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To Hell and back: A drug user's first-person account
DRUGS have hit the headlines recently following Operation Falcon in which 31 people were arrested for a varying degree of offences.
Many of those were accused being drug users, others pushers and runners, and at the top were suspected dealers, alleged to be operating a sophisticated web with links to London.
But how does the spiral into the world of drugs use begin?
The Bucks Herald spoke to one drug user who started taking drugs at the age of about 16 when he got in with the wrong crowd.
After he got heavily into alcohol his family sent him to Pakistan twice for a total of about four years, but it was there that he first got involved with hashish, smoking about 20 cannabis joints a day. He was then asked to act as a drugs camel with four kilos of heroin, which he backed out of doing just before he returned to England. Before throwing the heroin away, he smoked some and it was then that things started to go wrong.
He said: "I became hooked on heroin and then I came back to England. I was working at first and I had a full time job and everything. I was working so I was using my wages to buy drugs, but I was doing dodgy stuff at work, which inevitably caught up with me. I lost my job, then I started stealing and just doing credit card fraud, stuff like that to make money for drugs, just to feed my habit.
"After that, things just got more serious. I started robbing drug dealers and it became a very dangerous game. A couple of years after that when I was about 23, I started smoking crack cocaine, which just made me completely mental. Once you have had some crack cocaine you will do anything for another fix and that's how it was until I went into various rehabs.
"I've been to prison about five or six times, all drug related offences, however this last time that I spent in prison, it was for supplying drugs to a police officer (in a sting operation]. It gave me a lot of time to contemplate and think about my future and where I am going and I decided that life just isn't for me.
"I was 28 years old by then, so I decided that's it. New start. Fresh start. So when I came out of prison I kept myself busy working with the family, helping relatives doing various odd jobs. I bought myself a car, my family is happy, everybody's happy, people look at me differently, I get a lot more respect.
"My family have been there for me the entire way through, but there have been times when they have been on the verge of disowning me because of things I have done. I have stolen thousands of pounds from my parents, there was no trust whatsoever. My family, my sisters and that, they wouldn't leave their handbags lying around if I was about because they knew I would take it or any money I could to get a fix.
"The lowest point was when I got sent down this last time and my wife threatened to leave me and take my kids, my two daughters, and that was basically my lowest point. I just thought 'no way, I can't afford to lose them'. So I do what I have to do to kick this habit and live a normal life, but that was my lowest point, my wife and daughters were on the verge of leaving me.
"I am keeping clean; I give regular drugs tests at the probation service twice a week and my results are generally good and I am just behaving myself. I am avoiding the old associates that I used to spend time with. I try to avoid them as much as I can, I just spend all my free time with my family basically.
"My future's bright now. I have been out of prison for about six weeks. I have been made pretty much drug free. I have had a couple of lapses, but it's not the end of the world – I have recovered from them and things are positive, things are looking up for me.
"I have got a lot of respect from the community and my family. I have got my own car, I spend a lot of time helping my father and the family doing work around the house.
"My message is this: there's no glamour in it at all. I have lost a lot of good friends that have been murdered and whatever because of drugs and it's not glamorous at all and it's not big, it's not clever, it will only ruin your life, it will ruin the lives of those people around you and your family, it will destroy everything that you have. That's what I tell youngsters, I just tell them, stay away from drugs because it's bad news, it really is bad news.
"You really lose everything."
For help with drugs issues, contact Buckinghamshire Drugs and Alcohol Action team at www.bucksdaat.co.uk or call them on 01296 387034.
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Tuesday 07 February 2012
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