This is my first Ginger Heart Foundation blog post and so it only seems right to start at the beginning of our GHF journey. On 3^rd October 2021 at 8am on a Sunday morning, my beautiful son Shaun made his transition by means of a Cocaethylene linked suicide.

It’s hard to describe the moment your world stops, the moment you know that your beautiful son, the one who came and lived and loved and cared and supported and played, is no longer walking around on this Earth plane. As a mum, it was my job to nurture and support and keep my boy safe, so the fact that I was not there in that moment, will forever be a deep and enduring soul level pain.

It is hard to qualify our boy, who he was, what he meant to the different people in his life, and every time I try to write the words they just don’t seem enough. Shaun Taylor was a grounded, playful, insightful, and caring man in the world, and he is much loved and missed.  

I miss his long meandering calls that just lit up my day, the phone would ring, and I would hear his beautiful voice with his distinctive Rossendale accent, ‘alreeet motherrrrr, how are you doing?’ He was invested in life, moving in with his girlfriend who he loved dearly, was coming with his girlfriend to France for a holiday with us two days after he left us. They were also moving in together and he spent the last week of his life organising everything for their new home.

Shaun had no underlying depression or mental health issue or life events that led to him completing suicide. Shaun is one of many men of a similar age range who would engage in recreational cocaine and alcohol use on nights out. Shaun never went on ‘benders’ for more than one night, he would go out and maybe they would all end up back at a friend’s house until the early hours of the morning. I had no clue that he took cocaine on recreational nights out, I had no clue how common this is. Shaun never had days off work or visible issues because of his combined alcohol and cocaine use and he had done these many times prior to that day without any problem at all. 

I’m not going to write about the science of it all here, we have papers on our website for that and links to the Co-Alc Alliance where even more underlying evidence can be found. Co-Alc Alliance was founded by a wonderful woman named Maggie to raise awareness about the link between taking alcohol and cocaine  and the increased risk of suicide.  What I can say is that from the notes and the video Shaun left us on that morning, from the evidence of his actions, from his subsequent toxicology report, we know that it was a Cocaethylene linked suicide. Our beautiful boy is no longer here because he took cocaine with his alcohol, and this led to chemical reactions in his brain and artificial thoughts in that early morning comedown that led him to take his own life in such a way that there was no room for error.

The title of this blog post is ‘it doesn’t happen to people like us’, I absolute hate that phrase, but deep down I do believe that we all see our lives as safe and that these traumatic events will never touch us. I certainly was living in a bubble of our beautiful loving and close-knit family, who all communicate and support and care about each other. I was that mum who did not worry about my grown-up children because I know their strengths and character and integrity and how they live in the world.

Since Shaun made his transition to that other side of life, I have found out so much, read all the research and spoken to all the other families of people we know who lost their beautiful boys in the same way as we lost Shaun. This normalised culture of alcohol and cocaine use is taking lives, and this is a hidden issue because the research has not been pulled together, it doesn’t fit with national suicide strategy agenda because it is not mental health related or even drug addiction related. The way figures are gathered and examined and collated in the UK leaves gaps in the way we can pull together the facts.

University of South Wales are now working in partnership with Maggie and Co-Alc Alliance to conduct further research and strengthen the evidence base around this issue. We are currently challenging the verdict in Shaun’s case, so that it reflects the underlying cause of leaving in the way he did. This feels important as a family but is also an important vehicle to create movement in the government agenda if we are successful. Drug and alcohol services do mention Cocaethylene harm but do not directly relate it to the risk of suicide in the comedown.

Establishing Cocaethylene linked suicide as fact is only the first step for us at Ginger Heart Foundation, we want this done so that it can become known. We want it to be shouted from the rooftops, be on national TV, be included in national suicide prevention strategies, be taught, and spoken about by drug and alcohol services. Once this is established in fact then we can move to the real business which is supporting people with the aftermath of suicide and continuing to work with individuals who are questioning their recreational cocaine use and may need support around this. We will continue to work with a harm reduction focus to try to minimise the risk of death in the early morning comedown for those people who continue to engage in cocaine and alcohol use on nights out.  

The pain of loss for us is constant, we now live with grief and are finding ways to build a life around that grief. We are thankful to have had Shaun in our lives for the time that we did, his legacy is how much he is loved and how much he inspires all of us to embody all those amazing qualities of his. We know he is not gone; he is just with us in a different way as our big ginger guiding light, but we miss him being here and miss the unlived life together.