As the mother of an addict, I'd like to let your readers know that the Naltrexone treatment did not work for my son. When I mention Naltrexone he flies into a rage and yells at me. It does not stop the craving. It does not do anything at all. It was all a waste of money.

I made the arrangement to go to Israel after having read the article in the Women's Weekly sometime last year in which the young woman wakes up after the detox and says, `I am cured, I don't have the craving any longer.'

So Dan and I went there as our last hope and by the time I got there the price had increased from $8,000 to $11,500-and that's for a ONE NIGHT stay in the hospital. I felt quite cheated as I stood in the office with the three other parents who were all paying $3,500 less than what I had to pay for exactly the same treatment.

We, the parents with our kids, were put up in different hotels. We couldn't talk with each other. We weren't told one another's last names. At the time, I felt it was of vital importance to talk to other parents who were in the same situation as heroin is not a subject you talk about to `normal' people.

What the general public doesn't seem to know, or perhaps isn't the slightest bit interested in, is that all the addicts have mothers and fathers who work and pay their taxes; brothers and sisters who live normal lives and who all get tainted by the heroin and its addict. It's like pouring ink on a white carpet and watching the spreading stain. Our lives revolve around heroin, we eat, sleep and dream it and none of us know what to do, who to turn to. We are helpless and ashamed. We blame ourselves, each other. We fight and pour over little incidents, wondering how we could have prevented this. We see our son walk around with pinpoint pupils and now I know he has just had a shot and where did he get the money? How did he get the heroin and how long will it last?

I breastfed my son for 16 months and brought him and his brother and sisters up on clean healthy food and now when I look at him, his skin is so rough. I am not sure who I am looking at.

We are still in Israel We have finally arrived after the plane trip from the north cost to Sydney, to Singapore, to Rome and, of course, by this time he is getting quite desperate, and we have to wait for six hours and he quietly drinks glass after glass of beer and I drink coffee and he and I wait for the next plane to Tel Aviv. Then, of course, we have to stay overnight in a hotel and the receptionist hands him two sleeping pills and says, `see you later'. Dan looks at the pills and says, `this isn't going to do anything' and now he is getting angry. And does the receptionist really think that after all that time on the plane he is going to quietly sit in the hotel room waiting for the next day? In the taxi from the airport which we share with a woman and her father, she and Dan are talking quietly. He takes note of where her hotel is and as soon as we arrive in our room, he is gone.

I don't know where he's gone and I don't see him until the next morning. I lie in a small single bed in a strange room in the middle of a strange city not knowing where I am, where he is, just waiting, waiting. It's amazing how, all over the world, the addicts always find out where they can score. They always have the money and Dan tells me he can get the stuff delivered to his doorstep.

Next day finally comes and as many of us as can fit in are piled into the taxi for the journey to the hospital. There is a little bit of small talk but all of us parents are reluctant and wary.

I have paid the money but I haven't seen the doctor. When I do meet him after the detox he doesn't introduce himself. I have to guess that yes, that's him and I have just paid him $11,500.

A whole afternoon and night of not worrying about Daniel and I dream of a world free of heroin where my son is happy and laughing and going for a surf, making his life shine, doing something worthwhile. When you have been a junkie, who do you make friends with? Life is lonely without friends, people who really do understand what the craving does to you.

Back home Dan wakes up every morning, takes his little pill, vomits and walks around with a stomach ache. The local doctor takes blood and the rest is that his liver has been severely damaged. It was fine before he went to Israel. He had a test in the hospital and I was told that was fine yet his liver is not so good now. I ring up the doctor in Tel Aviv who tells me he has treated 3000 patients and no-one has had problems with the liver-impossible. Just keep on talking the Naltrexone.

To me, Naltrexone is the saviour. It'll keep him on the right road. He won't be needing heroin. He won't need to steal. Five dollars per pill and I've got 250 pills. After six weeks of Dan's stomach ache and feeling sick, he goes off the Naltrexone and then he tells me that it never stopped the craving. He still thought of heroin 24 hours a day.

No more Naltrexone, back on the heroin, back on the streets, the lying and the stealing and this time he ends up in jail and I am so angry with him. Not only do I have an addict for a son, he is also in jail. The shame, so hard to talk about. We bail him out, pay the money at the courthouse and pocket the receipt.

Naltrexone and rehabilitation-that's what he needs. We'll make sure that's what he is going to do-we are in charge now. Now he tells us loud and clear that the Naltrexone has never worked for him. It hasn't reduced the craving.

No more stealing, no more lying, no more thinking as soon as I see him, `Where's my wallet?' I have got used to hiding my money but he is patient and cunning and he can always find the last $50 and of course, now he can also forge our signatures so where are the chequebooks? Where is everything that represents money to the hockshop or your local friendly heroin dealer?

Tel Aviv We are picked up by the same taxi, again crammed in and sit around and wait. All the parents so anxious, so distraught, all needing help themselves. I am allowed to see Dan. `How do you feel?' `Like shit!' So do all the others, none of them are leaping up and down shouting, `I am cured.' They all look sick and off we go back to the hotel. And all of these kids came here on the basis of that remark, `I am cured, I don't crave heroin anymore.'

Dan is very quiet and, of course, he disappears again with the girl he met before and what is the first thing they do? Of course they shoot up and it doesn't do anything!

They go back to the doctor who gives them an extra Naltrexone tablet and Dan comes back to the hotel. For the next three or four nights he can't sleep. He complains of stomach ache, doesn't want to eat, doesn't want to do anything. He roams the streets at night. I make him take the Naltrexone and that's that.

We reverse the journey that we made only a week ago and we come home. Well, he is alright now, an addict no longer, get on with life! But he is still a junkie and he knows it. For him, there is no future, nothing to look forward to, no dreams. He doesn't want the present. As soon as he wakes to another day all he can think of is how to `get out of it', how to get some heroin into his veins so he can make it through the day.

We don't live in a council flat; we live on a big property with thousands of trees, with mist in the valley, different birds singing and waking us every morning and signing again at sunset. We have dogs and horses, everything available for a young man to be happy and content. Yet all a day means to Daniel is how to get `out of it', how to be rid of that one day.

He was brought up on the water; we have always lived near the water. He used to be a good surfer, started at 5 years of age. He used to be creative, intelligent and witty but he has since taken all the drugs that can be taken, including alcohol, for a year or so and heroin is the last step into oblivion, into darkness and, what no-one outside seems to understand is that we who are tied to him with threads of love and pain, are being dragged along. We cannot distance ourselves. His pain is our pain too. Our relationship, John's and mine, is hanging by a very thin thread. We both feel suicidal. We have no-one to turn to. I want to run away and so does he, but we cannot leave the other in this mess. Our younger son is becoming more surly as he still looks at his older brother as a hero and he doesn't want to betray him. Our family is being split up because of heroin that was put on the streets to make certain people rich and those same people know fully what it is doing to this fellow human beings and to all who love them.

This is pure evil. This is heroin.

Next time you condemn a junkie think for just a moment that every junkie has two parents who are living with the pain, the shame and the guilt, knowing there is no help, no comfort. They are alone.