New graves inform city’s alarming story of drug deaths

James McMillan grew up subsequent door to Lisa McCuish in a neat cul-de-sac on a hillside above Oban Bay. Now they lie aspect by aspect in Pennyfuir Cemetery.

The latest headstones on the freshly-dug fringes of the graveyard inform an alarming story of a misplaced era on this fairly vacationer city on Scotland’s west coast.

Oban is residence to simply 8,000 folks and not less than eight latest confirmed or suspected victims of drug misuse had been buried right here. The youngest was 26, the oldest was 48.

The inhabitants of the city is about the identical as the overall variety of overdose deaths recorded in Scotland prior to now seven years – by far the worst charge in Europe.

The deaths have led to requires pressing motion to deal with dependancy in rural Scotland with family members citing issues accessing very important companies.

Scotland’s Well being Secretary Neil Grey has advised NEWSTORN Information that he accepts extra must be completed to deal with drug misuse in rural areas.

For James’ mom, Jayne Donn, the nightmare started earlier than daybreak on a freezing night time in December 2022 when she was woken by the doorbell.

“At 10 to 5 within the morning, when it was snowing and my Christmas tree was up, the police got here to my door,” she says.

The officers had come, as Jayne had lengthy dreaded they might, to inform her that her 29-year-old son was lifeless of an overdose.

James was one other sufferer of a disaster that has been raging throughout Scotland for nearly a decade, claiming 1,172 lives in 2023.

“As slightly boy he was blonde-haired, blue-eyed, filled with mischief,” Jayne tells me in the lounge of the household residence.

The younger James beloved “fishing, music and his skateboard,” she says.

“As a person, there’s not so many good recollections,” says Jayne.

“He was very blended up. He was very offended. He was very misplaced.”

James’ father left the household residence when he was seven.

He struggled in school with dyslexia and psychological well being challenges and later started to dabble with hashish.

He began to get into bother, first with academics, then with the police.

As he grew into maturity, James drifted away from Oban and from his household, dropping a job as an apprentice bricklayer due to poor attendance and focus, and disappearing to England.

Jayne says she knew little about what was occurring there. In reality, her son’s life was unravelling.

He had been recognized with consideration deficit hyperactivity dysfunction, bipolar dysfunction and drug-induced psychosis.

He was combating suicidal tendencies, taking extra and tougher medication and more and more turning to crime.

Because of this he was out and in of custody for drug offences, breach of the peace, break-ins and theft, at one level serving a two-year jail sentence.

James died in Glasgow on 16 December 2022 – lower than two days after he was launched from custody following eight months on remand in Barlinnie jail.

James’ mom says she does not know the main points of the final prices he had confronted or why he was launched – however she believes extra might have been completed to help her son, as he had overdosed on launch from custody on three earlier events.

A Scottish Jail Service supply identified that choices taken on the finish of a interval of remand are a matter for the courts not the jail.

Jayne describes an online of organisations which dealt together with her son: charities, native authorities, the NHS, dependancy companies, housing suppliers and extra.

However she says: “He was launched right into a metropolis he did not know with no jacket, no cash and no person conscious.

“He lasted lower than 36 hours.”

Lisa McCuish grew up subsequent to James in a road trying down on Oban Bay, the place pink and black Caledonian MacBrayne ferries bustle to and from the islands of the Hebrides.

Oban was not too long ago named Scotland’s city of the yr by an organisation which promotes smaller communities.

At present, Lisa’s sister Tanya is sitting in Jayne’s front room, tears in her eyes, recalling her sibling as “a bigger than life character” with “a coronary heart of gold”.

“Lisa was by no means into medication, you already know, that wasn’t her,” says Tanya.

Issues started to go fallacious solely after Lisa was prescribed diazepam, which is usually used to deal with anxiousness, seizures or muscle spasms.

“She ended up shopping for it off the streets as a result of she felt she wanted extra,” Tanya remembers.

“She stored on saying that she wanted extra assist, extra help.”

Then, she says, her sister began taking heroin.

Lisa had a cardiac arrest on 13 September 2022 and died 4 days later in hospital in Paisley. She was 42 years outdated.

She had prescribed drugs in her system and likewise Etizolam, a benzodiazepine-type substance generally often called road Valium as a result of it’s typically offered illicitly.

Tanya and Jayne take us to the spot the place they each mourn, mentioning different close by graves the place latest drug demise victims are buried.

They embrace James’s finest pal, who lies alongside him and Lisa. He was 30 when he died of a drug overdose.

“It is simply terrible to suppose there’s not less than 10 round right here that we are able to consider,” says Jayne.

There isn’t any official breakdown of what number of lives have been claimed by medication in small communities akin to Oban.

We’ve been in a position to affirm that not less than eight of the deaths occurred inside only a year-and-a-half and had been associated to medication, or are nonetheless underneath investigation.

That is the fact of Scotland’s drug deaths disaster in only one small group and each Tanya and Jayne say the Scottish authorities should do extra to avoid wasting lives.

“I personally consider that a whole lot of dependancy is to do with psychological well being first,” says Tanya.

“There is no continuity in help from dependancy companies or psychological well being companies. There is no hyperlink up.”

Jayne, who’s a medicine help employee herself, says she spent years attempting to carry James residence to Oban the place she felt he would have a greater likelihood of restoration and survival.

A selected problem, she says, was that Argyll and Bute Council provided James housing locations in Dunoon and Helensburgh – each about two hours away – making it very troublesome for his household to help him.

The native authority mentioned it had provided “acceptable” companies to James.

The council added that it had housing companies all through the world, however couldn’t at all times fulfill “particular person and generally altering standards”.

Scotland’s Well being Secretary Neil Grey says that each households have his deepest sympathies and he accepts that rural drug companies might be improved.

“I feel that the 2 instances that you have highlighted inform me that there is extra that may be completed,” he mentioned.

“I recognise that not every little thing is on the market in all elements of Scotland.”

Mr Grey added: “We help alcohol and drug partnerships throughout Scotland, whether or not they’re in rural areas or city areas.

“I might clearly need us to be persevering with to do extra to guarantee that there may be entry to amenities and companies in rural and island areas.”

For Justina Murray, chief govt of the charity Scottish Households Affected by Alcohol and Medicine, the issues don’t lie with technique or funding however with tradition and supply, particularly in NHS dependancy companies.

“Folks need companies which can be in their very own group, they will entry once they want them, they are going to be met on the door by a pleasant face,” she says.

“They are going to be handled with dignity and respect.

“That is not essentially the expertise you are going to have participating with an NHS or a statutory remedy service.”

Based on the most recent accessible figures, launched in September 2024, there may be capability for 513 residential rehabilitation beds in Scotland, throughout 25 amenities.

Solely 11 of these beds can be found in what are thought of by the Scottish authorities to be very distant rural areas, though the vast majority of amenities do settle for referrals from any a part of Scotland.

I ask Jayne and Tanya concerning the argument that people and their households, moderately than the state, ought to take extra duty for their very own decisions.

“No person units out in life to be a drug addict,” replies Jayne.

“No person chooses it. The psychological well being situation was what led James to attempt to escape actuality.

“He then now not had capability to make his decisions. He wasn’t James any extra.

“These are weak adults who’re unable to guard themselves from hazard or hurt,” provides Tanya.

“Why is extra not being completed?”

“One thing’s bought to alter,” agrees Jayne.

“We’re dropping far too many younger folks.”