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EDGES MAGAZINE Issue 32 |
March 2003 |
Tony shares his thoughts.
Alcohol has been a problem for me since I was about twelve. My father was a
drinker – in fact my whole family were drinkers. Seeing them drink I used
to go down in the morning and help myself to the drinks cabinet and start
drinking.I started messing up at school badly. I was knocking about with my uncle who was about ten years older than me at the time. At thirteen I was going out drinking and robbing. I ended up in residential care. During that time I started taking drugs because the other lads were taking them. I got into a car accident. A car I stole crashed and someone died and I got sent away for it. I was in detention centres and different institutions until I was seventeen.
When I came out of prison at seventeen I started drinking straight away. Its been downhill since then. I’m now thirty-one years of age and I’ve been in and out of prison constantly since the age of seventeen. The drink and the drugs have basically knackered my life. If I couldn’t get hold of drink at night time I would take heroin. So it was heroin and drink. By the time I was twenty eight I had a duel habit. I needed a drink first thing in the morning and a bag of heroin in the afternoon.
I got out of prison in July of this year. Pam, the prison worker, had told me about T.H.O.M.A.S. while I was in there. While at T.H.O.M.A.S. I’ve discovered why I started drinking and why I started taking drugs. I’ve also discovered a lot more about myself and that I’m worth more than what I’ve become – a drunken bum. Since I’ve been to T.H.O.M.A.S. I’ve made a lot more contact with my son and I’ve got the relationship built back up.
My self confidence had gone basically through the drink and the drugs. I was paranoid all the time thinking people were looking at me, talking about me and I just couldn’t go out without taking drugs or having a drink. T.H.O.M.A.S. has opened up my mind and basically I feel a lot more confident when I’m talking to people.
