‘School officials never told us about son’s habit’

Kerala: I am sharing my bitter experience with the readers of Deccan Chronicle hoping that it will help other parents stop their children from taking to drugs. I would prefer not to reveal my identity. My husband, who is a businessman, and I were leading a happy and contented life until a phone-call changed our lives forever. One fine day two years ago, I got a telephone call from my only son’s ICSE school in Thiruvananthapuram asking me to take him away.

To our horror, the school authorities refused to say what our son had done wrong. We begged the school principal, teachers and his friends to tell us what had actually transpired. If we had known then, we would have given our son medical treatment immediately. He was in the ninth grade then and half- way through the academic year. With a lot of difficulty we managed him to get him admission into a government school in the city, but he was not regular to classes there.

We thought he was having mood swings because he was finding it difficult to adjust to the new environment in the school. He also became very demanding and began to show a revulsion for home food. Since he was our only child and we were living in a joint family, all of us were concerned. When he started breaking porcelain and glass items at home and began abusing us, a family friend of ours said he was most likely on drugs. Never in our wildest dreams had we expected this and were shocked beyond words at the possibility.

We took him to the Abhaya counselling centre and the Thiruvananthapuram Medical College for counselling and treatment. The doctors at Abhaya wanted him to be admitted there, but since he was not ready , this proved difficult. Though we sent him to a school in Tamil Nadu for his tenth grade, he never went back after the holidays. He however scored 72 per cent in his tenth grade in the state stream from a not- so- good government school in Thiruvananthapuram.

After close to two years of treatment, he is now on the path to recovery and is feeling remorseful for his actions. In the midst of this trauma, my husband had a stroke leaving me to fight the battle alone. On inquiry, we later found out that our son was returning home by a KSRTC bus instead of the school bus, which we had arranged for him and became acquainted with strangers, who had access to drugs.

We understand that the school expelled our son for fear of losing its reputation and in the recent past too similar instances have been reported from it, according to his doctors. Now he is in the 11th grade in another city school and has come back to life. But every moment we are praying that he should not return to drugs and guard him like an angel."