For 13 years, the Tyrolean Melissa (name changed by the editor) was heavily addicted to drugs. She tried several times to get clean – but the addiction was stronger. In January of this year she lost the hard fight, she died at the age of 29. In an interview with the “Krone”, her mother describes the ordeal of her only child.
The shock is deep, her daughter’s death was just four months ago. “It’s incredibly sad,” says the Tyrolean with tears in her eyes, “I’ve tried everything to save my child – in vain. I blame myself very much.” She is convinced that her daughter could have been saved – “if we had a different law in Austria,” she emphasizes. “She suddenly stayed away from school.”Melissa was always a very good student with good grades. She began an apprenticeship as a painter and attended vocational school. “In the second year of my apprenticeship, I noticed that she was changing. She was even calmer than usual, didn’t laugh as heartily as before and she was always tired. When I asked her about it, she said she was just stressed,” recalls the Tyrolean. Then it turned out that she often stayed away from school and stayed in Innsbruck. “All of a sudden she was hanging out with people I didn’t know. Her school friends distanced themselves from her. One of them told me that Melissa moves in circles where cocaine is used,” says the mother. She always denied all that. “Six centimeter holes burned in the calves” From one day to the next, the then 16-year-old only wore long clothes – even in summer. “It turned out that she self-injured her arms and feet with a knife. She also burned two-inch holes in her calves with a lighter. The doctor diagnosed depression and she was given medication. But by that time, my daughter was already addicted to drugs. Eventually she ended up in the hospital. The doctors there said that they could only legally help my daughter if she wanted to – but she didn’t want to,” the Tyrolean knows. At the age of 20, she gave birth to a son. Then Melissa met a man and fell in love into him, became pregnant and gave birth to a son at the age of 20. “Everything developed great, she treated the child very well, was a good mother. But appearances were deceptive,” reveals her mother. About a year later, her daughter took painkillers again. “It went so far that she ordered things that she didn’t pay for, but sold on to get money. She was imprisoned, her son in a foster family,” says the Tyrolean. “She dissolved morphine tablets in order to inject them.” After nine months she was released. “My partner and I took her in and then looked for accommodation for her. After about a week, she called me from the hospital and asked me to bring her a few things,” explains the mother. She went into the accommodation and found syringes in a drawer. At first, Melissa denied everything. “Then she admitted that an acquaintance had advised her to dissolve morphine pills and inject herself. She did that for a long time.” This was followed by admission to a methadone program – a form of therapy for long-term addicts. But that didn’t help, in front of the pharmacy the patients exchanged the pills or money back and forth, as the mother observed. “Isn’t this behavior self-harmful?” Melissa repeatedly started therapy, repeatedly stopped it, she suffered relapses again and again. “It’s been an ebb and flow for years between hoping that she’ll finally get clean and fearing that we’ll lose her. The doctors always dismissed her when she no longer wanted to. There had to be a danger to themselves or to others so that they could continue to look after them as an inpatient – but that was never the case,” says the Tyrolean, “but how can that be? My daughter acted like a robot. She was sitting at the table with a cigarette in her hand and just mumbling along with her eyes closed. She could no longer make sense of the simplest things, asked the same question ten times within five minutes, and injured herself. She didn’t turn off the oven, ran stark naked through the settlement. Isn’t that behavior considered self-harm? If she had been committed to long-term therapy, she would have had a good chance of surviving.” “She said that she could no longer and didn’t want to anymore. “The mother had tried to talk to her daughter countless times. She always told her that she would support her – also in June 2021. “But she said that she could no longer and did not want to anymore. That knocked the rug out from under my feet.” Melissa was cut off the rehab money, she received pension money. “It really annoyed me because I knew she wasn’t required to go to therapy at all anymore. I reduced contact with her to the bare minimum, she literally vegetated.” A decorative urn with daughter’s ashes as a reminder On the night of January 13th to 14th of this year, the mother was unable to sleep that night. “I was restless, had a bad feeling and didn’t know why. My mom felt the same that night,” she says. On the afternoon of January 14, the doorbell rang at the apartment. “Two police officers and two emergency services from the Samaritans were standing in front of the door. They told me that my daughter had died. She was found lifeless in her apartment, lying on the couch covered with a blanket. In the course of the autopsy, it turned out that she choked on her vomit while she was sleeping,” says the mother. “That was a slap in the face. I had been expecting this terrible news for years, but it was incomprehensible to me that it came so suddenly.” The bad thing about it: “I wasn’t allowed to see my daughter anymore – neither before nor after the autopsy, so I couldn’t say goodbye to her . That haunts me to this day.” The only thing left from her daughter is a small decorative urn with a little of her ashes inside. After the news of her death, she cleared out her daughter’s apartment. “There were syringes everywhere, everything was dirty and broken, the walls were smeared with blood. My daughter was always neat. But because of the drugs, she no longer lived, only dwelt. She didn’t realize that anymore.” “There are still enough others to protect”It’s always said that you should protect your children. “But how are you supposed to do that when your hands are tied? If a car driver causes an accident, he must immediately file a complaint for violating his duty of care. A drug-addicted, underage child, on the other hand, can decide for himself whether he wants to be treated or not. I had to watch my daughter self-destruct day after day. I can’t bring my girl back, but there are plenty of others alive in the same situation who need to be protected. Something has to change quickly.”
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