FDS Support Groups Evaluation 2014.
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“I never thought I would walk out of the storm.”
“It wasn’t fair on his sister, with everything all about him and the drugs.”
“You feel the loss and the grief. You have to protect your other children from this.”
“I’ve experienced anxiety attacks. I have diabetes and a heart condition.”
“He destroyed our family, and his own family.”
“We thought he was going to die. It sounded like he was having an epileptic fit for
hours. He’d bought a drug off the internet.”
“He’d get very drunk then walk back home on the road in the dark.”
“We even started fighting between ourselves, we were at such a loss.”
‘You see parents come to the group for the first time, They are utterly devastated.”
“I felt I was drowning every single minute. I lived under the sea and I couldn’t come
up for air”.
The impact of FDS Support Groups
A range of positive impacts of the support groups were reported by parents (and other
family members) in the interviews and survey feedback. These positive impacts were
sorted into broad themes:
•
Provides knowledge about drugs, addiction and treatment
•
Destigmatises the experience and reduces self blame
•
Helps with boundary setting
•
Reduces conflict in families
•
Encourages self care
•
Mutual support
•
Allows for acceptance
•
Provides hope and a chance to give back to other parents
•
Overall impacts
Knowledge about drug use, addiction and treatment
Parents reported that when they first realised their child had a drug problem, they had
little idea about the effects of drugs, how addiction affects people, or how people ‘get
off drugs’. Some said that they believed that they could stop the drug use, or, in other
instances, that they would be told how to ‘fix their child’.
Coming to the support groups helped parents in understanding the realities of drug use,
including the impacts of various drugs, the usual course of drug use, that a drug user
