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ABC Sunshine Coast By Kylie Bartholomew and Annie Gaffney
A Queensland community lawyer says grandparents are contacting her daily seeking custody of their grandchildren and requests for information are increasing.
The chair of the Elder Law Committee of the Queensland Law Society and a lawyer with the Suncoast Community Legal Service, Kirsty Mackie, said she was "astounded" at the surge in the number of grandparents seeking help.
She said addiction was at the crux of the majority of cases.
"It's probably one or two a day that I'm advising on parenting issues for their grandchildren," Ms Mackie said.
"Unfortunately in every matter I've seen in the last month there's been an addiction, generally ice, of one or both of the parents and the grandchildren are being neglected and abused."
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Ice use was responsible for up to 150,000 additional visits to hospital emergency departments in 2013, according to a new study.
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When Alex was in the process of attempting to quit, it became difficult to detach myself from the turmoil he’d ooze every evening.
Like clockwork, every night around nine, he’d get this vacant look in his eyes and begin to pace around. It was like a dark cloud had come over him and I wasn’t even there anymore. I began to feel that I wasn’t enough for him.
The love I had for him and the idea of us kept me in that relationship for several months after the revelation about his addiction, and I eventually realized why Alex had admitted his meth use to me. He thought he could rely on me to be the “strong one” in the relationship, since I was sober, but in actuality, I was just as fragile as he was.
And I felt too awkward setting boundaries for this recovering addict, afraid he’d feel infantilized or patronized every time I questioned him about his drug use or nagged him to stop. I felt like I lost myself again, when just months before I was so certain about my identity.
Alex continued to relapse for the next six months, never staying sober for more than a few weeks at a time, and I began to feel extremely helpless.
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"This new Australian series explores where Ice comes from, how it's made & what kind of people benefit from the profits made on the misery of users. We hear from the Police who plan & execute anti-Ice strategies daily."