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Chris wants to change his life. At the moment he is receiving support from our agency. I’m sitting here thinking where to start. So much has gone on in my life. I am now 28 years old and was using drugs since I was 14. I started off with ‘soft’ drugs at school like pot and trips. I look back and try and pin point what made me pick up drugs? I come from a good, loving, caring family. Although we did have our problems like many families do. I remember my mum and dad sitting me down and talking to me about drugs. Emphasising the fact that pot would progress to harder drugs. "You’re hanging around with the wrong set of lads". They were just concerned parents at the end of the day and I was a ‘know-itall’ teenager. "You don’t know nothing you!" So I went off doing my own thing and exploring drugs. That progression had already started. I just didn’t realise it! We started off robbing cars and bikes, flying around estates, getting chased by the police. We thought we weren’t doing anything wrong. The police caught us in the end in a robbed car in Kirkby; the start of my criminal ‘career’. We were soon out of control and up in court every week, our ‘firm’ our ‘gang’, whatever you want to call it. My mum and dad were foster parents, my mum is also a nurse and my father works in the medical profession. Our family was screened by Social Services regularly, risk assessments for the children. My mum and dad were put in a difficult situation. Because I was continually in trouble with the police, they were made to make a decision. It was either me, carrying on the road I had found myself on, or the children that my Mother fosters would have to stop staying there. The decision was made by the courts and my parents that I should be put into care. I totally went off the rails. I was robbing houses, factories, cars, debt collectors – anything that would raise money for drugs, clothes, food. I ended up in a detention centre until I was 16. My parents were hoping that the detention and care I was receiving would give me a short sharp shock. The reality was that it just never happened. Instead of closing doors, it just opened more. The ‘street cred’ you all want so much as a teenager, had gone through the roof. I was out there, in the real world on my own, resentful towards my parents, the courts, and the police. I was a menace to society with an attitude problem. I was hungry for street cred, money, girls, cars, respect, anything! This was the addict in me. I was with a girl just before I went into the detention centre. She was pregnant and due to have our baby but where was I? I was out working on my reputation, which I thought was so important. She had a beautiful daughter; I wasn’t there to see the birth. I had more important things to do like selling drugs. I brushed them to one side without even thinking about it. My girlfriend wanted to punish me; she wanted to be part of it so much. I like to think that she loved me. She just couldn’t fathom how I did not have time for her or my daughter. When I realised that I wanted to be part of their lives, she shut me out. She did to me, what I had done to them. That just made me hate myself society and life even more. It was the perfect excuse the addict within me needed. I dealt with it in my own selfish way and tried to put them to the back of my mind. I got on with my life, going to raves all over the country, selling tablets and ‘Charlie’. There’s that progression again, from pot and trips to ‘E’s’ and ‘Charlie’, and it happens without you even realising. I’m not going to lie and say that I didn’t have good times because I did. We were selling E’s, cocaine, weed, making good money, nice cars, nice girls. It was life in the fast lane and I loved it! Power, respect, image, all the things I had wanted so much. I ended up getting nicked for dragging a lad out of his Mercedes at Wigan Pier when I was high. I took his car and ended up with a helicopter and half of Wigan police force chasing me. I got caught and was nicked. I had already got myself a good few charges and now a list began to develop. I was called up to Liverpool Crown Court and sent down. I was in young offenders’ institutions now. I ‘fitted in’ in jail, there were lads I knew, and there was that respect ‘thing’. Prison would either send you running with your tail in between your legs or straight into a school for criminals. I had been in these situations before, in detention centres, so I mingled easily. My jail career had now begun. I got out wanting life in the fast lane. Smack was always frowned upon in young offender’s institutions. Just as I left prison it was ‘big’ on the streets and friends of mine were all using it. They all had addictions. I stayed away from it for a couple of years and just carried on selling cocaine, E’s and weed. I met a girl who had a young lad of 3 years old. Ready made family. She was gorgeous and so was her little lad. I fell in love with them both. Things were ‘good’ for a while. For a good few years I was dealing. We were going to parties, having tablets and cocaine; I loved them but there was always the doubt in my mind that they didn’t love me. Insecurities from my past, my parents putting me in care, my daughter, guilt and my attitude that life wasn’t fair. I started selling heroin and rock with the view that I would be able to stay away from it. Selling it to my friends, to anyone with money basically. I soon started getting high on my own supply. It was all good at the time. I had found something that would hide all my feelings; I wasn’t out grafting for it. I thought in my head that that justified it. It all started to go wrong though. We weren’t making any money because we were smoking all the profit. Soon enough it had all collapsed. Now I was back to grafting. I was desperate with a habit to feed. Things went downhill fast. I was in and out of jail. My girlfriend stood by me, had faith in me that I would get off the gear and get clean. There was always an excuse I could use though. I was on gear for 7 years. I went from having it all to nothing. My girlfriend put up with hell. My drug use had messed up both our lives. It affected everyone around me. I robbed all of them, my mum, my brother, my sister, and my girlfriend. I had become a manipulative thieving scumbag. I didn’t like myself much before I took heroin, I have destroyed mine, my families and my partners’ lives for long enough. I’m in rehab now at the T.H.O.M.A.S project in Blackburn. I have done enough rattles in enough jail cells, police stations and out there as well. No matter how many times in the past, in and out of jail, straight back on it, if you don’t change anything, nothing will. That is why I came here to T.H.O.M.A.S, to change. Look at the "why s"? Why do I keep going back to the same thing? Why do I keep putting myself back in the same circumstances, same friends and the same situation around drugs? I came from Preston prison determined to change all that. To take a good look at myself and why I have to escape drugs. I’m insecure, guilty and ashamed. I have a low opinion of myself, I’m angry at life and I’m somebody I don’t want to be when I’m on drugs. Its time to take all the fronts, barriers and masks off. Ego, street cred, respect, heroin soon stripped me of them. I was a desperate, mixed up person. I’ve got a lot from T.H.O.M.A.S. It’s not been easy but today I know I don’t have to be that person anymore. I’m going to college. I’m sorting my life out and I owe T.H.O.M.A.S a lot. I’m clean. I have hopes and dreams. There is nothing stopping anyone who is reading this having that! No matter where you are reading this, whether its jail, on the streets, ANYWHERE, I guarantee you I’ve been there and have the T-shirt to prove it. We all deserve a life, so be strong. Don’t listen to all the negatives. Make that step in life. I’m high on life, on me, and today. That’s enough for me! |
