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| My name is Wayne Dixon., I went to Witton Park school.
I got kicked out of there when I was 13, and had to go to a boarding school- a
borstal. I came back to Blackburn when I was 16. I did all the usual stuff-
listened to the Manchester scene music, and started taking trips and stuff.
That was what everybody did- so you did it. I joined the army, and stayed in three years. But I got kicked out for messing up, so I came back to Blackburn. Where I was brought up, heroin and methadone was the big problem from age sixteen. I started sniffing gas when I was thirteen, and it escalated from there really. But it was right on our doorstep. I did a lot of travelling as well, getting away from Blackburn. I knew there was something on the other side- I didn’t know what it was, but I knew it was there. Over the years I kept coming back, and slipping back. A lot of my friends have died. We all remember Neil Gudgeon, Julian Tierney, Steven Watson. I came back about five years ago, with a lot of big ideas from travelling. I was thinking ‘I’ll do this, I’ll do that’, but the same thing happened again, and two months down the line I was back to square one. I’ve been fighting for four or five years, and I’m lucky, because I used to go where a lot of my friends are still addicted, and are still living in Blackburn, if not in prison. About four or five years ago it was make or break time. It was throw a rope round my neck, or make a change. Because what’s the point of my Mum watching me killing myself all the time? So I started doing some work with Fr Jim on a Friday. I needed something instead of just going round to a mate’s house. I wanted to put something back in. So Friday and Sunday I was doing the soup kitchen, and then a couple of months later I started doing Nightsafe, working with the younger people there. They were telling me, about a year ago, to go down there, that I had something to put back in, and I wouldn’t do it. The first week I came down to Thomas and Nightsafe, I knew what I wanted to do, and all these doors opened. It didn’t matter what Wayne Dixon is an ex drug user he is now building a new life I’d done- if I’d been done for drugs, or done for shoplifting, or anything like that, these doors opened. At Nightsafe they have some volunteers, who work for Community Service Volunteers, and what appealed to me was that they had a no rejection policy. It didn’t matter if you’d had a drug problem for ten or twelve years- in fact it gave you an education greater than a degree in Social Work or whatever, because you’d been there. But I really needed to get out of Blackburn. I couldn’t risk doing volunteer work here, because I was starting to dabble again, and let people down again. So I went to do CSV on another project. I was in this place for one year. I got fifty quid a week, free accommodation, and had to work sixty hours a week on shifts, living in this project with young people. Loads of people were saying to me ‘Why are you doing that’ but I could see a light at the end of the tunnel. After that I got a job- it was all I’d needed, that year’s experience- not the GCSEs, the courses, because they can all come. It was that year’s experience, and the fact that I could relate to everybody. I was being a good role model to those 18 year olds. They had no Mums and Dads, drugs problems, and things like that. So I got a job for two years from that, as a support worker in Kingston. All in all I’ve been doing it for about five years now. I’m now project manager of four properties that look after young people needing care. You don’t need computer skills as yet, you just need that skill of communication; making somebody welcome; and the ability to tell your life story. People know then that you’ve done what they’re doing, and you’ve experienced the exact same things that they’re experiencing now. It means a lot. It’s up to us now, and I think we can do it. Our experience, our education has been what we got into when we were thirteen- the gas, the heroin, the lot. We’ve got to turn it back. It’s as simple as that. I want to mention a really good three or four friends who are doing council courses- they’re all working after eight or nine years of doing nothing, but now they’re putting something back. Doors will open for everybody. It’s been taking time, we’ve all been through it in different ways- some of us have gone on to be born again Christians, we’ve got the jobs and everything. But it’s still there all the time, over your shoulder, your past, your associations. It niggles and I hate it. What makes me stronger is what I’m doing now, even though I had no GCSEs, and had been doing drugs, and shoplifting, and things like that-even though I’d thought there was no hope. We’re living in an age where these are the problems we’ve got to face day to day. But we’ve got people who’ve got the experience of that lifestyle. If you’re ever at your lowest point, and you think there’s no hope- there is. We need more communication and integration, especially with the ethnic minorities. |
