Toxic returns with a second season and does so by changing perspective. After giving voice in the first season to those who experienced addiction firsthand (the stories of Gianluca, Maurizio, Ivana and Tiziana), this time we interview those who were close to those who abused substances: parents, partners, siblings, friends. Because drugs don’t just affect those who use them, but the entire system of relationships around them.
Opening the season is Carolina, mother of Sebastiano, now 28 years old, who tells how her son’s addiction to cannabis forced her to deal with her own limits, her own silences and the dysfunctional dynamics of her family.
Sebastiano began consuming cannabis at 13, during high school, reaching up to ten joints a day: completely anesthetized, incapable of feeling emotions, distant from everyone. Carolina tries for a long time to manage the situation on her own, convinced that “dirty laundry should be washed in one’s own home”. A mistake he clearly recognizes: «When you deal with a child who falls into an addiction, you don’t have the tools to deal with it alone. Drug addiction is a chronic relapsing disease and must be treated by experts.” The one who finally convinces her is the high school principal, who tells her not to bring Sebastiano back in September and recommends a structure.
At 16, Sebastiano entered an educational home for minors. The secondment lasts eight months, without calls or meetings. In the meantime, Carolina and her ex-husband embark on a path of parenting support: «Our son is not a broken toy that is sent somewhere and returned to you repaired. If he is dysfunctional, there is a dysfunctionality in the family system. Everyone needs to get moving.”
The path is not linear: there is also a relapse, a night in the Central station in winter, a period in Paris with his uncle. But seven months later Sebastiano himself called his mother: «I understood many things. I want to come back.” Today he studies fashion in Rome, he is still a fragile boy, but he knows it and knows how to ask for help.
After this experience, Carolina left the family business to become a parenting support therapist. The message he brings with him, and which he would like to say to Carolina fifteen years ago, is only one:
«Ask for help immediately. Don’t do it alone. The last people who have to go to someone are the children. The parents go first.”
