(All names involved are made up for confidentiality).

The 3rd of April 1981, the day I was brought into this world, I was already dependant on drugs. My mother had a terrible childhood and suffered from mental health problems from a young age. She had been on prescribed valium for over 10 years, she was told by doctors to reduce to a bare minimum for my birth, she didn’t take there advice and still filled herself with them every day, so when I was born I suffered slight withdrawal symptoms.

  I have some brief memories of my first few years, just silly things like playing in the garden with the girl next door. I can remember my first art set that I got for Christmas, I must have only been four of five. My first proper memory was when I was five, I was sitting watching Rainbow on the TV and my mam and dad shouted me into the dining room, I was sat next to my dad on the couch, and my mam was standing over us. They explained that they didn’t love each other any more and they where splitting up, I had to choose who I wanted I live with there and then. I chose to stay with my dad, I wonder if things would have been different if I lived with my mam, I’ll never find out. Mam soon moved out and I stayed with my dad in the house.

  Dad wasn’t single for long, two month later he had a new girlfriend, Sue, she moved in straight away. She was only 19, and my dad was 32, She was to become a large problem in my life. She came with a newborn baby, Samantha, she was only six weeks old when she came to live with us. At first things where great, we all got on like a proper little family, we went on a couple of holidays abroad, and things where going well. Dad worked at Cherry Knowle Hospital, he worked all hours god sent, I never saw him really, and when I did see him, he was either to tired or all his attention went to Sue and she made sure of that. I never had a minute with him alone, Sue would always come in and tell me to go and do something or ask my dad to do something, we never got a minute together. Slowly but surely her nastiness starting coming to the surface, it was just silly things at first, like sending me to bed at 7 o clock instead of nine, she would make me brush my teeth six or seven times until my gums bled, she said they weren’t clean enough. They where only small things but it made me hate her so much, the next few years where going to be torture.

  I was about nine when she started getting physical with me, I would get the odd crack here and there for daft things like, making a mess or picking on Samantha, I was ok with this as all young kids get a crack now and then for being naughty. My first serious run in with her was when I drunk some of her Diet Coke, I wasn’t even allowed to go near it never mind have a drink. She’d marked the bottle to catch me out, when she realised I’d drank some she came belting into my bedroom and dragged me down the stairs, I told the truth and admitted having a mouthful so she threw me so hard onto the couch my head cracked the wood inside the couch full force, the pain was unbelievable, I was screaming but she still yanked me up and kicked me all the way up the stairs to my bedroom. I told my dad when he came in from work, he didn’t do anything about it as usual. Sue used to talk and act really nice and pleasant to me in front of my dad and as soon as my dad turned his back, the evil looks started again.

  One day I was invited to a girl’s house from school, her name was Sarah, I had always had a crush on her, I was really looking forward to going down.  My dad let me put my brand new tracksuit on, and my new trainers, I was over the moon. My dad left for work like usual, I was getting my bike out of the shed when Sue shouted me into the house, “get them off now”, I told her my dad let me put them on but she didn’t care, she made me wear a old pair of shorts on, and a horrible jumper what had dinosaurs on the front, I looked pathetic. At this time she would be hitting me every day for some reason or another, I would just sit in my bedroom out of the way I was truly scared of her, I dreaded my dad going to work. She would always make me feed Samantha with yoghurts or chocolate, she would spy on me, and if I ate some she would belt me then ground me for a month.

I would cry even if the cracks didn’t hurt, just for her to leave me alone. I was basically bullied into calling her mam, everyone thought I should call her mam as she so called” looked after me”, nobody knew what I was going threw with her, they didn’t have a clue.

  It was around this time that my real mam was in a mental hospital with her nerves, she couldn’t do things like, going on buses and going shopping, so she was put in there for a long time. Every week I would get a letter off her and it always had my one-pound pocket money in. All of a sudden Sue was just giving me the money and no letter. I later found out that she was ripping the letters up and throwing them away. She hated the fact that someone cared and loved me, and I’ll never know why. It wasn’t long before they got married, it was torture for me, I was the only person who knew how evil she was, and I couldn’t do anything to stop it, my dad loved this woman so much, I had to just grin and bare it. One day she was being unusually nice to me, we where having a good laugh. I sat in front of the fire and she told me to tilt my head back and close my eyes, all of a sudden I was being sick all over, she’d put a handful of salt in my mouth, she just sat back and laughed her head off at me.

  The thing that kicked everything off was when I was wrapping my Christmas gifts up for my dad and Sue, if my mam knew that I called Sue mam it would break her heart, so on Sue’s present I had to write Sue. Christmas morning came and we were all opened our presents, when she came to hers and saw what I’d wrote, she saw the opportunity to make a big thing of it. She started crying her eyes out saying that she deserved better for all the things that she’s done for me. So I was blamed for spoiling Christmas day. Boxing day came and there was a lot of tension in the air. Dad sat us down together and we all decided that Sue and me were never going to get on. We came to the joint decision that I would go and live with my nana and granddad. I packed my few bits and pieces together and away I went to live with my grandparents, I was over the moon.

  I was my granddad’s blue-eyed boy, and my nana was over the moon to do the mother role again. My life got a whole load better, I had new friends, I started playing football for a Sunday league team, and I was a happy schoolboy for the first time. This took me to the age of thirteen, I had two best friends, peter, who was the show off, wanted to be cool. Then there was David, he was the joey the run about, and he was the one who would get sent to the shop. Me, I was the quiet one with the glasses, I was always up for a laugh. I didn’t have any self-confidence really, that’s what made me the quiet one from the group. The three of us started smoking, we would drink on a weekend and that’s as far as it went. We had another close friend called Ross, we only saw him at school because he had a girlfriend, Claire, who was three year older than us. It was a Friday night and we where walking past the bus station and Ross called us over. We went in and there was loads of lads and lasses all drinking and smoking dope. Ross offered me a dope pipe, I was a bit nervous at first but I over came that soon enough, so I had my first taste of illegal drugs. I sucked the life out of this pipe, all of a sudden I coughed all this thick smoke out, I knew I was stoned because I felt really giggly and it felt like my eyes where going to shut. We stayed a while and smoked some more, we had a really good night. We would get stoned only on a weekend at first, I would nick a packet of baccy from my dad and Peter and me would practice making joints all day long, we were always competing against each other.

  As time went by the gang would evaporate and there was me, Peter, David, Ross and Claire stuck together, we soon became really close like family. We soon went from smoking dope on a weekend to smoking it everyday. We went from joints to buckets, we would smoke buckets all day and night. This went on until I was about fifteen, same everyday.

  It was a Friday night again when I tried whiz, (amphetamine), one of our pals had a load from work for cheap, so we all bought a fiver bag each. It didn’t take me long to have a tenner note rammed up my nose, the taste was the most disgusting taste ever, it was horrible. It wasn’t long until I was rushing all over my body, the louder and faster the music in peters bedroom, the more I rushed. We stayed up all night, the next day I was ill, it has a horrendous comedown. I think that’s what put me off taking whizz on a regular basic.

  Some weekends we would all go out drinking round our local town. We where restricted to a few pubs as David only had a baby face. It was Boxing Day that year when I tried my first ecstasy tablet. I was hammered by ten o clock, and a lad I knew was selling them, I bought one for ten pounds, it was a red tablet with a picture of a bull on the front. I dropped it straight away; within half an hour I was out of my skull. my confidence went threw the roof, I was on top of the world. Out of nowhere I started sweating and feeling funny, I had to get some fresh air and fast, the toilets where outside, so I went out to cool down. The next thing I knew, I was woken up by my uncle who asked me if I was OK. I was freezing, I had an inch of snow on my head, and I couldn’t stop shaking, all the shaking made me paranoid, I just ran all the way home and went to bed. That should have put me off taking ecstasy forever, it didn’t, I ended up needing them to have a good night out, I would take six or seven every night. I tried acid a few times I liked them but they where to hard to come by.

My dad came to live with me down my nanas, as he was getting divorced. Sue had fleeced all his money off him, then got him kicked out of his own home. He was really down in the dumps, he turned to the drink and went off the rails. He would book holidays off the tele, and him and me would jet off all over the world. We went to Thailand for three weeks and it was the most fantastic holiday ever. I was working with him, import, export business things where going well for us both.

  I was sixteen now, and life was going well, I had left school early as I didn’t go in anyway. Claire was working in a factory, on good money, her and Ross split up and I hadn’t seen her for a while. One night I got a call off her asking if I would go out clubbing with her, I had to refuse as I had no money, that was the last time I ever spoke to her. I went to the chip shop the next day and the ladies behind the counter where talking about a crash down the road in which a young girl was killed.  When I walked threw the door my nana had taken a phone call from David’s mam, the girl who died, was Claire. I couldn’t believe it. The car she was travelling to work in skidded on black ice and ploughed into a tree, Claire was the only person who got injured, everyone else walked away with cuts and bruises. Claire’s funeral was the first I’d ever been to, when her coffin came past me I just exploded into tears, I couldn’t believe she was gone.

  After Claire’s death we all just got on with it, when we where all drinking and partying, no-body would speak of her, but we where all thinking of her. She was one of those girls who would try anything, not just drugs, all sorts, she was one of a kind. I know thing’s would have been different now if she was still alive. Rest in peace Claire.

  Peter went in the navy, so he moved down south. David ended up getting this lass pregnant and moving in with her. Ross I saw him occasionally, he had a new girlfriend and he ended up with a child with her, so I ended up knocking round with a lad along the street, Keith, he was a spoilt lad, he was driving round in a soft top car, he had tons of gold on and he always had nice clothes on. We got on well, we just smoked the dope together, we’d go out drinking and pop a few pills, and we just enjoyed ourselves.

  My life so far wasn’t to bad really, the biggest down was Claire’s death, this was about to change, dramatically. I was woken one hot, sunny morning by Ross and a lad called Jigga, I didn’t think anything of it. So I got up, got dressed and away I went. Ross just came out with it “do you fancy getting some heroin?” It took me my by total surprise, heroin, I’d only ever heard or saw it on the television. I think I was more curious than scared, this would be the one decision I would regret until the day I died. We walked up to this scruffy house in a well-known drug area, we walked in and the smell hit me first, fish, it was horrid. There were a few more people already their smoking heroin on the tin foil. Jigga started ripping and folding tin foil, my guts where turning with nervousness. He explained how to go on, and it came to my turn. I slowly followed the “beetle” down the foil and kept the smoke back. It tasted like rotten fish, it was horrible. I had a few more lines and I felt fantastic, I was in heaven. I could have been on a murder charge, and I wouldn’t have cared, not one bit. I was in a trance with my head down and my eyes closed, this was a gauge. At first we would go to the smack houses about twice a week, this didn’t last for long.

  My dad fought to get his home back and he succeeded, we both moved back in and started rebuilding the shell of a house, what Sue had left behind. My dad paid for me to pass my driving test, and got me insured on his car, this changed my life completely. I was doing a bit import, export for my dad, which made me a few quid each week. I would get phone calls every day from heroin addicts, and I would take them out of the area to get their gear, this would get me four, five bags a day for nothing. My habit was going through the roof, and I didn’t even know it. I never had the chance to go into withdrawal for months, I always had gear. I was kicking about with a lad called Steve, he was my fellow drug-taking partner.

  One day I got a phone call from Barry, a lad I used to go clubbing with. He was using the gear once in a while, so I picked him up from work and the three of us went to get sorted. The plan was to have a good Friday night, things didn’t go to plan at all. We got sorted and went somewhere quiet to do our thing, Barry started cooking his gear up on the spoon, as he was an injector. We had a toot, Barry done his thing and we where having a good time. Barry asked us to take him to his friend’s house, so we went round to a lad called John. We went inside, he had an upstairs flat in a nice quiet area. We started smoking heroin again and Barry had his fix again. John started asking if he could have a hit. After a while we agreed and John soon had his sleeve up to have a hit. It was about fifteen minutes later when we noticed John was really quiet, when we took a closer look, he was blue. Barry said he’d seen this before and told us not to panic. We tried for about ten minutes to revive him but nothing was working. We decided to take him to hospital ourselves. Steve opened all the doors and me and Barry carried his 20 stone frame down two flights of stairs and into the car. I flew in the car through to the hospital, the doctors and nurses rushed him into theatre and started working on him. As we looked through the small glass window in the door we could see them putting pipes and tubes in his throat and neck, they used those electric paddles on him but nothing was working. Soon they just stopped and came walking out, they told us they couldn’t do anything else and he’d passed away. It was silent all the way back in the car, I kept pulling over and vomiting on the road. I was in a state of disbelief. We all slept at my house and we came up with a story that he already had taken the heroin before we arrived. We decided to stick to the same story.

It sunk in properly when we got a knock on the door from the police.

We all gave our story to the police and I thought that was that. The next thing we know, Barry had been remanded for manslaughter. The police came back and totally grilled me, they knew we where lying. They stripped me down and put me in a paper suit, they made me sweat in the cells for hours before interviewing me. I was under eighteen so my dad sat with me in the interview, he found out everything I had been up to. Barry was remanded for injecting John with the heroin that killed him. I saw John do it himself, and that’s what I told the police, Steve told them that he saw Barry inject him, I have no idea why he said that. Barry went to crown court and was remanded for another six months until the trial date came.

  A few days after I was interviewed my dad kicked me out of the house for being a drug addict. I was at a real low in my life at this point and I couldn’t see things getting better in the near future. All of a sudden my granddad passed away and my nana was devastated. He had been suffering from Alzheimer’s for a few years by then, he didn’t know what was going on around him. Six months later my nana passed away, I classed my nana as my mam, it ripped me apart when she died. I just went off the rails. I moved in with a heroin addict called Mark, we started selling heroin together and it wasn’t long until the police where right on our backs. We had all the smack head vigilantes after us, I hated walking about, and I was always looking over my shoulder. I was a complete mess, I was a scruffy skeleton. I turned to the needle because smoking it didn’t do the trick any more. I would inject five to ten bags a day just to feel the way a normal person does when they wake up on a morning. I nearly died twice threw overdosing on heroin and valium, I woke up in hospital a few times.Thing’s were bad, really bad. My own dad said he wished I was dead, to give him and the family peace.

  Barry’s trial came round and I went to court off it on Valium. I stood in the box and totally changed my story, I said that I bought the heroin that night and that I put it on the spoon for John, I’d totally screwed myself up, big style. Three days later Barry was found not guilty and was released. Two days after that the major crime team came to Marks and arrested me. I was charged with Perverting the course of justice and Perjury. Now I was looking at prison. I kept on selling heroin to feed my habit, I just didn’t care. My mam would hang the phone up on me because whenever I would go to see her I would steel her Valium and sleeping tablets, I was a complete arsehole.

 I was now eighteen, my parents didn’t want to speak to me, my grandparents had passed away, I was injecting heroin numerous times a day, I was looking at two to three year in prison for telling lies. I couldn’t see my life changing at all, to me my life was over. About two months before my court date Mark and me where evicted for getting the door kicked in by the police in a drugs raid. It didn’t take long for us to go bankrupt, we where spending hundreds of pounds a day on crack cocaine and the gear was getting used as though we had kilos of it. We ended up with nothing, I had nothing or no one. It was a week before I was due up to court and I was standing in the rain all day in serious withdrawal, I decided to ask my dad for help, I went to his house and begged him to help me. He took me to my nana’s empty house and locked me in to I could do my cold turkey. It was hell, I never slept for a full week, the sweats and cramps where agony, I just wanted to die. After five days I started feeling abit better, I started to get a little bit sleep here and there. The morning I went to court, my dad picked me up and took me to the train station. He paid me onto the train so I couldn’t run off with the money, getting on that train knowing I wasn’t coming back was really hard, I was a thing I had to do. I went to court and received fifteen months in prison, the judge took into consideration my age and circumstances, so I got off lightly.

  It was about four thirty when the paddy wagon arrived, and was

Squeezed into the cubical that stunk of wee and away we went on a two-hour journey to the prison. I was in a trance most of the way there, I had no idea what to expect. When my name was called in reception I was about to be made another number in the prison system. I was now prisoner HA 4334. I was finally taken onto the wing and I was overwhelmed by the size of the wing, it was a very old prison and the landens where really long, there where nets draped across so that no-one could jump off. When the big cell door closed behind me, things started sinking in, I was about to spend the foreseeable future in this place. When I went down for breakfast the next morning I saw a few lads from my town so that made me settle a bit better. After ten days I was moved to another prison, it was much better, a lot newer than the last. I kept my head down and kept out of trouble for five months. One morning I was cleaning the landen and the screw gave me a piece of paper, I had been accepted for my HDC, home detention curfew, I was getting out in two weeks. My mam took me in when I was released and I just drank cans of beer all day. It was about a week later, my mam and her husband went out drinking and I sat in with my dope and cans of beer and just watched the television. I started looking for my mams tablets and found them, I ended up taking a cocktail of Valium and sleeping tablets. I woke up in the police cells the next day, I’d stolen my mams husbands car and went to my home town, the police pulled me over and arrested me for banned driving and drink driving. I was on licence from prison and ended up straight back to serve another six months. This time I had a good think about what I wanted from life, and I decided to give it the best shot I could.

  When I was released I moved into a shared probation house out of my hometown. I started knocking about with lads who didn’t touch heroin, they used other drugs and I was ok with that. I started going out clubbing three, four times a week meeting girls, meeting new people I was enjoying myself. It was a great feeling to be able to walk about without looking over my shoulder, I was normal. One night I went to my dad’s to borrow a pair of tracksuit bottoms. I went into my sister’s room to find this really pretty girl sitting giggling. She was beautiful, natural curly hair, a lovely figure, she was so sexy. Samantha introduced me to her, her name was Jennifer, this Jennifer had fancied me for months and this was the first I knew of it. I went home and was sitting having a drink and I got a phone call from our Samantha, Jennifer wanted to go out for a date, I made arrangements with her and I met her the next night. I was a nervous wreck, but once I started speaking to her I knew she was something special, we got on great, she was sixteen and I was twenty-one, she seemed so mature for her age. We started meeting each other every night and we got on great, I met her family and they thought I was a nice lad and everything was brilliant. Within six weeks I’d moved in with Jennifer and her mam and I was part of the family. I soon got a job in a factory and I was making my own money. I ended up working as a salesman for a big energy company, then I went to work in a call centre for a bank. I had lovely clothes all my family spoke to me, I had a beautiful girlfriend, and life couldn’t get any better. I would take Jennifer out all the time, out clubbing, we would go for meals on a regular basis, we where really happy. Jennifer was the first proper girl in my life, and I will never be-able to explain how much I loved this girl. I was made part of her family, I classed Jen’s mam, as my mam, I even called her mam. I was part of the most loving family ever. The past was about to come back and ruin everything, again.

  One day I came in from work and Jennifer was sitting in the garden in the sun. We had a few cans and we where just chatting, she just came out with it “I want to try smack”, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. She had brought all the memories flooding back, she was giving me the opportunity to take heroin again without going behind her back. I will never be-able to understand why on earth I jeopardised all I had fought for to have another go of heroin. My head was telling me to just go and get one, but my heart knew this was going to destroy everything. I agreed, and went and bought a ten-pound bag for us. We smoked it in the bathroom, and she loved it. What had I done, I had introduced the girl, who I loved more than anything on the planet, to the most evil drug on the face of the earth. Soon it was back in my head, and I would go out and get it on the sly sometimes, Jennifer wanted it all the time. We got a beautiful flat together and we where both working. The more we took it, the more I could feel it all slipping away. We soon ended up taking it all the time and we both ended up with a heroin habit. I started injecting straight away, Jennifer would try and inject herself when I wasn’t there, because I wouldn’t let her. It was her seventeenth birthday when her mam found out, she had seen the track marks on her arm. Her mam came over while I was in by myself, I let her in and she came straight at me with a piece of wood and she hit me repeatedly with it. I could feel inside everything falling apart, things where only going to get worse, a lot worse.