Almost four decades after Stephen overdosed, I was finally able to grieve the astonishing waste of my brother’s young life
My older brother Stephen’s descent into drug addiction began in south-east London in 1969. It started with cannabis at school and escalated to LSD and amphetamines. By 1973, my 18-year-old, Jimi Hendrix-loving, Afghan-coat-wearing brother was taking heroin regularly and committing crimes to fund his habit.
I was 14 when the hell of Stephen’s heroin addiction began. Like my parents, I was enveloped by feelings of shame on the chocolate-box pretty but stifling housing estate where we lived in Eltham. Stephen’s antics regularly made the local papers, most notoriously when he stripped naked, covered himself in yellow paint and jumped over the hedge in front of our cute little house. He was on a bad acid trip, believing himself to be in a prisoner-of-war camp, the hedges transformed into barbed wire. My parents were unable to endure the gossip and we moved away in 1975, by which time Stephen had already had spells in young offender institutions for burglaries.
