Agony of mother who lost 2 sons to drugs

'GOVT MUST REALISE DRUG ABUSE IS A NATIONAL HEALTH EMERGENCY'

- By NEIL SHAW

Liz Brown lost both her sons, Lee and Karl, to drugs. Lee overdosed a year ago, and Karl died two years earlier

WHEN Liz Brown opened her door on December 23, 2024, she thought the police officer standing there had come to arrest her son. Lee had struggled with heroin addiction and she assumed he was in trouble. Nothing could have prepared her for what happened next.

“The police officer said, ‘Something very unfortunate has happened to Lee. I just thought he'd been taken into custody,” says Liz, 61, from Plymouth. “But then he told me. My son had died.”

Lee, 42, had overdosed alone in his room and the news left his mother reeling in shock. She had lost her son Karl two years earlier after a long struggle with addiction, and the grief was overwhelming.

“I couldn't believe it,” she says. “Lee had just been through a full rehab programme. He really wanted to get his life back. He had a lovely girlfriend. He was doing so well. He'd come out of rehab and been put in a dry house. His girlfriend would visit from Exeter. But when she left, he'd meet people he knew in town and get pulled back into using.

“That Saturday, a policeman brought him to my door at three in the morning. He'd lost his keys. I knew he'd taken something, not a lot, but I told him off, told him to sleep. I went through his bag - which I never did - and found some tablets. I took them out.”

The next morning, Lee asked for the pills back. “I told him, ‘They're gone! He said, ‘I want them.' I said, ‘You either stay here or take them and leave.' He took them and went.”