Family Relationships#02

Relationship with Mother	Number of Respondents	Percentage %
I don’t see my mother at all	3	1.7
Never see her, never talk to her	3	1.7
Often see her, cannot talk to her	6	3.3
Never talks, only shouts	2	1.1
We have a good relationship	138	76.2
She hits me when I misbehave	5	2.8
No Answer	24	13.2
Total	181	100

Our mothers protect us. They don’t understand addiction and wouldn’t want to believe that their children are using. So a lot of the time our addiction and our drug use is ignored. If there are lots of children in the family, our mothers are too busy to worry about each and every one of us. Most of the time, boys in the Maldives have a lot of freedom. They don’t have to stay at home all the time and our mothers don’t question us about where we go and what we are doing. We have good relationships because they trust us and we are left to do whatever we want. This is before they notice our behaviour changing. Once they realise something is different they start asking us if we are using drugs. We never tell them the truth, for as long as we can we continue to lie and hide it from them. Our mothers look after us and they provide for us. Our food is cooked and ready for us, our clothes are washed and ironed. But our drug addiction is ignored and never talked about. So we are able to maintain a good relationship with them because we use their love for us to our advantage. The good relationship with our parents lasts as long as our addiction remains hidden away from them and beyond because they are then probably too scared to annoy or upset us. We use it to our advantage.

“I was brought up very protected until I finished school and got a job. Of course I had my freedom until I got busted but I was scared to speak to my mother about my addiction or my personal matters. But there were times that we spoke heart to heart. But then I also used to omit the parts of addiction. As the eldest in my family I had some responsibilities over my younger sisters and because of that I had some privileges that they didn’t have. My parents trusted me more. The biggest reason I never could talk to my mother was because I knew she would not understand. She spoke about other people who used drugs and that was what she thought about it. Her point of view scared me. I didn’t want her thinking the same way about me. After I got busted She knew about my addiction but because I was her son she never said I was like the other junkies. I ended up hurting her. So even now I can’t talk about my addiction to my mother. But just like my father she is getting more aware with time.” (AGG, male recovering addict, 25 years old).