Edges Magazine Issue 26: Sniffing Glue & Taking Heroin

EDGES MAGAZINE Issue 26

July/Aug 2001

SNIFFING GLUE AND TAKING HEROIN

Justin Simpson, aged 27 is not yet in our project. My name is Justin Simpson. I'm twenty seven years old and I'm a heroin addict.

I started taking drugs at eight years old. I was sniffing glue and smoking cannabis. I had a bad childhood. I came from a broken home. It was the events in my childhood that led me to take drugs, to escape the reality of it.

When I was fifteen I moved onto harder drugs. I started injecting speed. Soon after that it got to the point were I had to earn money any way I could to fund my habit. That led me to going to prison when I was seventeen.

In prison I was introduced to heroin and I have been taking it ever since. I have tried a few times to get off heroin. I have been on methadone scripts and I've been into a rehabilitation centre.

I have recently moved out of the area where I was from and changed my circle of friends. I'm still on drugs but I have been suspended of my methadone script because of a positive heroin test. In the next couple of weeks I hope to be back on that and things should look up from there.

At the moment life couldn't be any worse. I've been contemplating suicide. I'm on incapacity benefit at the moment for depression and insomnia. I don't work, I've got no job or future.

I'm hoping to get into another rehabilitation centre. It's been two years since I've been in the last one, Gisburn Park. I was discharged from Gisburn Park because I had a relationship while I was in treatment. As soon as I got back to Blackburn and saw a few of the old faces I relapsed. It's been all downhill since then.

At the moment I'm surviving through street drugs.