The inevitable call came while I was on night duty: Peter was out of control. I had to take responsibility for his drug frenzies

During his first few weeks at university we had met for lunch at the home of Nanny London. The kids had always called my mother Nanny Liverpool and my husband’s mother Nanny London. He couldn’t wait to tell us all about his experimentation — we’d always had an open rapport, an honesty. So he and I went for a walk and a two-hour chat ensued.

I went mad.

“Everyone smokes it,” he told me.

“And that makes it right?” I argued. He hadn’t a leg to stand on. Hadn’t I always told him it was a “gateway drug”? Not every cannabis user goes on to take hard drugs, but statistics show that most hard-drug users began by smoking cannabis. “Mum!” he scoffed. “I’d never take heroin!”

Famous last words.

Peter had left home not smoking. Nanny Liverpool had smoked and he’d detested it. He didn’t like even to sit in the same room if she was having a cigarette. He’d won a local poetry award with a poem about smoking. “Cough cough cough,” he’d written. “Coughing up what shouldn’t have been there in the first place.” He’d won a cash prize, too — and now here he was, keen to share his rebellion with me. I was grateful for our long talk and honestly felt I’d made an impact. How foolish mothers can be. He was 19 and away from home. My son was now a smoker. Happily, in front of me, it was only cigars or cigarettes from a packet (I noticed, suitably relieved).

Nowadays I hardly ever see him without a cigarette in his hand, whether he’s performing or on a television interview.

To think I used to be concerned about cigarettes.

From the day of Nanny Liverpool’s funeral to Peter’s first rehab was eight weeks. Eight weeks of madness in Peter’s life. In those eight weeks Peter, my husband, had received a new Army posting and we had moved from Germany to Holland.

One week after moving, almost eight weeks since the funeral, the inevitable call came while I was on night duty: it was someone very close to Peter and the band, the Libertines, calling to tell me that he was way out of control; that someone now needed to take control, someone needed to be taking responsibility for him and his ever-increasing, drug-induced frenzies. Parental intervention was now required and they told me of the many problems that the band and all those around them had to endure because of Peter’s drug taking. The relationship, they said, was now untenable. Untenable? Drug-induced frenzies? What the hell were they talking about? Late for rehearsals . . . mood swings . . . bizarre behaviour . . . Why hadn’t I heard this before? Why had they left it until now to say parental intervention was required?

A meeting had been set up for that very afternoon as I arrived — a rendezvous with the management of Rough Trade, the band’s record label, in Golborne Road in West London. As I walked there from the Tube station my heart pounded with the fear of what I would have to face, but as soon as I arrived three very kind people met me to give advice and comfort: Geoff Travis and Jeanette Lee, who ran the label, and James Endeacott, who was Rough Trade’s A&R man. We were later joined by my daughter AmyJo and a heavily pregnant Lisa Moorish — lead singer with the band Kill City — who was expecting Peter’s child, my first grandchild, Astile, born in July 2003.

We went to Peter’s hotel and eventually he got around to asking why I was in London. Slowly, gently, I began to unfold the events from the phone call the previous night up to my arrival.

As we sat on his bed, bonding and talking, I asked him about his fragility — a word he often used to describe himself — and his drug taking. I told him to be honest with me — that there was no point in lying — and I asked him if he was injecting heroin.

At first, there was a weak denial — to himself, really, rather than to me. Then it all came out. He was smoking heroin and crack cocaine.

Smoking heroin and crack cocaine. I can’t explain how I felt. I can’t. I was mortified. I wanted to hit him. I wanted to be sick; to be deaf; to be struck down; to hold him; to cry out to God. No wonder there were no needle marks — my son was smoking heroin. I remember thanking God for that small mercy.

I hope those reading this will never find themselves in the position I am now in with my son. If you do — or you already are — please don’t lose sight of the fact that we never know what tomorrow will bring. I remember being so proud of my children, who were bright, upright citizens. They would never take drugs or break the law; they were past their teenage years and we’d sailed through those without a hitch. Hadn’t I watched other parents who’d had awful trouble with their kids? Hadn’t I felt smug? Pride cometh before a fall.

My small mercy at that time, I had foolishly thought, was that if he was smoking heroin it was somehow not as bad as injecting it. Naivety. Uninformed. Ignorance.

I didn’t shout at Peter. We talked and talked for hours. We all cried and spoke of rehab and, eventually, when everyone was exhausted, it came time to leave him. Peter seemed so keen to “do the right thing”; it all seemed so easy that it was difficult to see a problem at this stage. The following day someone rang me from Rough Trade with great news. Peter was on his way to rehab!

He was taken to a treatment and care centre called Farm Place in a beautiful part of Surrey. I couldn’t believe it. It was so easy. Why hadn’t they tried this tack before? I thanked them profusely.

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He’d been there just under a week before he decided to run away. We’d only been in our new home in the Netherlands for a couple of weeks and I was in the middle of hanging my curtains at the house’s huge front window — all Dutch houses have huge windows. I had to leave metres and metres of curtains on the dining-room table and, instead, pack my bag and book a ticket for the Channel Tunnel.

Everyone was waiting for him to surface. The logistics of finding him were complex. Ringing here. Ringing there. But it wasn’t too long before I tracked him down. He was safe, he assured me: “clean” (by now drug slang was used in everyday conversation); “didn’t have a problem” (denial); and, yes, he would meet me in Soho tomorrow. “Don’t worry, Mum,” he said.

Surprisingly, he turned up on time and he looked great. He was still absent without leave from Farm Place but they were holding his bed. This was another of those awkward times. What could I say? “You naughty boy” . . . “You fool”?

We embraced. It was a time for talking, not for shouting. We sat and drank coffee on the pavement at a corner café in Soho, awaiting the arrival of his older sister. It seemed that every second person knew him and we were interrupted many times for autographs or a chance “Hello!” Peter was so patient with everyone, so kind, so gentle with them and with me. Finally, he agreed to return to the rehab centre. I would go with him, there and then, in a taxi. I phoned Rough Trade. “Yes! Go, go!” they said. I phoned Farm Place; it was quite some distance away and would take a few hours to get there. “No problem — come, come.”

During the second phone call, a fellow songster had arrived with guitar in tow and he and Peter began to strum and sing. Within minutes the pavement was crowded with people, spilling over into the road. Some were singing. Some were waiting for autographs. My heart sank.

Suddenly the moment was lost, and as Peter came to his next song he intimated with his doe-eyed look that this was where he wanted to be. He wouldn’t be returning to rehab after all.

I felt desolate. That’s the only word I can use to describe how I was feeling. A bed was being held, the taxi was on its way but, with a few notes plucked on a guitar, my hope that Peter would return to the only place that could help him was destroyed.

Eventually we were joined by AmyJo and spent the whole day together around Soho, having lunch in one of Peter’s favourite restaurants. It was a good day; there was no evidence of any drugs and no sloping off anywhere. I’d been told he didn’t have any withdrawal symptoms, and because he didn’t feel the need to slope off I talked myself into thinking there might not actually be a problem. Maybe he was just a recreational drug user. I asked him to return with me to Nanny London’s house, but when he looked back into my eyes he told me that he loved me but that he couldn’t come with me. In that moment I knew that yes, he loved me, but that he loved something else much, much more. This is one moment I’ll never forget. It was so hard to leave him. I cried all the way to his nan’s house.

After that first rehab in June 2003, it would be nearly a year until the second in May 2004. Then, they would follow in quick succession. A third in May-June 2004 and then a fourth in June 2004. Three in just one month. The fifth was in February 2005, with the first implant (to help to prevent heroin from taking effect) followed by a second in July 2005. The sixth rehab came in November 2005. To avoid confusion, and to set the record straight, here are the dates:

1 Rehab June 2003 (England)

2 Rehab May 2004 (England)

3 Rehab May/June 2004 (England)

4 Rehab June 2004 (Thailand)

5 Rehab February 2005 and first implant (England)

6 Second implant July 2005 (England)

7 Rehab November 2005 (America)

I won’t even attempt to chart all the court cases or remands that Peter has had as there are far too many and lots of them overlap — in a word, it is all very confusing. But it would be fair to say that, since Christmas 2002, the Peter Problem has been constant. There is rarely a moment when I am not thinking about, or working on, the Peter Problem.

Peter nowadays tries as best he can to keep a low profile. It isn’t easy as he naturally courts attention. He is battling his addictions and feels very weak in that respect. It doesn’t help to be labelled constantly as a crackhead or a smackhead. Negative labels bring about negative responses.

In April 2006 the press carried pictures that caused me great upset. [Note: The photographs showed him apparently injecting drugs into a female fan’s arm.]

Normally when Peter appears in one paper or another, someone will text me the headline and some of the content. Sometimes I’m grateful, sometimes in despair. I never buy these papers, but the regular texts and phone calls keep me up to date on what I’m missing. The pictures that day, I was told, were apparently horrifying. My boss texted to ask if I was OK. “Yes, I’ve heard,” I replied. “Am OK thanks. Am doing a crying marathon — 30 hours so far — can’t wait for tomorrow’s news; they usually save best till last.”

Just a few hours before the news broke, at 3am, Peter had called me: he’d been at a gig in Bournemouth and sounded so positive. I told him a joke that I’d heard earlier that day and we laughed. That had been two days on the trot that he’d called and had spoken, both times very positively, about change.

While the world was going mad at what was in the press, Peter was sleeping. Poor sod, he had no idea the trouble he was in. I make no comment on the photographs and believe them to be despicable and beyond words. One has to ask, is he mad to allow himself to be portrayed in this manner persistently? Does he still trust everyone around him? Is that not crazy? Where the hell will it all end?

Most people would tell me to blame my son, and I say the same, of course I do. Peter is an addict. But there are addicts up and down the country in every town and they are not, like Peter, hounded continually by police and press and betrayed by all and sundry.

It is important, now more than ever, that he keeps out of trouble and attends all his appointments as organised by the courts and, with all the help he is receiving, there is just the slimmest chance that he will come through this nightmare.

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SMOKING: A POEM BY PETE DOHERTY, JULY 1996

CAN’T GET ANY WORSE? IT DOES

Peter and I had heard about a monastery called Thamkrabok, about 80 miles north of Bangkok, a drug-treatment centre. Their detoxification regime made for tough reading, but if this was what it took, then bring it on.

The phone rang at around 5am on the Sunday morning. Peter was leaving the monastery. He hadn’t yet been there a week. I was frantic. Should I go to Thailand? How would I find him? I cried and prayed so hard. It wasn’t long before word filtered through that Peter was on his way back home. To this day I still don’t know how he left Bangkok. I am amazed that he was able to leave. But his departure was down to one person. Through all the mayhem, over these past three long years, this one person has been a constant support and has gone to great lengths to help Peter. I shall be forever grateful but, out of respect for her privacy, she shall remain nameless.

That Peter had walked out of his rehab was too much for the band to bear. This was now the real beginning of the end of the Libertines. Whenever I think the Peter Problem can’t get any worse, it usually does. This time, after he’d been back on British soil for only a few hours, he had been stopped by the police for erratic driving and arrested for being in possession of a knife.

It’s very difficult to explain what I was feeling. It was just unbelievable. Where was it all going to end? How on earth did it all come down to this? A wonderful, happy, bright child — who’d never been in trouble with the police — with a fine future ahead of him. I had no answers then and still have no answers now.

ALWAYS WAITING FOR THE PHONE TO RING, AND DREADING IT WHEN IT DOES

Peter went to prison on September 8, 2003, for just over four weeks. Hadn’t I always blamed the parents for many of the ills of our society? “No one is at home any more, rocking the cradle,” I’d often quip, feeling smug that my children had had the benefit of a mother “at home”, always had someone to come home to, someone there with a sandwich and a smile at the end of the school day.

Hadn’t I purposefully ensured that I was there both in their nursery and in their adolescent years? Peter, AmyJo and Emily would come in, the tea would be on and the playing cards would be out on the table for a game of sevens. And didn’t I always — by the second round — know who was going out with whom in the sixth form and all the gossip of the day? The children hadn’t realised they’d even spoken a word. Likewise, I’d always resisted buying a dishwasher for the simple reason that we rotated the chores: I always washed and AmyJo or Peter always dried. And what had started out as a chore had become a one-to-one session with my kids, several times a week. So much so that when all the dishes were dried, the conversation would carry on because we’d found some level ground on which to talk.

Some say these teenage years are a time when mothers can spread their wings a little because the children don’t need them as much. But didn’t I always know better — that adolescent children need their parents’ time more? What a kick in the teeth for someone who curtailed her own career to ensure that she was there to listen and to understand.

How, then, did it come to this? What had I done wrong? My only son was in prison and it was my fault . . . or so I felt. There is an old Jesuit saying: “Give me the child at 7 and I will show you the man.” But Peter at 7 was as far removed from the man he would become as the East is from the West. These were the thoughts that were running through my head that day: at 7 Peter was a happy soul, a joy to have in the family, articulate, funny, knew the difference between right and wrong, a mother’s dream, an avid reader: was at liberty. At 24 Peter was a troubled soul, a cause for great concern for the family: inarticulate and fragile, funny, but not the ha-ha type of funny, the line between right and wrong had become blurred, a mother’s nightmare, yet remained an avid reader: was imprisoned.

We then had to wait for news of which prison Peter had been taken to and then, much worse, had to wait for word from him. This would become a recurring pattern in the Peter Problem. I’m always waiting, waiting, waiting. Even now. Never knowing what the next day will bring. Always waiting for the prodigal to return.

It’s as though your life is on permanent hold. Always waiting for the phone to ring and dreading it when it does. Always waiting for the next day’s newspapers and dreading them when they arrive. Always waiting for your neighbour to drop “Peter” into the conversation. But all I’m ever really waiting to hear is that he’s recovered. And still I wait today. The news I dread to hear is that he’s dead.

© Jacqueline Doherty 2006

Extracted from Pete Doherty: My Prodigal Son, to be published by Headline on September 11 at £16.99. Available at £15.29 with free delivery from Times BooksFirst. Call 0870 1608080