Sai Kit's mind went blank when he beat down his mother's bedroom door, only to find her body lying stiff on the bed.
He had sensed trouble when he saw a bag of charcoal in their flat and banged hard on her door but got no response. When he finally got in, it was too late.
Now, his mind often goes back to December 24, 2003, a few months before her death, when he celebrated her last birthday and wished her 'happiness every year'.
It is an ironic memory, but the tragedy had one positive aspect: his mother's memory made the young addict determined to give up drugs.
'My greatest regret is my mother's death. It was her that made me determined not to take drugs,' says Sai Kit, now 21, who began his habit when he was just 15 and later graduated to trafficking.
'I knew drugs were destructive, but then I was under the sway of my friends and I didn't think much.'
Sai Kit, whose story will be told in an RTHK programme on TVB at 7pm tonight, recalls how he once carried 400 tablets of Ecstasy and 85 grams of ketamine in the street and was lucky not to be caught. He gave up trafficking after several people were arrested in a disco and worked fixing air conditioners, but his drug-taking continued.
