Fighting addiction is a family affair for Mel - The Observer 2nd December 2007

Thomas Quinn visits a centre that offers mothers the chance to get clean and keep their children When she arrived less than a month ago she weighed just five and a half stone. At around five feet tall, Mel is small, but even so. The problem wasn't the heroin so much as what she'd started to take along with it. Cocaine really kills your appetite. Mel is sitting on a leather sofa in what was once one of the grandest drawing rooms in Glasgow's opulent west end. The walls are panelled with dark mahogany, the ceilings tower above us edged with cornicing like icing on a Christmas cake, and the floors are wood and marble. Yet it is far from glamorous: there is an everyday, institutional feel to the place.

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