Magda is 22 and has a loving mother and two sisters. Her father takes no interest in her. The young woman is addicted to psychoactive substances. She lives with her mother, having been legally incapacitated. She regularly runs away from home, and her mother, sisters and the police regularly search for her.
While preparing to write about Magda, I watched a report about her and her mother made by Uwaga TVN. One scene caught my attention. Magda, completely unconscious and under the influence of drugs, runs away from her family, who want to help her. It is night; the footage is blurry and shaky, and the lights of a police vehicle flash. This heightens the sense of chaos, desperation and strangeness in the scene.
Earlier, Magda had been taken by an unknown man in a van from outside the railway station. The TVN vehicle followed the van all the way to a house where Magda was delivered. A house full of men, probably employees of some company. Some of them were partially dressed and under the influence of alcohol or intoxicating substances. That was where the Uwaga reporter, together with Magda’s mother and sister, the police and an ambulance, arrived to save the girl. Dazed by drugs, Magda first hid in the house full of men and then ran away from the family trying to save her.
When Magda’s sister spots her running away, she shouts after her: “Madzia, come here, don’t run away, come! Come back, Madzia!!!” The louder she is called, the faster Magda runs. Two police officers give chase. They catch up with her, and Magda is taken to the psychiatric hospital in Bolesławiec.
Magda’s mother
I speak with Agnieszka, Magda’s mother, almost a month after TVN came to Bolesławiec. Magda has been placed in the Bolesławiec Hospital for the Nervously and Mentally Ill for a month-long treatment. A few days before she is due to leave, I meet Agnieszka on the hospital grounds at aleja 1000-lecia. It is a cold autumn day. Agnieszka has cycled to the hospital. She has brought her daughter doughnuts, snacks, a towel and a few other small items. She visits her daughter every two or three days.
We are first supposed to talk about Magda’s case, and then Agnieszka wants to go for a walk around the hospital grounds with her daughter. The mother wants the court to force her daughter to undergo longer-term rehabilitation lasting several months. The woman believes this is her daughter’s only chance of being saved. After that, it would be best for her to leave Bolesławiec and change her environment. Her mother hopes her child will recover because, as she says, the girl is young and still has her whole life ahead of her.
We sit on a bench in the hospital park because the hospital common room is closed on Sundays. Agnieszka shows me the same photographs of the girl from her childhood that Uwaga filmed. I look at a chubby, smiling girl embracing her mother around the neck. A dozen or so months later, that child will take her first hit. She will become addicted and start disappearing from home.
Whenever her daughter disappears from home, Agnieszka reports her missing to the police, as required by law. These disappearances are cyclical. From time to time, information about Magda’s disappearance and finding appears on the istotne.pl website. In December 2022, we published such information once again. When Magda ran away yet again, her mother wrote to me.
I have no peace at all because of her. When she runs away, I worry about where she is. When she is high, she is aggressive: she insults me and can hit me. It has been going on for so long. I don’t know whether I can cope. Nothing surprises me anymore. I think about a miracle, that a miracle will happen.
Magda
Magda takes crystal methamphetamine. She believes that this drug can be taken from time to time. She does not say how she obtains it. She feels good after taking crystal meth; that is how she experiences it. A psychiatrist diagnoses Magda with a mental illness in the form of psychotic disorders occurring in the course of mixed dependence on psychoactive substances.
Magda changes after taking drugs. When she takes them, she becomes aggressive, wrecks the rooms she is in, threatens to kill her mother and threatens to kill her beloved pets. Agnieszka has a cat and a dog. The girl constantly runs away from home, makes risky contacts with strangers and is unaware of the danger to which she exposes herself. She is an easy victim for all kinds of deviants. During visits, while walking around the hospital grounds with Magda, her mother tries to make her understand how dangerous her behaviour is after taking drugs and what could happen to her at the hands of strange, drunk men, but her daughter does not want to listen. She is waiting to leave the hospital and counting the days.
The assessment issued for Magda by a psychiatrist at the Bolesławiec hospital states that Magda denies and downplays her addiction, has no sense of losing control over the psychoactive substances she takes, and does not feel the need for rehabilitation treatment or to remain abstinent.
Taking into account Magda’s current mental health and the lack of treatment results, the psychiatrist believes that if Magda is not admitted to a psychiatric hospital, her mental health will deteriorate and physical aggression will occur as a result of psychotic states.
Methamphetamine is one of the most toxic and physically destructive drugs. It damages the brain, strains the heart, leads to psychosis, delusions and suicidal thoughts, impedes wound healing and accelerates the ageing process. Methamphetamine addiction is difficult to treat and almost always leads to permanent changes in the nervous system.
A helpless or heartless law?
Magda’s mother has tried unsuccessfully to have her daughter forced into treatment. She files applications with the court, but they are dismissed.
– The problem is that under our law there is no way to send an adult addicted to drugs to rehabilitation treatment. Even if that person has been legally incapacitated – says Agnieszka Śmigalska, who provides free legal assistance as part of a government programme at the District Office. – A court may either order compulsory psychiatric treatment in a psychiatric hospital for a mentally ill person or force an alcohol-dependent person to undergo rehabilitation treatment, but here too specific conditions must be met – the lawyer adds.
All the doctors at the centres to which Magda’s mother turned for help say that Magda must consent to treatment herself. If the girl is unaware of the need for treatment, it will simply be ineffective. Magda already spent several months at the Monar centre in Grabowo, and after leaving she returned to her addiction.
Adam Nyk, an addiction specialist with many years of experience, says in a radio programme that there is one thing all people recovering from addiction have in common: it is the moment when the addicted person wonders what is happening to them. If a spark of goodwill appears, or the addicted person accepts what their loved ones say and concludes that they are right when they say that it is impossible to live with an addicted person, reflection may arise and can be used. If that does not happen, even deep isolation will not work.
Grażyna Hanaf