EDGES MAGAZINE Issue

October 2000

- this time I'm not going back

Mick came to us from Prison. He is in our Reconcile Project and doing well.

I’m twenty-six and I’m from Darwen. I’m currently staying in Blackburn at St. Anne’s House.

I was serving a prison sentence at Haverigg Prison. A drug worker from Haverigg contacted a probation officer about some outreach work for me. The probation officer told me about St. Anne’s House and put me in touch with Father Jim. A week later I had a visit from Father Jim who arranged for me to come onto the Reconcile Project when I left prison. That was a God send really. I have been here two months now and if it wasn’t for this programme I would be back in prison.

I came out of prison and used on the first day I got out. I scored in Lancaster and then came back to Blackburn. Without me knowing Father Jim had arranged for me to stay in a Bed & Breakfast for a week before I started this programme.

I started using drugs at the age of fourteen. I was using the recreational ones like amphetamines, magic mushrooms and cannabis. At eighteen I ended up with a prison sentence. I come out of prison and started getting into heroin because that’s what was about at that time and I have been on it ever since.

I did quite well at school up until about third year where we merged schools. I was at St. Thomas Aquinas in Darwen and we merged with St. Edmund Arrowsmith and became St. Bede’s. I didn’t fit in and started playing truant. I got to the fifth year and thought that I better start trying but I didn’t know my way around the school so I stopped going and I had two days there in my fifth year. In that time I was sniffing solvents, smoking cannabis and taking acid. It took me out of myself, it took me to some where I didn’t know that was full of fantasy.

I started taking drugs because I was introduced to them by some friends who were a bit older than me. I liked the idea and thought it would be a laugh, an adventure. .

I have served four prison sentences for burglary, theft, fraud and deception and theft by deception.

The amount of heroin I would use a day differs. I could spend twenty pounds a day and that would stop me feeling ill but I could spend anything up to two hundred or three hundred pounds. I used to work fitting kitchens and bedrooms with my uncle and I used to come home with two hundred or three hundred pounds some weeks. I’d come home on Friday and would be coming into work on Monday asking for a sub. My uncle could only put up with it for so long and eventually he said I’m going to have to let you go. He didn’t like seeing me screwed up on heroin and he didn’t like giving me two hundred or three hundred pounds a week to do it. He did tell me to get your head together and that if I did there was a job there waiting. That was two years ago and the opportunity is still there.

The last few time that I’ve been away I have treat it as kind of a break. I appreciated being locked up so that I couldn’t use. The first time I was locked up was a shock. I was at a Young Offenders Institution in Wigan. There was violence, bullying and lack of general interest.

In prison you are locked up unless you get issued with a job. There are officers around you with their eyes on you all the time. They let you out in the morning to go for your breakfast and then it’s back to your cell to eat. If you are working then you would go to work, if you are not working you are locked up in your cell until dinner time. There is an hours exercise in the morning from ten till eleven. You then have your dinner and it’s the same again if you are not working you are locked in your cell until tea time. Then when you’ve had your tea you are locked up until the following morning.

When your cell is opened up everyone is running around like idiots to get their drugs sorted. It might be weed, heroin or whatever. Drugs are rife in prison. There may be a couple of days when there is none about but it doesn’t last very long. The drugs come in on visits, parcels or if it’s an open prison they get dropped outside.

Not the last sentence I was on but the sentence before I was in Preston. I had withdrawals and I had been on a detox. I got put in a cell with a lad who is now dead and he was getting quite an amount of heroin in every other day, like two or three hundred pounds worth at a time. I was with him for about four weeks and I was using everyday. I used more in there than I was using before I went in.

Since I’ve come to the T.H.O.M.A.S. Organisation my spirit has been lifted. The amount of help I have received has been amazing. If it wasn’t for this place I know I would have been back in prison within four weeks. Now I’m trying to rebuild myself to go out, not use, go back to work and just live a normal life. I want to get the things I’ve always wanted, like a motorbike and a driving license. I want to build up my relationship again with my family. I don’t want to let myself down now or let my family down because I feel it’s my last chance. T.H.O.M.A.S. has taught me to open up and speak to people and not to bottle things up. I do find it hard to speak to people about what’s going on for me. I’ve never been in an environment before where you can open up and talk to people before, it’s quite strange. I feel it’s working and I feel I’m changing day by day.


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