Last night’s Mum, Heroin and Me programme started on Channel 4 with twenty year old Hannah and her mother Kate reading aloud from a letter Hannah had written to her family trying to explain why she felt they would be better off without her in their midst given that she is a heroin addict.

Kate then talked about how when Hannah was born, it was discovered that she had a rare digestive system disorder which caused her problems at school with bullying and teasing from other children and how Hannah herself then became something of a bully with an aggressive streak.

Meanwhile, it was explained that Hannah lives with her boyfriend Ricky, who is also a heroin addict. Kate said that she’s very fond of Ricky and that he takes good care of Hannah, but she further explained that rarely do two heroin addicts manage to come off the drug simultaneously so in that regard, the relationship is damaging to both of them.

We then saw Ricky and Hannah taking heroin but Hannah was struggling to find a usable vein. As often happens with intravenous drug users, her veins had become hardened and many had collapsed but she eventually, and painfully, found one usable vein in her foot. Meanwhile, Kate told how she’d once been unable to reach Hannah by phone for several days so she’d gone to the B&B where Hannah was staying and found her seemingly lifeless in bed. She said that it was the ‘longest minute’ of her life when, before Hannah came round, her mother thought she was dead.

In 2007, Hannah and Ricky were both attending a substance misuse clinic daily where they were on a programme of heroin withdrawal using the controversial drug Methadone in order to reduce the amount of heroin they take, but Hannah found that the Methadone wasn’t in sufficient quantity to relieve her withdrawal symptoms so she still had to use heroin.

The pair were sleeping rough at the time and were begging on the streets for money but often resorted to crime in order to buy heroin. Ricky told how he has convictions for burglary and it was actually Hannah’s parents home that he burgled. Kate was quite philosophical about it and said that she understands why he did it and that she doesn’t hold it against him.

In October 2007, the pair moved into a hostel for the rehabilitation of drug addicts. They were permitted to take drugs there but the focus was on their withdrawal. We then heard how Hannah had started binge drinking at age thirteen and by fifteen, she was smoking cannabis and taking cocaine. Kate and her husband Robert paid for Hannah to go into rehab for a month at that time and Kate said how much better Hannah seemed when she came home, but it wasn’t to last and within months she was fully addicted to alcohol and drugs again.

Kate also described how she and Robert had tried to help Hannah and Ricky to detox in a room at their house. She told how the two had diahorrea and vomiting and ultimately how Robert felt he couldn’t continue to be a part of it. He found it too shocking and distressing while Kate felt just as strongly that she couldn’t ‘abandon’ Hannah. Ultimately, her devotion to helping her daughter caused Kate to have a nervous breakdown which she described as going into a ‘total shutdown’ and she herself was hospitalised.

Kate and Hannah also described how she’d been in rehab at least six times, and each time the rehab failed in one way or another. The last attempt had seen Kate take Hannah to a rehab clinic and drive away leaving her there but this had angered Hannah who decided not to stay and hitched rides back to Brighton. The disappointment for Kate was overwhelming but not entirely unexpected. She’d come to know by then that Hannah’s conviction to getting off heroin was weaker than her need for the drug.

By April 2008, Hannah and Ricky had been kicked out of the hostel for non-payment of rent and were again living rough until the council found Hannah a short-term bedsit, which Hannah refused to tell Kate the address of. They were however in contact by phone but when Hannah didn’t answer her phone for several days, Kate became increasingly afraid for her daughter.

However, time passed and Hannah’s 21st birthday came around. Kate had to plan her gifts with care because they had to be things Hannah couldn’t sell for drugs. She bought her a massage, a haircut and colour and a modestly priced new outfit which she hoped Hannah would wear immediately so that she couldn’t then take them back to the shop or sell them.

On the day, Hannah told Kate that she needed a fix before her hair appointment and Kate then had to work the logistics of arranging it into their day. She very philosophically talked about how the dealers ‘don’t start work until 11.30’ and therefore there was a good chance Hannah would be late for her appointment. It was odd and sad to hear this well spoken, genteel lady talking so matter of factly about scoring gear for her daughter but it’s obviously a well trodden road for Kate.

She had to draw out ten pounds for Hannah to buy her drugs and she told her daughter that it was a one off and she wouldn’t be doing it again. Hannah then met a dealer, got the heroin and while she and Ricky were shooting up, Kate went to a newsagents to buy chocolate and a drink for Ricky. She was by now worried that they would be late for the hair appointment.

By June 2008, Hannah and Ricky were squatting in a flat that belonged to a friend of Ricky’s who was in prison. It was Ricky and Hannah’s sixth home in the year that they were filmed and the first one that Kate had been allowed to visit. She took a hoover, cleaning supplies and new bedding for Hannah and Ricky and at first, things looked bright. The flat was clean and liveable and it seemed that they could possibly get the tenancy on it formally but just eight weeks later, the flat was squalid, filthy and full of drug paraphernalia and Hannah was facing criminal convictions for robbery and assault.

Other criminal charges followed and as the programme ended, there was no resolution to any of Hannah’s problems. She and Kate will doubtless continue in the same way until Hannah either achieves long-term rehabilitation or she dies.

This was a shocking, touching and powerful film that showed the reality of life for not only heroin addicts but their families who are also the victims of drug abuse. Some estimates say that there are up to 300,000 heroin addicts in Britain, the majority of whom will have families who are in Kate’s situation; never knowing from one day to the next what horrors will be visited on them or to what lengths they will have to go for their heroin addicted family member.

Kate is an amazingly strong and intelligent woman and I hope that however it comes she can find peace and some happiness for herself.