Everyone has recovery inside them. No matter how hopeless it may feel, no matter the nature of the addiction. I was brought up in a family where both my parents were addicts – my mum to drugs, my dad to alcohol.
It wasn’t what my mum wanted for me, but it was what I saw. To deal with your problems, to make money, to have a good time – it was the easiest way. September is Recovery Month , when we celebrate the lives saved from addition, and remember those who sadly lost theirs to it.
I’m proof that the former is always possible, the latter not inevitable. Recovery Month took me back to HMP Perth, last week, as a volunteer and mentor this time. I’ve now helped more than 200 people with addiction and other challenges – I’m addicted to helping now, to feeling good about myself – but in 2018, I was not in HMP Perth out of choice.
Job, car, girlfriend, all lost I first started taking drugs as a teenager, despite working full time and holding down a good job. Everyone’s life is split between their work and colleagues on one hand, and their friends and home life on the other. But for me, that divide seemed even greater.
I came home from work and went into that other life with friends who were taking drugs, who were in and out of prison, and increasingly, I felt I was missing out. Why Scotland’s drug deaths crisis will only get worse without radical reform The truth is, that world seemed so appealing to me then. For a long time, I didn’t even know I was addicted .