Cocaine and alcohol - a dissertation journey

naytay_851@hotmail.com (Nadine Taylor) — Sat, 10 Jun 2023 11:33:24 GMT

Mandy's Dissertation journey on the topic of cocaine, alcohol & suicid e

This journey of setting up the Ginger Heart Foundation is one of waking up to a lot of new things I did not know. We have an initial aim and that is to raise awareness about the link between taking alcohol and cocaine together and the risk of suicide in the comedown. It doesn’t happen every time, it is an unpredictable event. Someone could have used cocaine when they are drinking once, ten times or maybe engaged in it for years without it causing them to take their own life.

The question I chose for my MSc dissertation is, ‘what is known about cocaine and alcohol induced suicide?’. I needed to gather all the facts, understand the evidence base behind what happened to my son on the morning of 3 ^rd October 2021, when with no warning, no underlying issues and no risk factors, the thing that led to him taking his own life was the fact that he had been on a day and night out drinking alcohol and taking cocaine.

It has taken me 18 months to conduct the research necessary to do a thorough and systematic integrative review of the literature. I had a Doctor of Research, second review the method to ensure that the process of literature selection for inclusion in the dissertation was robust and transparent to avoid any bias on my part due to the personal nature of the content.

It was hard, in so many ways, not least that this link has been talked about in research dating as far back as 1980’s, before Shaun was even born. Gathering the data and examining thousands of toxicology findings of people who had completed suicide in the hours or day after using alcohol and cocaine, where the results were the same as my own son, is harder than I can describe here.

We are fighting a battle, to get this information into the public health domain, to inform people who take cocaine and alcohol, to change the data collection methods so we can get a clearer picture of the numbers and to have this information included in national drug and alcohol literature and in the suicide prevention strategy. I am hopeful that soon we will have the true figures of how many of the young male suicide statistics in the UK and beyond are related to recreational powder cocaine and alcohol use.

I do not want it to be that proving this link exists is my life’s work, I want to help people and fulfil the wider aims of Ginger Heart Foundation and my own heart. I want to continue the legacy of my big, beautiful son, in loving and helping people. I want to make a difference, but first we have to ensure that the facts are heard by the right people and the right actions are taken.

Please educate yourself, become part of the voice to save lives. Please look at our cocaine and alcohol booklet, which you can find on our Facebook Page, or our website at www.gingerheart.org in the evidence and resources section.

Together we are stronger and together, we can make a difference!

It doesn't happen to people like us

Sun, 26 Feb 2023 14:44:25 GMT

We lost our heart and now we are finding a way to do life differently

This is my first Ginger Heart Foundation blog post and so it only seems right to start at the beginning of our GHF journey. On 3 ^rd October 2021 at 8am on a Sunday morning, my beautiful son Shaun made his transition by means of a Cocaethylene linked suicide.

It’s hard to describe the moment your world stops, the moment you know that your beautiful son, the one who came and lived and loved and cared and supported and played, is no longer walking around on this Earth plane. As a mum, it was my job to nurture and support and keep my boy safe, so the fact that I was not there in that moment, will forever be a deep and enduring soul level pain.

It is hard to qualify our boy, who he was, what he meant to the different people in his life, and every time I try to write the words they just don’t seem enough. Shaun Taylor was a grounded, playful, insightful, and caring man in the world, and he is much loved and missed.

I miss his long meandering calls that just lit up my day, the phone would ring, and I would hear his beautiful voice with his distinctive Rossendale accent, ‘alreeet motherrrrr, how are you doing?’ He was invested in life, moving in with his girlfriend who he loved dearly, was coming with his girlfriend to France for a holiday with us two days after he left us. They were also moving in together and he spent the last week of his life organising everything for their new home.

Shaun had no underlying depression or mental health issue or life events that led to him completing suicide. Shaun is one of many men of a similar age range who would engage in recreational cocaine and alcohol use on nights out. Shaun never went on ‘benders’ for more than one night, he would go out and maybe they would all end up back at a friend’s house until the early hours of the morning. I had no clue that he took cocaine on recreational nights out, I had no clue how common this is. Shaun never had days off work or visible issues because of his combined alcohol and cocaine use and he had done these many times prior to that day without any problem at all.

I’m not going to write about the science of it all here, we have papers on our website for that and links to the Co-Alc Alliance where even more underlying evidence can be found. Co-Alc Alliance was founded by a wonderful woman named Maggie to raise awareness about the link between taking alcohol and cocaine and the increased risk of suicide. What I can say is that from the notes and the video Shaun left us on that morning, from the evidence of his actions, from his subsequent toxicology report, we know that it was a Cocaethylene linked suicide. Our beautiful boy is no longer here because he took cocaine with his alcohol, and this led to chemical reactions in his brain and artificial thoughts in that early morning comedown that led him to take his own life in such a way that there was no room for error.

The title of this blog post is ‘it doesn’t happen to people like us’, I absolute hate that phrase, but deep down I do believe that we all see our lives as safe and that these traumatic events will never touch us. I certainly was living in a bubble of our beautiful loving and close-knit family, who all communicate and support and care about each other. I was that mum who did not worry about my grown-up children because I know their strengths and character and integrity and how they live in the world.

Since Shaun made his transition to that other side of life, I have found out so much, read all the research and spoken to all the other families of people we know who lost their beautiful boys in the same way as we lost Shaun. This normalised culture of alcohol and cocaine use is taking lives, and this is a hidden issue because the research has not been pulled together, it doesn’t fit with national suicide strategy agenda because it is not mental health related or even drug addiction related. The way figures are gathered and examined and collated in the UK leaves gaps in the way we can pull together the facts.

University of South Wales are now working in partnership with Maggie and Co-Alc Alliance to conduct further research and strengthen the evidence base around this issue. We are currently challenging the verdict in Shaun’s case, so that it reflects the underlying cause of leaving in the way he did. This feels important as a family but is also an important vehicle to create movement in the government agenda if we are successful. Drug and alcohol services do mention Cocaethylene harm but do not directly relate it to the risk of suicide in the comedown.

Establishing Cocaethylene linked suicide as fact is only the first step for us at Ginger Heart Foundation, we want this done so that it can become known. We want it to be shouted from the rooftops, be on national TV, be included in national suicide prevention strategies, be taught, and spoken about by drug and alcohol services. Once this is established in fact then we can move to the real business which is supporting people with the aftermath of suicide and continuing to work with individuals who are questioning their recreational cocaine use and may need support around this. We will continue to work with a harm reduction focus to try to minimise the risk of death in the early morning comedown for those people who continue to engage in cocaine and alcohol use on nights out.

The pain of loss for us is constant, we now live with grief and are finding ways to build a life around that grief. We are thankful to have had Shaun in our lives for the time that we did, his legacy is how much he is loved and how much he inspires all of us to embody all those amazing qualities of his. We know he is not gone; he is just with us in a different way as our big ginger guiding light, but we miss him being here and miss the unlived life together.

The Real Conversation

Cocaine and alcohol - a dissertation journey

Mandy's Dissertation journey on the topic of cocaine, alcohol & suicid e

It doesn't happen to people like us

We lost our heart and now we are finding a way to do life differently