence over their lives. Elizabeth performs an almost post-mortem to discover where she went wrong, initially believing that she must be to blame for some deficiency in their childhood. ‘Just like most mums, all I ever wanted was to do the right thing for my children’. Despite having the very best of intentions, your offspring will make their own choices and these will be based on your sound upbringing as well as social influences.

A typical parent’s anguish comes across when Elizabeth comments ‘surely we would know if they were taking drugs? But simply hadn’t been able to spot it’. There are no hard and fast rules which dictate who will become influenced by drugs but from this book it becomes apparent that Elizabeth made every attempt to get her twins’ lives back on track.

Simon experienced the world of drugs with his brother and his accounts go a long way in providing graphic detail of the effects of heroin. ‘I would go up to Nick’s flat and he and his friends would be sat in his bedroom ‘gouged out’. Gouged is a word heroin addicts use to describe being ‘out of your face’. When you gouge you aren’t on this planet – your head isn’t attached to your body. Actually you’re off your head, half asleep, but your body is tingling and you don’t care what is going on around you. Somebody could be shot and you would probably say ‘Yes well, so what?’.’ To think that this would appeal to someone is beyond me, and I hope that people read this and take it on board as educational literature.

As with a lot of street drugs there are effects that you feel from one which leave you wanting an opposite effect to bring you back. ‘Heroin and crack accompany each other. Crack cocaine speeds up your heartbeat and gives you a feeling of anxiety and paranoia......heroin allows you to get the initial buzz from the crack smoke and it quickly removes the anxiety and paranoia’. Heroin suppresses the appetite and overrides the need for food over another ‘hit’ as can be seen from the pictures included in the book. They show the twins’ demise from healthy young men into nutrient deficient and generally ill looking.

At certain points in their lives they managed to regain control over their day to day existence and clear their debts, with the help of their mom and get decent jobs. During these brief periods, they managed to stay away from drugs and get some control over their lives. Unfortunately, the stints that Simon and Nick spent abstaining from drugs didn’t last long and left a lasting impression ‘it was like being pulled out of a womb as an adult and i didn’t like it’. Four years were spent surviving as ‘functioning addicts’ which they financed through crime or getting involved with drug dealers through whom they could have a steady supply of their chosen drug. By moving away from his brother, Simon managed to regain control and recover from his drug induced lifestyle. Nick, however, did not. Elizabeth felt trapped in his habit ‘I was addicted to his addiction and committed to find a way to fix his recovery’.

Not only was this situation tearing apart their mother, but it was having a detrimental impact on her marriage. After remortgaging their home and haemorrhaging money left right and centre to help her son’s she had finally had enough. ‘The knife of heroin addiction had sliced a big wound into our marriage, but maybe now the healing process could begin’. It was time for Elizabeth to do the hardest thing – do nothing at all. Both Nick and Simon were prescribed Subutex (an opioid drug that is similar to heron and also known by the name Buprenorphine) with an aim to reduce withdrawal symptoms from heroin. For a period of time, this had its desired effects and both boys were beginning to get back on track, but before long, heroin reared its ugly head.

Although Nick did not see the end of the tunnel, there are some positives to be taken away from the story, in the form of his brother and the strength of their mother. Simon now works as an IT executive and is married to his childhood sweetheart with whom he has a small brood of children. It took the loss of his brother and, as he refers to him, his ‘soulmate’ to shake him up and make him turn his life around.

Nick Mills Charitable Foundation has been set up by Elizabeth with a view to empower ‘families and carers of addicts to be heard and supported’. It has links to external sites such as talktofrank.com, Addaction (the UK’s largest drug and alcohol treatment charity), and careforthefamily.org which, as the name suggests, is about the immediate outer circle and promoting cohesion where there has been family breakdown. Along with this there are various other links as well as the opportunity to contact Elizabeth and her family.

In terms of drugs education it is materials like this that ought to be taken into schools and used as learning tools. Eye-opening accounts such as these have a way of embedding themselves in your conscious and making you think twice about, not only the immediate effects of drugs but the wider impact as well. At the moment, Emmerdale is doing a pretty good job of depicting the life consuming impact of drugs on a person with the Barton family.

The book is available at Amazon ranging in price from £6.48 to £9.32 with various delivery options.

Technical info is as follows:
Hardcover: 272 pages
Publisher: Portrait; First Edition (24 May 2007)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0749951559
ISBN-13: 978-0749951559
Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 16.4 x 3.2 cm

Thank you for reading & I hope this review encourages more people to read this heartfelt story.