poledriver
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Jul 21, 2005
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Mother of festival drugs victim says we have learned nothing since her son’s death
THE day Adriana Buccianti’s son died he was so disorientated he no longer knew who his mother was. It was a Saturday night and a clearly distressed Daniel, who was 34 years old, begged his mother to pick up him up from the Rainbow Serpent music festival, in Eastern Victoria, and take him home.
“He said, ‘Mum, I’ve taken something really bad I’ve never taken before. Some really bad acid, I’ve never experienced this’,” Ms Buccianti tells news.com.au.
Early the next morning, she would get a knock at the door from police informing her that her only son had been found dead.
Daniel died in 2012, a victim of combining too many potent drugs. But Ms Buccianti wonders if we’ve learnt anything from her son’s death after Sylvia Choi, a 25-year-old pharmacist from Oyster Bay in southern Sydney, passed away after taking ecstasy at last weekend’s Stereosonic music festival, the latest in a string of deaths at dance parties.
This weekend, thousands of people are set to gather once more to dance the day away as Stereosonic hits Brisbane.
“We’ve had five deaths this year in NSW and no amount of dogs and searching has stopped that. I have full respect for the law and the police, but it’s clear our drugs policies are not working,” she said.
BEST FRIENDS
They may have been mum and son, said Ms Buccianti from Epping in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, “but we were also best friends and there wasn’t much I didn’t know about him.”
They didn’t judge one another, she said. “I counselled him but he was able to make his decisions based on his own experiences and live his life as he saw fit.”
In his late teens, Daniel tried a few careers including being a chef and working with people with autism which, his mum says, he loved. He headed to university to study agricultural science which earned him the nickname “farmer Dan” among his friends and family.
“He saw himself as a tree hugging hippy, but he was born in the wrong era. He loved the tie dye T-shirts but he could never get his hair long enough to become dreadlocks — but he tried his hardest,” Ms Buccianti recalls fondly.
“When he was 18 or 19, he discovered the rave scene,” she said. “He loved that type of music, watching bands. He wanted to be himself for a few days without any scrutiny, to not shower and dress like he wanted.”
Ms Buccianti knew her son, like many others who attend festivals, took drugs.
“I didn’t condone it, but Daniel kept saying he knew what he was doing and it was very difficult. How do you stop it? I thought I’d be better knowing so we could have an open and honest discussion.”
‘I CAN’T BE HERE ANYMORE’
But as Daniel headed off on a Friday in January 2012 into the Victorian countryside for his final festival, something made his mum hesitate. “I said, ‘Daniel, don’t turn me into a statistic, make sure you know what you’re doing’.
“He said ‘don’t worry, I know, I love you.’”
SCUMBAGS
“I bet my bottom dollar if my son was able to go somewhere and test his drugs and they said ‘you know this is 100 x stronger than you’ve had before’, he would never have taken it,” says Mrs Buccianti who has set up a Change.org petition to put pressure on the state Governments to implement drug checking services at festivals this summer.
Cont-
http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/he...h/news-story/fa8f11d23edc9ca31363b3c902a54673
THE day Adriana Buccianti’s son died he was so disorientated he no longer knew who his mother was. It was a Saturday night and a clearly distressed Daniel, who was 34 years old, begged his mother to pick up him up from the Rainbow Serpent music festival, in Eastern Victoria, and take him home.
“He said, ‘Mum, I’ve taken something really bad I’ve never taken before. Some really bad acid, I’ve never experienced this’,” Ms Buccianti tells news.com.au.
Early the next morning, she would get a knock at the door from police informing her that her only son had been found dead.
Daniel died in 2012, a victim of combining too many potent drugs. But Ms Buccianti wonders if we’ve learnt anything from her son’s death after Sylvia Choi, a 25-year-old pharmacist from Oyster Bay in southern Sydney, passed away after taking ecstasy at last weekend’s Stereosonic music festival, the latest in a string of deaths at dance parties.
This weekend, thousands of people are set to gather once more to dance the day away as Stereosonic hits Brisbane.
“We’ve had five deaths this year in NSW and no amount of dogs and searching has stopped that. I have full respect for the law and the police, but it’s clear our drugs policies are not working,” she said.
BEST FRIENDS
They may have been mum and son, said Ms Buccianti from Epping in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, “but we were also best friends and there wasn’t much I didn’t know about him.”
They didn’t judge one another, she said. “I counselled him but he was able to make his decisions based on his own experiences and live his life as he saw fit.”
In his late teens, Daniel tried a few careers including being a chef and working with people with autism which, his mum says, he loved. He headed to university to study agricultural science which earned him the nickname “farmer Dan” among his friends and family.
“He saw himself as a tree hugging hippy, but he was born in the wrong era. He loved the tie dye T-shirts but he could never get his hair long enough to become dreadlocks — but he tried his hardest,” Ms Buccianti recalls fondly.
“When he was 18 or 19, he discovered the rave scene,” she said. “He loved that type of music, watching bands. He wanted to be himself for a few days without any scrutiny, to not shower and dress like he wanted.”
Ms Buccianti knew her son, like many others who attend festivals, took drugs.
“I didn’t condone it, but Daniel kept saying he knew what he was doing and it was very difficult. How do you stop it? I thought I’d be better knowing so we could have an open and honest discussion.”
‘I CAN’T BE HERE ANYMORE’
But as Daniel headed off on a Friday in January 2012 into the Victorian countryside for his final festival, something made his mum hesitate. “I said, ‘Daniel, don’t turn me into a statistic, make sure you know what you’re doing’.
“He said ‘don’t worry, I know, I love you.’”
SCUMBAGS
“I bet my bottom dollar if my son was able to go somewhere and test his drugs and they said ‘you know this is 100 x stronger than you’ve had before’, he would never have taken it,” says Mrs Buccianti who has set up a Change.org petition to put pressure on the state Governments to implement drug checking services at festivals this summer.
Cont-
http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/he...h/news-story/fa8f11d23edc9ca31363b3c902a54673
