Amy Thomson is a 16-year-old student from Pollok in Glasgow. In June, she collapsed at a house party after taking MDMA and was taken to hospital with three other girls aged 15, 17 and 18. The others went home shortly afterwards, but Amy was left in a critical condition. She spent one month on a life support machine at Glasgow South Hospital.
According to the Daily Record, a man aged 33, and two women, aged 17 and 18, were arrested for alleged drug offences. At the time, police and doctors warned the public about the threat posed by the powerful crystallised MDMA capsules believed to be widely available in Scotland.
After being in a coma for two weeks, Amy squeezed her mum Tricia’s hand. Her condition was slowly stabilised, she began to regain consciousness and slowly recovered in a specialist rehabilitation unit for people with brain injuries.
Today, her family has released a video showing how far she’s come since waking up from her coma but, equally, just how much her life has been changed.
The family’s Facebook pages now seem to have been made private. But in the video, you can see Amy sitting in her garden in a wheelchair thanking people for their support. ‘Thank you, thank you everyone’ she says. Her movements are clearly restricted. Her speech is slow and slurred. However, she’s able to lift her hand slowly to give a small wave to the camera.
Despite the nature of the video, the Daily Record reports that for Amy’s family, the clip is a sign of hope, of how far her recovery has come and how she can continue to make progress.
Amy’s cousin, Kayla, says that as well as being a tribute to her cousin’s strength, the clip is also a warning to other young people. She wrote: ‘Some people may have cried, laughed or been shocked seeing the video. But this is what a tiny pill can do to you. If this isn’t an eye-opener for everyone who continues to take stuff, I dunno what is!’
Apparently, many of Amy’s friends were upset by the video on Facebook. But Kayla told them, ‘Amy won’t be like this for the rest of her life. She’s getting the best care and support.
‘What you’re seeing is amazing compared to the way she was a few weeks ago. She’s improved in many amazing ways. She still has many improvements to show us all.’
Last year, Anne-Marie Cockburn, the mother of a 15-year-old named Martha Fernback who died from a heart attack after taking extremely pure MDMA, called on MPs to look into the legalisation of drugs.
She said at the time, ‘I’d like to meet with Theresa May, Norman Baker and Yvette Cooper to start a sensible dialogue for change, from prohibition to strict and responsible regulation of recreational drugs.’ She hoped this would lead to ‘a safer society for us all by putting doctors and pharmacists, not dealers, in control of drugs.’
Twenty years ago, 18-year-old Leah Betts died after taking ecstasy at a birthday party. Like Martha’s mother, her parents launched a campaign to bring awareness to what happened. However, theirs was about abstaining from drugs.
Paul Betts, Leah’s father, said of Anne-Marie: ‘She wants good to come from bad – like we went through with Leah. It’s part of the grieving process. But since 1995, when Leah died, nothing has changed about ecstasy in the sense that you just cannot predict the effect it will have on the body.’
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.