I Decided I Needed To Change My Life
Karl is on our Rehabilitation Programme
I decided that I needed to change my life because I had been seventeen years in addiction; seventeen years of the same old stuff day in day out, no life really. Just jails; institutions and not far from death sometimes; I was sick and tired of hurting the people closest to me. Not that I really enjoyed drugs or the life I had; if you can call it a life, being on the streets. I wanted to start enjoying life.
When you get into the circle of using drugs for so many years it’s hard to get out of it. You don’t really know what the solution is and you’re vulnerable. And to come to a place like this. I have done rehab for 10 years before I came here. The first time I was 21, too young really and I didn’t take it in, also I was doing it for the wrong reasons; for other people not myself. I feel today it’s different. In jail recovery is different. It’s like – the world doesn’t owe you anything I have to start taking responsibility because nothing is going to happen if I don’t meet it half way. I’ve got to put the footwork in and apply myself. Coming to a place like THOMAS is pointing me in the right direction and giving me the tools I need to live life on its own terms.
Some of my worst moments are being in hospital; found half dead in the street by my brother; being found in bed and coming round to see the paramedics and the police there. The emotional rock bottom for me was being on the streets three months after getting back on drugs because me and my girl friend had fallen out. I had nothing and I got five and a half years in prison. I got this for aggravated burglary. It was the quickest progression that I had had in seventeen years of drug use. I did four and a half years of that sentence. That three months was the worst time ever.
When I first started taking drugs at the age of 14 -15 other people made it easy for me, because they were naïve and they didn’t understand the implications of trying to help me. I came to that place where no one wanted to know or to help and where it was do or die. I don’t want to make excuses for myself, I did it because of my self-centred habit.
In the first two years of the prison sentence I was still in the madness, still taking drugs expecting people at the other end of the phone to do things for me that I couldn’t do for myself. There were still many people sending me money for my drugs; sending me top-up cards for my phone. I expected other people to run round for me whilst they were trying to get on with their own lives. By the third year of my sentence I began to ask myself why was I still being obsessive, why was I carrying on doing this? Always asking these questions and not knowing what to do about this problem, I didn’t know why.
I asked for an appointment with the psychiatric nurse because I believed at that time that there was something wrong with me. I had been locked up for three years and I couldn’t stop taking drugs and I was still obsessed; I wanted to know the answer.
I enrolled on a RAPTS course in prison and did thirteen months on the 12 Steps programme. It kept me out of the madness; I didn’t have to use. It kept me busy and on the level and I didn’t have to listen to all the s--- that goes on it jail, I wanted to have a normal conversation without resorting to all the stuff about violence and so on.
And I did that, I don’t know how but I did it. There is only one rehab wing in the jails. 90% of them are singing from the drugs hymn sheet and 10% trying to stay away from drugs and it’s hard.
Three months out of jail and I got the habit again; after all that time of not taking them. Ten months clean and I don’t know why that was. I was back in that madness I had put down the programme. I am 32 years of age and I am sick and tired of being in prison. I have more today than I had. I have got my family back in my life and I didn’t think that would happen. They got sick of my demands when I was first in jail.
Since coming in to THOMAS I have learned to take responsibility for myself and not expect others to do for me what I can do for myself. I am learning to be honest and open; to live a life without drugs. To stand on my own two feet. I am determined not to go to prison again. At the moment prisons are worse than they used to be; they are overcrowded; living on top of each other. It’s a different generation – all the young kids getting ASBOS; drinking on the streets; getting into fights. There’s plenty of education out there, but not many jobs after so they are hanging about on street corners, doing what they do. They go in jail mixing with the older ones thinking they have something to prove or trying to make a name for themselves in jail. It can be easy at times but I don’t think the easy approach has done them any favours. Most of them hang about doing nothing and there is nothing constructive going on in jail.
As I look to the future I hope that I will stay drug-free and that I will keep on doing what I am doing to arrest this illness of addiction. I think I will.