Joel was a happy child. When we look back at photos he always had the biggest smile in every one. As he grew up he always thought everyone who spoke to him was his friend, and was never short of friends at school. He went through a ‘chubby’ stage in primary school because of his love of snack foods, and yes, now I see that as parents we should have had more control, but he was our baby, and we thought it was just a stage and he would grow out of it. He didn’t seem to have any self image problems and because of his loving nature, had many friends who accepted him for what he was. Maybe this was the start of him trying to be something different to what he really was, always being the witty, charming person with the smart answer.

During High School he began to change, and became very confident, almost too confident, in himself.  We see now that he was just a totally different personality to the rest of our family, and unfortunately we expected him to conform to our image of what ‘normal’ was. I also believe that part of his persona on the surface was an act, covering up a much more sensitive, gentle spirit than what he portrayed. Joel was passionate about things, and very creative. I also see now that in the last 12 months of his life, he was being pushed down by people around him, even family not understanding him, which must have been very frustrating and disheartening.

When he had his car accident in August 2007, he was given Oxycontin, extremely strong painkillers. He was on Work Cover, so had to do the rounds of physiotherapists, doctors, specialists etc. before they finally reached the conclusion that he would need a back operation.

Joel was led to believe by the specialist that once he’d had the operation, he would be pain free, and after 6 months of extreme pain, and taking strong painkillers, Joel was so looking forward to being pain-free. Once he had the operation he was making an excellent recovery, but then told us and the specialist he’d lifted something and was in bad pain again. The specialist, recognising that Joel was addicted to the strong painkillers, refused to give them to him and also banned the local doctor from doing so. At the time we thought it was the right thing to do, but in hindsight, realise that what Joel really needed was understanding and not to be treated by the medical profession as a down and out addict. Even if he was, help should have been offered, and parents involved. We put our faith so totally in the medical system and believed they knew what was best.

This is when the local doctor started giving Joel Valium and other anti-anxiety medication. We as parents, were absolutely naïve about the whole situation. Joel always seemed so confident, and was in regular touch with the local GP and even told us what medication he had been given, and the dangers of mixing them with alcohol etc. We put our trust fully in the doctor, and other professionals who were supposedly looking after him. In hindsight we now know that we should have played a much bigger role ourselves.

Joel completed an intense rehabilitation program which was going extremely well. He was keen to get back to work, as he didn’t like hanging around and become bored. Things hadn’t been going well at work, with the manager putting more pressure on everyone, and the two girls who Joel had worked with in the photo lab since he started, finally left. The manager put a younger girl on as manager over Joel, and she gave Joel a hard time, which distressed him enormously. He told us about it and we said he shouldn’t let it get to him so much and if it was that bad, find another job and leave.

A new staff member at the time befriended Joel, and told him about time management and setting goals etc. While parents can tell their children about this sort of thing, sometimes they listen more to others. Joel’s brother Ben, had heard through me, that Joel was having a hard time, and emailed him from London where he was working. Ben told Joel to follow his passion, which was film. Joel was the most excited when he received that, than he’d been for a long time. He went out and bought a video camera and started filming and making his portfolio for university admission.

Unfortunately he let things at work get to him too much and that last week was desperate to quit. Once again we told him not to give in, but find something else first. This he did and on the last Thursday, he was up early, making his ‘to do’ list and going around handing out his CV. He was convinced he was going to get one of those jobs.

After many searches for questions and answers, we now understand more about addiction and how it controls people’s lives. All the confusing changes in his life over the past 12 months seem to have led to self-medication through prescription drug abuse as a way to deal with the situations he was experiencing.

Joel was always a happy and loving child and teenager. When he was going through these other stages, we just put it down to his different personality, and the changes that normal teenagers go through at that time of their lives. I must admit that I tried to talk to him on numerous occasions, but he wouldn't let me and just told me to ‘stress less’ – then often would give me a big hug. I so much wanted to believe him, and was torn between keeping tabs on him, and letting him become more independent. I couldn’t count the nights I stayed up waiting for him to come home and sending text messages to him. Even though I got mad at him, he would always get around me and I would want to believe the stories he told me.

Joel was a free spirit and I loved him so much. We related in so many different areas. With his Dad frequently away on business trips, it was just the two of us, and we formed a close bond, albeit with the continual struggle of how much freedom he should be given.

That last week I had questions going through my mind and was contemplating taking Joel to a specialist for more tests to see if he was suffering from bipolar disorder. Sadly he never lived long enough for us to get to the bottom of just exactly what was going on. The last day he was with us he was at work, and I went to visit him around lunchtime. He asked me to stay and have lunch with him, which I did. When I met him to walk up for lunch, he was very irritated by the noisy kids playing in the inside playground. I remember telling him, ‘Joel, be happy’, thinking that one day he would stress so much he would have a heart attack. I was confused at the change of personality in Joel. One minute he was a loving son, the next minute he was irritated and angry. I now know that it was the medication.

We had O’Portos which had become one of his favourites, and when I tried to clean a bit of mayo off his arm, he chided me and told me to ‘stop being such a mother!’ As we mothers know, that never happens, no matter how old our children are. He got home from work that night and then went to the chemist to buy some Panadeine Forte. Once again we didn’t question anything because he always seemed to be upfront with what he was taking, and apparently was only taking Panadeine Forte occasionally.

That night his Dad and I went out for dinner, asking him to join us, but he said he was happy to stay home. We weren’t going to be late, and he waved us good-bye. He was happy that work had gone well that day, someone had given him a part for his computer, and he was going to work on his uni application.

After getting his phone back from the police in December and going through text messages from that night, I believe that he must have been feeling very alone, and had been texting friends about catching up. He was very much a ‘people’ person, and through the accident, and pain, etc. he had become more isolated from people, which I now see, made him very vulnerable.

When we got home, he was asleep on the couch, snoring his head off. I went and spoke to him, saying he should be going to bed as he had work the next morning. He spoke to me, although he didn't totally wake up, and later on after I'd gone to bed, I heard him go to the bathroom and clean his teeth. I even got up later to see if he was in bed, and he was in the lounge room, which he usually did so he didn’t disturb us with the TV. I didn’t go and speak to him then, as this was nothing out of the ordinary as he would often fall asleep on the couch, and then wake up some time later and go to bed.

He'd obviously gone to bed not knowing how bad he was, or perhaps even taken something else before he went to sleep. He went to bed and never got up, instead he woke in the arms of God. We have been told that the combination of the two drugs he had taken slowed down his respiratory system, which caused him to stop breathing.

We received the coroner's report just before Christmas 2007. The coroner’s conclusion was that Joel died from an accidental mixture of prescription drugs (Panadeine Forte and Xanax). Somehow he made a terrible error of judgment that last night, mixing two drugs which proved to be fatal. He possibly was confused with the amount of drugs in his system, and took more before he went to sleep, not realising how many he’d taking earlier.

Joel's death was contributed to by the disease of addiction. Addiction is a brain disease. The addicted person has no more control over their disease than someone suffering from diabetes or cancer does. Their struggle is just as painful and difficult for them.

Most addicted people start down their destructive path when they are children. Children don’t consider the consequences of their actions and they think they’re invincible. Ultimately, they discover that it is the drugs that are invincible.*

Still there may be a question of intention by some people and it is natural to wonder. At times life can be confusing for anyone, without the added burden of stress and drug addiction (prescription or non prescription). These burdens distorted Joel’s thinking and reasoning skills. Drugs may be abused at times by people to feel "normal" and at other times to escape dealing with life’s struggles. (In reality, this offers no solutions and only worsens the struggles.) It is possible that in a confused and impaired moment, caused by stress and drug abuse, he wanted to escape his problems. If so, another question remains as to whether it was meant to be a temporary escape or was it meant to be permanent? We will never know the answer to these questions but totally believe in our hearts that Joel would never harm himself. He was so full of life and looking forward to the future. He was planning his film course and had set his alarm to get up for work in the morning.

Whatever his intentions may or may not have been, his thinking and actions would have been influenced by drug abuse. It is also my understanding that sometimes in the drug abuse cycle of self-medication and self-treatment, the sufferer can never really know what their bodies can tolerate. When Joel was first on the strongest painkillers, Oxycontin, his body could tolerate very high doses, and the doctors were amazed at how he did it. When he wasn’t allowed to have the Oxycontin, he assumed he could tolerate more of the other drugs as well, and fell into the trap of self medicating, mixing drugs, albeit prescription, and taking them at higher doses.

Why would anyone risk death for the high of these powerful drugs? For some, it is an unwitting mistake. Incredibly, others intentionally make this choice as part of a desperate search for an increasingly better high. The reason for this behaviour is addiction, or one of its fundamental features: the ability to alter peoples' brains such that they can no longer exercise proper judgment or experience normal pleasures. Along with displacing natural "reinforcers" such as food, family, and friends, drugs of abuse also eventually lose their ability to reward, placing the addict on a compulsive quest for more drug and for greater drug potency as their reward circuitry becomes increasingly blunted and desensitized. **

He obviously didn’t realise how they might interact. Who knows all the things that could have played a part? We will never know the answers, and we believe to this day that doctors have lot to answer for. There is a need for a state wide register to stop people having more access to drugs than they should. We believe the measure of one's life is more than the way in which they died.

In the big picture, these problems were just a small part of a dear and precious life. Joel kept his battles to himself and made his path seem easy to others with his beautiful smile and loving nature. So many people loved him. Although, now we see that at times his struggles kept him from receiving all the love offered to him. We are left with so much love for him in our hearts, and so many unanswered questions. What did we miss and when did we miss it? Where did normal adolescence changes stop and the problems start? At no time, not even in the depth of the hard times, did we ever imagine this outcome. What parent ever does?

Young people with these struggles are not bad kids from neglectful families. They are not weak minded. They are wonderful folks struggling with problems and stresses they and their families may not fully understand. Teens may not want to discuss their problems openly because they do not want to be seen as different. More work needs to be done to increase everyone's understanding of these issues.

"There's far more here than meets the eye. The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the things we can't see now will last forever" (2 Corinthians 4:18 MSG).

Despite our unanswered questions, we know now he is at peace with his struggles. He fought his battles the best he could. He was the gentle soul who tried to do the right thing by all his friends. As the poem says,

‘How can the gentle boy not know
You love him beyond death
You’d help him any way you could,
Unto your dying breath?’

One of his friends said at the memorial service, that Joel was the first person to say to him ‘Take care’. I remember being with him in many different places and he would always leave people with a ‘Take care’ to everyone. It is our belief Joel is experiencing greater things without struggles, pain and limitations. But, I must admit at times we are very selfish. We wish we could turn time back and have him here with us. Since we cannot do that, we live each day to honour his memory.

Drug abuse doesn't just affect the user; it affects the lives of everyone that loves them. I hope folks that use drugs to temporarily escape problems realize that continued drug use will also take away the good things in their lives, such as; their plans for the future, their joy, hopes and dreams. To learn more about drug abuse you may want to visit http://www.drugfree.org/intervention/ or http://www.drugfree.org/Portal.

"Some people sweet, attractive, strong and healthy happen to die young. They are masters in disguise teaching us about impermanence". -Dalai Lama


*http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sheryl_Letzgus_McGinnis http://EzineArticles.com/?The-Other-Side-of-Mothers-Day&id=532384

**http://www.nida.nih.gov/about/welcome/messagefentanyl606.html