EDGES MAGAZINE Issue 13

March -May 1998

no longer injecting my veins
PAUL SHARES HIS ROAD TO RECOVERY WITH US

I am now 28 years of age. I began using drugs around about the age of 15. I started using Amphetamines, Cannabis, alcohol, progressed through pharmaceutical drugs such as Morphine and Dyacanol and finished up on Heroin.

I made numerous attempts to get clean from using Heroin before finally getting clean just before my 24th birthday. I was detoxed in September 1993 and I haven't used anything since then but as I said I made numerous attempts at getting clean; did numerous detox's, went into numerous rehabs, went to see psychiatrists, drug counsellors, went on rehabilitation programmes, went to other countries, changed my area, tried to change my friends, substituted one drug for another because I didn't understand what being clean was.

As I understood it I had a problem with Heroin, but with hindsight I can now see that I had a problem with everything that I used. I couldn't imagine life without using drugs; I couldn't imagine life without drinking alcohol because it is something that I'd done from such an early age. The thought of life without drugs or alcohol was quite a frightening thought and I didn't believe it was really possible to get clean. I believed an old myth "once a junkie - always a junkie". Eventually, I gave up hope of getting clean, I had tried so many times that I didn't think it was possible and when people told me that they were clean I didn't believe them. I became cynical about anybody who said they were clean. I knew people who'd say, "oh yeah, I'm off Heroin now, and I am on a Methadone script and I've got myself a new girlfriend, or I've got myself a job", or whatever. I'd then bump into them a few weeks later at a local dealer's house and they'd be telling me "don't tell anyone that you've seen me here" and of course I would instantly go out and tell everybody that I'd seen them there, because I really didn't believe it was possible.

Eventually, I finished up with nowhere to live, I was under eight stone in weight, I didn't have any veins left in my arms, I didn't have any veins left in my hands. I had to walk through the back streets because I was constantly on the lookout for people I owed money to, or who I had ripped off. If cars pulled up near me I'd be looking over my shoulder and I was constantly in a state of fear. I'd wake up every morning thinking if only I could stop doing this. Every morning I'd have to go through that cycle of going out stealing, getting the money together, scoring, using and no matter how much I used it was never enough. The only time I was happy at the end was when I was unconscious, because as soon as I had used, I'd tell myself that it wasn't enough and I'd have to go out and repeat the same cycle over and over again. Then I went to a meeting of Narcotics Anonymous.

I ended up in a Treatment Facility by default really, because I owed people money, people were offering money to know my whereabouts and I had to get out of town really quickly. I ended up in a treatment facility and in this facility they took us to a meeting of Narcotics Anonymous. When I walked into this meeting and there was a whole bunch of people who were sat round, clean, it amazed me. The thing that really struck me was not just the fact that not only were they clean, but they were clean and a lot of them seemed quite content to be living life without drugs. I had always imagined that life without drugs would be like watching the omnibus edition of Coronation Street on a wet Sunday afternoon for the rest of my life! But a lot of these people were getting on with their lives, and they had good chunks of clean time behind them.

The people there suggested things to me; nobody was trying to tell me what to do, people were just telling me things from their own experiences of being clean. I was more willing to listen to these people because I knew they had come from the same position and the same place that I'd come from. They told me things like, don't use for a day at a time, wake up in a morning, make a decision for that day not to use and if when I get in bed that night and I'd stayed clean for that day, whatever else has happened, that day has been a success. They told me to keep coming back to meetings as regularly as I could. The things that I was going through when I stopped using, the people there helped me to overcome. If it had been drugs that were the problem then, theoretically, I would just have to stop using drugs and the problem would be solved, but as any addict knows, when you stop using drugs the problem just begins. For me when I first started to use drugs they weren't a problem they were a solution.

I continued to go to meetings, I continued to stay clean. I stayed in the treatment facility I was in because I didn't have anywhere else to go. I didn't have anywhere else to live, my family didn't want to know, and I didn't really have any friends left. I steadily got better and I went into a halfway house and then when I left there I got my own place. I continued to go to the meetings and whatever life threw at me I knew that I had the support of other people.

I realise that even now after four and a half years clean that it isn't possible for me to do it on my own. It may be for some people, but for this addict I have to have people around me to remind me of the reality of what I've come from. I realise from all my attempts to get clean that every time I tried to stop, as soon as I started again, I'd pick up exactly where I left off. My addict mind may try and kid me that things would go back to the way they used to be, but I realise that they don't.

The fun days of using drugs for me were over a long time ago and I have learned that life without drugs can be okay. It still has its problems and I would never say to any addict that getting clean is easy, because as any addict knows it isn't. I had a lot of things to sort out. I felt responsible for the death of a close friend of mine who over-dosed and died whilst I was living with him a few years before I got clean. I've met other people in Narcotics Anonymous who had been through similar experiences and were able to suggest things to me to help me to overcome that.

Now I feel that I am very much on the bridge to normal living, whatever normal is supposed to be. What I mean by that is that I have the things that society deems acceptable in so much as I returned to education after a year clean; my first year clean was spent concentrating on just staying clean, but then I returned to education and I am now in the final year of a degree course. I was on probation when I began my course because I didn't know if I'd be able to handle being in an educational environment. I now stay clean; one of the things that helps me to stay clean is the fact that I do things for other people now, I help other people to get clean by my example


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