Kealan was the youngest of three sons. He was loved and wanted. He was given a soft, caring nature, with a very lazy streak. He was artistic and intelligent, and a very gifted musician.

It is very possible Kealan had an addictive personality; he didn’t have one or two guitars – he had eight or nine.
 
It’s difficult to know when he began taking drugs (as with all addicts, he was very clever at hiding his intake) but it was probably when he was 17 – his A level year. We, his family, knew he took cannabis and ecstacy, but he was coping with University, a part-time job, and had a steady girl friend; and he said he only took very little.
 
On the 6th October 2007, he bought a bottle of Methadone, went to his bed and took it.
 
As far as we know, it was his first time taking that particular drug, and it was stronger than he suspected.
 
The drug, and the fact that it slowed down his breathing, so starving him of oxygen, destroyed his brain, leaving him quadriplegic, blind, unable to swallow, and needing a catheter.
 
He spent the first six months in hospital, and another year in a care home, suffering terribly, before septicemia from a urinary infection killed him on 25 February 2009. He was just 22.
 
From messages on Kealan’s mobile phone we found out that he’d been taking many more drugs, and in a larger quantity than we had thought, and he himself believed he couldn’t give them up.
 
His family would hope his story will encourage other teenagers to seek help if they believe they have an addiction to drugs.