On 26th October 2014, my younger brother Bram died. Aged 34, he took his life by hanging in the garden of the drug service he had been attending on and off since the age of 16. I believe if drug policies had been different, so might his life have been, and his death could have been prevented.

At 27 years old, Bram was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. Throughout his childhood and teenage years, he’d always felt ‘different’ without knowing why. He found it hard making and keeping friends, was intellectually smart but didn’t understand social interactions.

Aged 11, Bram discovered cannabis through one of the playground monitors. This is how he found an older ‘group of friends’ where he finally felt accepted. He thought they were his friends, but to them he was just a kid that came in handy for transporting drugs from here to there.

At 14, Bram started experimenting with ecstasy and speed. He discovered that alongside his drumming skills, he also had a talent for DJ’ing. The drugs and sense of belonging allowed him to momentarily forget the limitations of his then yet to be discovered autism, and to escape the loneliness that came with it. However, when most people went home to sleep in the morning, the overwhelming fear of the comedown and the craving for more meant that he would continue to party with hardcore drug users for whom the weekend never ended.

It was in this environment that a 30 year old woman gave my brother his first shot of speed when he fell asleep at her place after staying awake for 3 days. After that first shot, the threshold for injecting was lowered and by the age of 16 Bram was injecting heroin. In conversations with my brother, he described those initial experiences with drugs as finally ‘coming home’ and understanding the world. The drugs became a solution until they weren’t, and thus began his years-long struggle against either his addiction or against his own dark thoughts during sober periods.

Bram was a hard worker and only signed off sick during periods when the chaos of addiction took over. He was appreciated by colleagues, had a supporting girlfriend, and was loved by friends and family. However, Bram could only experience the meaning of this with the help of substances. Substances he was, under the current drug laws, unable to obtain legally.

Years passed. The peaks became less high, whilst the downs grew deeper and longer. By the time Bram had emerged from the longest and deepest period of his addiction, he’d experienced 7 overdoses; one intentional, a few as cries for help, and several unintentional as a result of not knowing the potency of the drugs he was injecting. As far as Bram was concerned, he didn’t have a problem with drugs. Instead, he struggled with life and the world he lived in, which the drugs made slightly more bearable.

In the end, my brother decided to end his suffering by taking his own life. Drugs may cause harm, but current drug laws inevitably cause even more harm. To save lives, drug policy needs to change!