I was heavily into amphetamine and I met my girl
who was at school, and I used to go round there to meet her. She wasn’t
into drugs but I had been using amphetamines and such since I was fifteen. I
met her one night and that was the beginning of a relationship. She has been
through a lot because of me. I was thrown out by my mother at fifteen because
she found some needles in the house, but my girl stood by me through all this
and used to let me stay at her house sometimes. A few years later we moved to Burnley and that’s when I got into heroin. I was selling drugs at this point, going out at week-ends managing on the money I got from the bits of heroin and ecstasy and other drugs that I was selling. But I got into debt with the wrong sort of people and we had to go back to her mother’s. This was at Christmas and shortly after she became pregnant. Our baby girl was born in December 2000 and that was the proudest day of my life, even so I still couldn’t stop taking drugs, I swore that I would be the best father that I could be but I still couldn’t stop. I tried every way, made efforts but there seemed no way out. We shared a house together for two years after the baby was born but she couldn’t take it any longer. For instance, I was sleeping with other girls, using drugs in the house and she was clean. She wanted to lead a normal life, but I couldn’t do that. I was too heavily involved with drugs, all I wanted was to get drugs. Even though I loved my girl and my baby I wasn’t spending much time with them, so she left me and moved to another area. I was very upset but it just seemed to push me deeper into heroin. I was living with a friend who was selling heroin. At this point I phoned her every other day, and I managed to convince her that I had stopped using heroin and she believed me, even though I was lying. We moved in together again but it didn’t work because she could tell that I was lying when I said I wasn’t using heroin. I was kicked out and from then I was getting more into heroin, robbing more people stealing from friends and my family and her family, anywhere where I could get money to feed my £60 a day habit. I was doing a lot of crime, but I was also doing roofing and other jobs, ripping people off, saying that I had done jobs that I hadn’t. I was always making promises to see my daughter and to take her out but I didn’t keep the promises. The worst moment was when I rang up one day to take out my daughter and my girl refused to let me see her, because of the mess that I was in. That was when I realised that I had to stop. I had heard about the T.H.O.M.A.S. project from a family friend who had been through it, and I contacted a member of staff who gave me an assessment and admitted me on to the project. I have discovered that I am not the person I thought I was. I thought I was a ruthless and a bad person. I have come to realise that I have emotions and feelings. I care about other peoples’ feelings and opinions. I know that what I have done to my girl friend over the years and my role as a father have been wrong. I want to make it up to them. I am now looking into the future and getting things put into place. I would like to go to college in Oxfordshire. I would like to get into hotel management, or the retail business. Other than that I would want to study sociology and psychology so that I could be a drug worker, because I respect the team workers here at T.H.O.M.A.S. and that is something I wouldn’t mind looking into. |
