SORRY, BABY, MUMMY’S BUSY TAKING DRUGS

T hat nice, wholesome mother you met at the school gates could well be snorting cocaine in secret to ease the stress of parenthood. Polly Dunbar investigates why middle-class mums are fast becoming the biggest users of class-a drugs

ouisa* checked the monitor to make sure her toddler was asleep, then popped her head around the door of the living room, where her six-year-old was transfixed by Go Jetters. Satisfied nobody needed her in that moment, she raced to her en-suite bathroom, rolled up a £20 note and snorted a line of cocaine from the toilet lid.

She’d felt exhausted after a long half-term morning at soft play, but now her energy levels were rocketing. By the time her son had woken from his nap at 2pm, she’d cleaned the kitchen, put a wash on and started the prep for dinner.

‘That’s the only time I’ve ever taken coke during the daytime while looking after the kids and I’m not proud of doing it,’ says Louisa, a 42-year-old events manager who lives in a spacious house in a fashionable part of South London. ‘My husband would go ballistic if he knew. But I was desperate for something to get me through the day. I knew I had some left over from the weekend and I thought, where’s the harm?’

Shocking as it undoubtedly sounds, Louisa is not alone in combining childcare with cocaine. Middle-class use of the drug is at an all-time high in Britain and ‘spiralled out of control’ during the stress and isolation of the pandemic, according to a recent report. A colossal 873,000 16- to 59-year-olds reported using cocaine in 2019-2020, an increase of at least 290 per cent in the past decade – due, in large part, to the ease with which users can order it to be delivered to their door, just like a pizza.

The dark side of the boom is flourishing equally rapidly. Referrals for addiction treatment rose by 300 per cent last year – many of them ordinary, middle-class mothers like Louisa – while deaths from cocaine use are also soaring. Among women, they have increased by more than 800 per cent in the past ten years, from 16 deaths in 2010 to 158 in 2020. Long-term use carries the risk of fits, heart attacks and strokes, as well as mental-health problems such as paranoia, depression and anxiety.

Recently, home secretary Priti Patel urged police forces to ‘make an example’ of middle-class users of the drug by naming and shaming them. She intends to target ‘high-value individuals’ to change the perception that class-a drugs can be taken without consequence when, in reality, the impact ranges from gang violence and ‘county lines’ exploitation – where teenagers are forced to become dealers – on British streets to murder in Central and South America.

‘Middle-class women who have money are major users,’ says Charles Moseley, who runs addiction counselling service Stop Now. ‘We often don’t see middle-class people as being problem users, but most of the money fuelling the criminal activity comes from them.’

For many women, the juggle between work and family life is exhausting, and, he says, cocaine can play a trick by appearing to offer a solution. ‘If you take it once at a party, it makes you feel energetic, confident and clever. But over