Update - my missing alcoholic son, out on London's streets...

Hello again. I hope I have a few readers...
See my first posting (today also) for the details of how this story began, about our missing 28 year old alcoholic son )gone now for about 3 days and nights, in central London). This is several hours later on the same day, at tea time. I have been offline for several hours to give the phone lines a chance to be open for calls. In fact my son Tom did ring in, just beore 11am, saying he was now at Waterloo station, and was going to come home. He sounded much more lucid than yesterday - then he was drunk, slurred and paranoid. However I made an error in mentioning that we had put the police on to searching for him. After a while he rang off. He had said he would try and get a train home, but he never showed up. It is now 6 hours later.

I then rang the local police, who are keeping us in touch, and they advised me to try and trace the call. It was undisclosed, so he could have been anywhere, on any phone except a public call box. The police also told us Tom was in fact arrested in Camden Town two nights ago, and put in a police cell to cool off - then released, as no-one had been on to them about him being missing. They did not inform us then, as we had not notified him as missing by then. We had left it until yesterday, as he had phoned us the day before. If we had notified them after only 12 hours or so, he could have been back home with us by now, as we would have gone over and got him. You live and learn! Now it looks as if we are going to go through another evening, maybe a night, of worry. Later my close friend Jayne rang to find out how things were - I said no real news, though Tom had rung. (Note - I know a lot intellectually about alcohol abuse and illegal/legal drugs issues from a criminological point of view - it still does not help, when we are in the middle of a personal crisis, ie. our son's misuse of these substances.)

Friends from the church texted me (I had to miss the meetings today) - I had given some of them the latest info on my mobile, and asked them to pray and look out for Tom, as the church meets near Covent Garden. It's the radical Christian group, the (Modern) Jesus Army, or MJA) - some of them would be doing some evangelism round there before the evening meeting. The house group I belong to is called Battle Centre, based in Acton, West London. Tom also belongs - he was trying to contact 2 of the leaders yesterday, for help, but they could not heve done much - one was nto even in London. He then lost his mobile phone!.

My husband (Dave) has had more than he can take. I feel really shattered - I dozed out on our scruffy back lawn, in the shade, for an hour just before writing this. The cat (Whitton, who is a neutered male ginger short hair, with white bits, of nearly 17 - very wise and knowing) wandered up to see what I was doing there - I am not usually around on a Sunday, as i spend it with my church, also in London. He normally has the garden to himself and the neighbour's tabby cat, Jack. Today I have to be here - near the phone, and to support my husband , who can't handle it all alone.

IN the morning to pas the time waiting, I tried to get on with some of my academic work on my PC - writing sections for a course guide for my college, Birkbeck, on the Sociology of Crime (it was on the thorny subject of Ethnic Minorities and Crime - the various explanations, and cultural history). I was working on the Mass Media recently, then Subcultural Theory, Marxist or conflict theories, and will be going on to revise a section on women (ie. why so few women criminals? - And society's attitude to them. This is despite notorious female killers like Rose West and the late Myra Hindley, of Moor Murders fame, in the UK,plus Aileen Wuornos in USA - see the US film "Monster" and N. Bloomfield's very good British documentaries. Murder is just a sub section of the much wider mass of lesser, mundane, but still nasty crime - burglary, theft, drug dealing, fraud, robbery and minor personal violence.).

OK - that's it again - must get offline in case anyone rings again about Tom. I doubt if it will be him - probably the police to see if WE have heard anything! We just have to sit it out - and hope, and pray he will remain OK, and get home safely in due course. Then we have to go through what happens next - attempted recovery, doctors, detox, going back to AA (Alcoholics Anonymous), his and our guilt - in whatever order. Life has to go on...!

Bless you all - thanks if you have been reading this.

Regards and take care, Tigey