Cameron from Glasgow tells his story

I was brought up with a foster family just outside Glasgow. For fifteen years I stayed with foster parents. Due to my disruptive behavior I was put into residential school where I stayed for a further two years. During this time both of my foster parents died and I subsequently left residential school. I went to stay in accommodation set up by the social services but due to unforeseen circumstances that fell through. From the age of seventeen I was pushed from pillar to post, here, there and everywhere. I was staying with my friends and out on the street.

I eventuallymet my natural father and stayed with him for a couple of weeks. I didn't agree with what he was into because he was an alcoholic. I met a lot of my other natural family and made friendly contact with my mother. She stayed in Preston. I went to stay in Preston in 1994 and got myself a job. I worked for about eight months then my mother decided to move back up to Hamilton in 1995.

When I lost my job I decided to go back up to Hamilton. I got up there and started drinking and what-not. I was just experimenting with drink and drugs. As my problem got worse there was no prospect for jobs and what-not. All there was to do was hang about the street corners drinking and smoking cannabis. At that time there was not a lot of heroin about but as the years went on the heroin came in to where we lived in our area. There were drug dealers everywhere.

When I had just started experimenting with drugs me and my friends would buy a ten pound bag every fortnight on my giro day. It started from there. Taking a wee bit, then it would be a wee bit more, until I finally got a habit. We were just smoking it on tin foil but then that didn't work anymore so we started injecting. Then it started to spiral out of control. There was no way we could feed our habits just off our giro's so we started going shoplifting, breaking into cars and stealing car stereo's. My life from there went downhill.

Sometimes I say to myself, 'Why I am doing this?', I feel at a low ebb sometimes. I know I could pull out of it if I get support. That's what I really need and that's the reason I decided to leave Scotland, because I've seen a lot of friends die through heroin addiction. I wouldn't like to be sitting there in a wooden box, six feet under. I have been in company, sitting there and injecting and that, and I have seen one of my friends just lying there. I said to him, 'Are you alright, are you alright?', and his face just started to turn blue. We tried to call the ambulance but by the time it had arrived it was too late, he was stiff on the floor. It really shocked me a lot because with every injection that I take it could be my last. That's why I have decided to come away from that scene and sort myself out.

In primary school I had a fairly good education, I did well in primary school. When I hit secondary school for the first two years I did alright but after that I was starting to experiment in smoking cannabis, taking tamazipan and vallium. Then I started truanting school and being disruptive at home. That's when my parents first decided that enough is enough. My social worker decided that if my behaviour continued to spiral downhill I would end up eventually in a residential school. I didn't really believe him at first, I thought nah it's a load of rubbish and continued with my ways. I started doing stupid and more stupid things. The police would be coming round to the house looking for me.

I went to all the usual classes such as maths, english and physical education. In one of the departments where I worked I learned to do joinery. I took a module in joinery that took around twenty months. I also learned to do a bit of electrician's work, and some painting and decorating and a tiny bit of motor mechanics. I went there with no qualifications whatsoever because at that time I had been thrown out of mainstream school. Upon leaving my residential school I left with several modular qualifications.

I think things went downhill due to my foster parents dying and that. I didn't know my natural parents and I started to drink a lot and to use drugs a lot. Things just weren't happening for me. I have only had one job in my life and that's when I came down to England to see my mother, when I finally contacted her. That didn't last and I was only there for a little over a year before I moved back up to Scotland.

In the early nineties it was things like Ecstasy and amphetamins, that was the upper drugs at the start of the nineties, but as we get to the end it seems to be the downer drugs that are the in thing. A lot of people are taking heroin and a lot of folk are getting into crack. They are taking crack then they are taking heroin to come down off that. There are a lot of folk taking more barbituates, tamazipan, vallium and all sorts of different drugs. It's a bad culture but it's the same wherever you go, there will always be a drugs trade. The people that sell drugs get richer while the people who are on drugs get worse. Eventually some of them will die, some of them will come of it when they realise what they are doing wrong. It's just a case of do you want to come off.