Rabbie speaks to Edges. He is currently in our residential programme I went to Blackpool to get away from my problems. I’d no fighting spirit left and I felt emotionally beaten. I wanted to isolate myself from family, peers, just to be on my own. To be totally honest I probably just wanted to die. I wanted to be in a black hole, a dark place where no one could see me. I’m from Paisley in Scotland and it was rough where I came from. I had a good upbringing up to a certain age, about 9 or 10 then my mother met this man. From there my life went drastically wrong. I used to see her getting battered. Her face would be a mess. I used to wake up in the morning, my face would be a mess and I felt scared. I used to lie in my bed at night crying. I was scared and I felt helpless. I was only a young boy and I felt guilty that I couldn’t help my mother. I could hear her screaming in the next room taking the beatings. This was quite regular. I was being tortured, mentally tortured. I was made to sit in corners and watch my sisters eat their dinner and I wasn’t allowed to eat it. It was my step-father doing this to me. I was made to become a shop-lifter. I was sent out from the age of 10 to get stuff, not for myself but for my mother’s boyfriend. I got depression from a young age and I was the eldest I had four sisters and a brother. I just didn’t know which way to turn or who to turn to. I felt a lot of responsibility for my brother and sisters. I felt like a father figure. I just didn’t want to tell anybody about the stuff going on in my life. I was growing up around drugs, my mother took drugs, my step-father took them and one of my aunties died from an overdose when I was about 14. She was a full-blown junkie, so I saw her injecting when I was young. I was sent to pick up drugs so they have been a part of my life. I smoked my first joint when I was about 10 and I didn’t really like it. Because of all the drugs that I’d seen I always swore that I wouldn’t go down that path in life because of all the misery they caused to people. By the time I was 14, through all that I’d seen and all the stuff that was going on in my life I was depressed. I decided to start smoking cannabis and cannabis lead to drinking, ecstasy tablets and everything; so for the past 13 years I’ve been a full blown addict. If it hasn’t been one drug, it’s been another. The only time when I really didn’t want to take drugs was when I was in prison. I missed it for a time but if I’m honest I took drugs when I was in prison. I just felt that I wanted to run away from the pains of the past. I felt that I had suffered enough. I’ve been to prison several times probably about 8 or 9 times. Some of them have been serious charges, through my addiction, but a lot of stuff that I did I didn’t go to prison for, because I managed to get away with the charges. Through my teenage and adult life I’ve spent a good few years in prison. The worst moment in my life with drugs is sticking a needle into myself. I’d always thought that I was a better class of addict than those I saw in the street. I always swore to myself that I wouldn’t ever stick needles into myself. The people who did that I thought were lost souls that there is no way back from that. But as soon as I got to Blackpool I managed to last a couple of weeks smoking heroin on foil but before long I started injecting. I was ashamed and embarrassed about that, it’s something I’ll probably never forgive myself for, that I did that to myself. Somebody above must have been looking at me because I ended up getting a prison sentence. The prison sentence made me take a good look at myself and actually at where my addiction had taken me, from the pain of my past. I did a lot of thinking, where my life has been, where it’s gone and trying to get my life back. A life that I haven’t had from the age of nine; I’ve never felt really happy. I had to do something with my life. I wasn’t in control. I came into T.H.O.M.A.S. with all guns blazing, thinking I was confident, with a lot of self-esteem. But before long I realised it was all front, that I didn’t really know myself. All that confidence and self-esteem was false. For the first couple of weeks I found it hard here but I’ve stuck it out and I’m feeling the benefits. I feel a lot more spiritual. A lot of people comment on how much I’ve changed. When I speak to family members on the phone they say I sound more grown up and more at ease. I can honestly say that I’ve found peace in myself. Finding peace in my self is strange, because I lost a lot of faith in God through my upbringing and if there is a God the stuff that happened to me shouldn’t have happened. But because of the 12 Steps and coming to believe in a Higher Power a lot of good things are happening for me. What it’s made me realise is that a Higher Power has actually been working in my life. It’s overwhelming, at first it was strange, it was my first experience of that. I felt that I could have actually shed a tear through happiness; in the past the only time I could shed a tear was through pain. As I look to the future I would like to stay on the path that I’m on, focus on my recovery but not become too complacent. I would like to get some stability in my life; happiness and I would actually like to work like a normal person, whatever a normal person may be. I would like to stay drug free for the rest of my life. In the past, drugs have always caused me misery. |
