IAN Beach should have been celebrating his 28th birthday today...if he had lived to see it. Ian changed from a normal child from a good home into a drink and drug-crazed schizophrenic before dying in a Blackburn bedsit. As the debate continues about how to stop the drug epidemic, Ian's mother Susan told reporter MARK WOODHOUSE her son's story:

LIKE any other mother, Susan Beach loved her only son Ian.

She went on loving him even though he stole from her, demanded money with menaces, slashed her arm with a kitchen knife and smashed up her house with a golf club.

Throughout his tragically short life, he was in and out of prison and was shunted around 41 different addresses in Lancashire.

To pay for his addiction to drink and drugs, he stole, burgled and sold everything he ever had, including his body.

Ian would have celebrated his 28th birthday today, but he died at the age of 23 alone in a bedsit in Shear Brow, Blackburn. His body was not discovered for several weeks.

An inquest heard that Ian may have suffered a fatal epileptic fit but an open verdict was recorded.

Now all Susan has left of him are a pile of letters, press cuttings from his many court appearances, condolence cards from his funeral...and memories.

His story is in many ways typical of a lot of young people who fall into a spiralling abyss of drink and drug addiction. And it's a story that Susan now feels able to tell, four years after his death, to try to stop others suffering a similar fate.

She admits to feelings of shame and guilt at not being able to save Ian from his addiction.

She remembers how he changed from "a lovely lad" at the age of 12, into a frightening schizophrenic. She recalled: "From being a caring, sensitive boy he ended up with one thought in his head, 'Where do I get my stuff from?'"

Ian was not a boy from a disadvantaged background. He lived in a good area - Kingsway, Hapton - with his mum and dad David until they split up when he was 16. Susan, who is now divorced, said Ian started to go off the rails when he fell in with the wrong crowd. "It started with glue sniffing when he was 12. He was influenced by older boys, most of whom are dead now.

"He was easily led and he then got into taking magic mushrooms and drinking heavily."

Ian's schoolwork at St Christopher's High School, Accrington, rapidly deteriorated and he started playing truant.

"I tried to stop him seeing the other boys but he would meet them round the corner," added Susan, 51, who now lives in Blackburn. "They seemed to have a hold on him."

Susan and Ian later moved to the Park Lane area of Burnley but "the Hapton mob" as she calls them were still on the scene.

"By then I'm sure he was into heroin," she adds.

"He could not hold down a job and from then on it was violence all the way.

"He wanted to do his own thing so he left, going from hostels to bedsits.

"He robbed me at least five times. He once smashed everything in the house with a golf club.

"Me and Jim (her partner) locked ourselves in the bathroom but he smashed the door with the club.

"He used to smash the windows so often I was given a 25 per cent reduction by the window company as a regular customer."

In another incident, Ian ended up stark naked in a skip after a binge and went into a housing benefit office wearing nothing but a dustbin bag given to him by workmen.

"The housing woman thought he was in fancy dress," said Susan.

"He once broke his arm by putting it through a plate glass window and then used the sling to hide his shoplifting.

"But he was no good at that. A judge told him, 'Give it up - you are hopeless at it'."

Susan, who now works with homeless young people at the Nightsafe hostel in Blackburn, says there was no-one for her to turn to. "Even when he really beat us up, nobody came forward to ask if we needed counselling. It's a wonder we are still here."

Attempts to get him psychiatric treatment at Queen's Park Hospital also came to nothing as he attacked staff, missed appointments or failed to take medication.

Now Susan is worried at how young people are getting hooked on easily available drugs.

"When Ian was buying heroin it was £25, now it's between two pounds and five pounds," she says.

"It's so little money, mum and dad aren't going to notice when the odd fiver goes missing."

Susan had a premonition that Ian would die and when the police arrived she instinctively knew the bad news.

By that time, she and Jim were too scared of Ian's behaviour to give him their address but he had their phone number for emergencies.

"The road he had travelled and the life he had led - he had no self respect left," added Susan. "So much of his life had gone, he could not climb back."

Ian's plight even drove her to alcoholism - which she managed to kick just before his death.

She said: "Other parents from good families have children similar to Ian but dare not say anything to anyone.

"It's as though you have been responsible for everything and you have been a really bad parent. It is considered shameful and it should not be like that.

"If people think it cannot happen to them, they've got another think coming."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.