 Our Project is helping Yarrow build a new life. Hi, my name is Yarrow and I'm twenty-one. I got into taking drugs at an early age. At thirteen I started smoking cannabis and taking things like magic mushrooms. At seventeen I first took heroin. This got rid of the isolation that I was feeling at the time. I'm surprised that I took heroin and got addicted because before that I was into keeping fit. I also liked doing Karate, which I did from the age of nine to seventeen. I thought that addiction would never happen to me. I was wrong like most people are. It's quite common to think that it's not going to happen to you. When I started to take heroin everything began to collapse around me. My relationship with my parents suffered. I started to sell drugs and steal things. I have realised that I have a problem with heroin since 1998 and I have been battling to overcome it since then. I have been too stubborn though, in that I thought I could overcome my addiction by myself. It is not quite as simple as I thought it was going to be. I'm glad that I have come to the Reconcile project. I have a lot of support and I now realise it's not as easy as just stopping. There is a lot of work to do. I still think of myself as a kid. I have always felt different to other people. I have always been quite sensitive. A lot of my problems have stemmed from a self-imposed isolation from others. I am aware that have an emotional side but it isn't the done thing for a young male to share that. The things that don't bother other people seem to bother me. My upbringing was also different from other people. You could call my parents 'alternative', some people would call them hippies. My mother is a herbalist and she's from London. Her mother is French and her father is English. My father is American but he has lived over here for twenty-five years. My father used to work as a community artist, working with youth projects and things like that. He became sick about ten years ago. He was very ill and that had a big effect on me. He nearly died. He had a disease related to his thyroid gland. He has had quite a large part of it taken out and the effects can now be controlled by a drug he takes call Thyroxine. My mother and father also got divorced around the same time. It made me upset because the things that I knew were falling down around me. I am close to both my dad and my mum. At school I got away with doing as little as possible. I didn't find it stimulating. The teachers were quite against me because they saw that I was capable of learning but was showing no interest. There was a lot of conflict there. I wasn't interested in fulfilling my potential. From an early age I wasn't interested in school. I lived in my own little day dream world. The lessons were boring really. I would daydream about being in a different place or a different country. I travelled a lot as a child. I enjoy myself a lot more in the sunshine and in the hot weather. The future confuses me sometimes because when I first started taking heroin I didn't have a clue what I wanted to do with my career or education wise. Since the age of eighteen I have not thought anything about it. Even now I try not to think about it too much because I don't want to worry. Through my late teenage years I have not lived in a real world. Worrying about what you want to do with your life is not really important when you're on heroin. Since I have come to T.H.O.M.A.S. I feel a lot better in myself. I have started eating properly again and I've put a stone on in weight. I'm just living day to day. I enjoy being here and I enjoy the sessions. After I leave T.H.O.M.A.S. I would like to develop my education. I have the potential to learn something and to broaden my mind. |
