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Your storiesYou are in: Berkshire > People > Your stories > My twins the heroin addicts My twins the heroin addictsIt started off with cigarettes, then cannabis, now one of Elizabeth Burton-Phillips' twin sons lies dead in a grave. The Reading school teacher has published a book to expose the pain suffered by families coping with a child's drug addiction.  Nick as a school pupil, and then as an addict. Do you know what your teenage child is up to? If they say they're off on an innocent outing with friends, such as to the cinema, how sure are you that they're telling the truth? Elizabeth Burton-Phillips, a school teacher from Reading, didn't realise what her twin sons, Nick and Simon, were up to. Now Nick lies in a grave aged 27, having lost the battle against heroin and crack cocaine. So where did it all go wrong? Speaking on BBC Radio Berkshire's Henry Kelly programme, Mrs Burton-Phillips says:  Young and innocent: Nick and Simon as toddlers "In the first instance during their early teenage years we had no idea that they were meeting in little groups and smoking pot or sharing bottles of cider. "Our first warning came when they were in the sixth form. The headmaster invited us in and said that he had reason to believe that the boys were involved in smoking pot and possibly taking other drugs." Mr and Mrs Burton-Phillips had "severe words" with Nick and Simon, choosing to confront them immediately in an attempt to resolve the issue. A flurry of raging tempers and frank conversations ensued, but in the end, as Mrs Burton-Phillips says, "promises were made that this would stop and that's what we believed." Afterwards she had no reason to suspect that her sons were descending into a life of drug abuse.  Addicted: Nick and Simon Mills Nick and Simon had left school and found respectable jobs in pub management and estate agency respectively. She was unaware that they were ploughing their way through LSD, ecstasy, cocaine and crack to heroin. Then in 2000 a gaunt Simon confessed to her he was an addict. Not long afterwards it dawned on Mrs Burton-Phillips that Nick was also an addict. Nick had been very good at 'blagging' money from her, borrowing small sums of money here and there. Unwittingly Mrs Burton-Phillips would lend him the money for his next hit. Eventually he'd steal her bank card and remove £200 from her account.  Simon has a relapse She'd seen her sons go from healthy handsome chaps to skeletal filthy street urchins with skin pock-marked with needle holes. She'd spent her life-savings on drug rehabilitation, even paid off a couple of drug-dealers who were threatening Simon. But it was all in vain. "I made the mistake that many parents do by thinking you can help, thinking you can get it right. "I know many mums empathise but actually I'd say very firmly that tough love is very important and to step back and let your children know you love them but do not rescue them and do not let them enable them to continue on with their drug use." Finally Mrs Burton-Phillips admitted to herself that she would have to prepare herself for a possible tragic outcome. "I had trained myself that this knock on the door would come."  This box was found near Nick's body And it came, from a kindly policeman who had to inform her that Nick had died. He had hung himself after a drug-fuelled row with his brother. Both were trying very hard to go through a recovery programme but Nick couldn't resist the temptation to inject himself again. "What I had expected was the knock on the door to say that both boys would be dead," says Mrs Burton-Phillips, "you're in between the dimension of grief and total relief when you hear the other son is alive." Simon has made a full recovery and is now living a drug-free life. "Simon says very passionately that he believes that his brother's death gave him life. That his brother's soul entered into him. And therefore he wants to live a good life for the pair of them." Mrs Burton-Phillips has now published a book entitled, Mum, Can You Lend Me Twenty Quid?, to expose the pain that many families go through when coping with a child's drug addiction. She hopes others may benefit from reading her story and be made aware of local and national support. "I know just from my support group Crack It, based in Sindlesham near Wokingham, that the many mums and dads who come along or phone us or who email us, are worried that they will one day get a knock on the door that we had." ___________________________________________ Mrs Burton-Phillips and Simon have set up the Nick Mills charitable foundation. More details here: Nick Mills FoundationThe BBC is not responsible for the content of external websites last updated: 20/05/2008 at 14:14 Have Your SayKatrina helen annette perla Jane Andrews josie.mc@hotmail.co.uk Lorraine Whitley Derek Williams Margaret Kennedy SEE ALSOYou are in: Berkshire > People > Your stories > My twins the heroin addicts
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