Cocaine devastates families – I lost my son to drugs & now I help other stricken parents whose kids were killed by coke

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The devastating loss prompted her to set up her charity DrugFAM, which offers support to those dealing with a loved one's addiction to drugs or alcohol.

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Here, the author of Mum, Can You Lend Me Twenty Quid? reveals the harrowing effect drugs have on the families of users and discusses why all parents have a duty to watch for the warning signs with their kids.

She also reveals the sharp rise in people seeking help for issues with cocaine, which is why she is backing The Sun's End Of The Line campaign to raise awareness of the mental health impact using it can have.

"No cocaine user, I imagine, starts out thinking about the consequences of snorting that first line, but the reality is that from the moment you do you are playing Russian roulette with your life, as the distraught mother of a teenage boy who called our helpline last year could tell you.

Her son had gone upstairs to their bathroom to take cocaine for the first time, little knowing that the drug he had been given was so pure it would kill him.

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Have you or your family been affected by cocaine? Tell us your story by emailing [email protected]

At the other end of the spectrum we hear from the loved ones and friends who are living with the consequences of prolonged and ongoing use of the drug: the erratic behaviour, the mood swings, the pursuit of the next high that any addict will recognise.

They are wives and husbands, siblings, parents or friends at their wits’ end, surfing a roller coaster of emotions from blame and shame to fear and dread.

Take the call I received not long ago from a lady whose husband had disappeared for several days on a cocaine bender. They had three young children, all of whom were asking where their daddy was.

Who knows? His wife only knew where he was found – which was by the police in what she despairingly told me was 'a very bad way'. 'I just feel so helpless,' she said.

That helplessness is an emotion we hear of time and again at .

I know, of course, that drugs and alcohol are equal opportunity destroyers of lives: at a recent service of thanksgiving held by DrugFam the guests ranged from the homeless to the aristocracy.

I've also experienced this myself - my son Nick started experimenting with drugs at 13, starting with cannabis and eventually progressing to cocaine, heroin and crack cocaine.

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As the years progressed I saw my previously handsome, healthy boy turn into a shadow of his former self, a skeletal mess enslaved to narcotic highs which, for Nick, would ultimately bring about the end of his life.

The grief-stricken aftermath of his death led me to set up my charity DrugFAM.

It came from my yearning to understand how my beautiful son – raised in a loving middle-class home - could have succumbed to an addiction I once foolishly assumed happened to other people’s children.

A Buckinghamshire-based support group, my aim was to throw a lifeline to those struggling with the nightmare of someone else’s use of drugs or alcohol.

Nor did I foresee the escalating demand for our services: last year alone we fielded 10,372 calls and such is the need for our help that we are now open 12 hours a day, seven days a week – because addiction, of course, is not a 9-5 affair.

During those hours our highly-trained front line team – many of whom have experience of loved ones succumbing to addiction, or have done so themselves - hear about all kinds of drug use, from cannabis and heroin to ketamine and crystal meth.

Yet what we have noticed is the increased grip cocaine in particular has started to exert on lives across the age and class spectrum.

I would go so far as to say the rise in use has been massive in recent years, to the extent that, for many people, taking it has become the norm, whether it’s the teens who view it as a fast track to getting high at the weekend, or the students who are handed business cards by drug dealers at their freshers week.

Then there’s middle-aged professionals who use it as a way of staying alert - or so they think - in their high stress jobs.

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Barristers, students, lawyers, teachers – we have had the loved-ones of all of them on the phone.

Cocaine is rife in all walks of society and stats show use among young people aged 16 - 24 has been steadily rising.

Use of the drug has doubled over the last five years, while deaths have quadrupled since 2011.

But the impact on families is huge, and never more so than in the aftermath of a loved one’s death by suicide – something of which we are, tragically, seeing a significant amount more of as a consequence of the spiralling use of cocaine and the havoc it plays on brain chemistry

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Only recently I spoke to a father whose twenty-something daughter - bright, beautiful and with everything to live for - had committed suicide after taking the drug.

Like many of the family members we talk to, the parents' devastation was matched only by his guilt. The family poignantly described what they felt was as an “avalanche of blame” at their failure to stop their daughter on her path to self-destruct.

The best way to help them is to get them to understand that their family members are having a love affair with a drug that controls them – yet who cannot see the addiction for what it is. Like all addicts, when challenged denial is their default setting: they don’t see they have a problem.

In some ways that denial is shared by society, which has still failed to grasp that addiction is a major health issue.

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My frequent talks in schools about the risk associated with drug use are marked by a notable absence of parents, who are invited but rarely come. 'They think it won’t happen to their kids,' as one teacher put it.

Yet I also know there is hope.

I can only hope that by facing the perils of cocaine addiction head others manage to realise this too.

The DrugFAM helpline is 0300 888 3853 and is open from 9-9pm seven days a week.