Recovery Stories – Making a Difference
Addiction recovery stories from clients of The Basement Recovery Project
I was 12 or 13 when I first started using substances. At first, my drugs of choice were alcohol and cannabis. My relationship with these quickly developed into habitual using. I smoked cannabis every day and this quickly led me to lose concentration in and motivation for my education.
I first got drunk when I was about 13. A friend had got hold of a couple of litres of vodka and we were at another friend’s house sharing it around. I hated the taste but I loved the feeling it gave me. I drank enough to make me really poorly but it didn’t put me off. These one-off binges would happen every so often through my teenage years but it was when I started university in 2008 that my drinking really took off.
As far back as I can remember, I’ve always been a bad kid. I know there was a time I was happy and normal but that was too long ago. I had an unhappy childhood, I was the second child of five. Dad was a pisshead. I’m really not sure of the why but being unhappy must have played its part…
I met my husband In a local bar in Halifax when I was 17 and enjoyed the clubs and pubs and music bars for several years. At this time, I enjoyed drinking socially.
I bought a local travel agency in the Calder Valley when I was 22 years old, which over the years I expanded and it became successful, winning ‘Independent Travel Agent of The Year’ in 2002…
In an interview at work in January, I was told I would be prosecuted, the court date would be 1st August 2017. That’s when I decided I’d had enough – I was going to kill myself. I thought that when people thought about suicide, they just did it straight away but I gave myself six months…
My dad was an alcoholic. He would swing from a happy every-day comedian to a violent bully. He always seemed happy when surrounded by his mates and in the pub, but things were often different when at home. We’d often feel the wrath of his frustration through not being able to work due to arthritis. I remember all the times I was verbally and physically abused. I’d even received a broken nose for eating a lettuce sandwich…
…Midway through my second in-patient detox from Heroin, methadone, benzo’s and alcohol, clucking my tits off and wondering if I’d self-discharge (again) I was asked to attend a group that was being held in the TV room. It was either attend this group or sit on the floor in my room upstairs next to the heater with a blanket wrapped around me feeling extremely sorry for myself. For a change I chose to attend the group…
…I didn’t know anybody who had got clean and stayed clean. I had been in treatment for years. I felt like I had done a life sentence on a methadone script. My mental and psychical health was deteriorating. I needed help but didn’t know where to find it…
…This detox house has been a sanctuary for me, a lifeline to get back my focus and direction. It has sowed the seeds for hope and aspiration. It’s opened my eyes to my capabilities, achievements and failings. I am getting my confidence back…
I was eight years old the first time I tried alcohol. By 13 I was smoking cannabis and taking poppers and sniffing glue and gas. By 15 years old I was taking anything with LSD in, and binge drinking. I stopped for a few years, from 15 to 17 years old, then started amphetamines and the drinking started again. By age 21 I was using crack and smoking heroin, which I’d tried at a party from a man I’d met when I was intoxicated…
…Sick and tired of being sick and tired. I was sick of the isolation; no woman, no friends, no booze, no heroin and no me. I was a completely changed person. My whole character had changed and I was no longer the ‘happy-go-lucky’ guy that I once was. I didn’t know how to enjoy myself and have a laugh and there I was, alone and afraid. It was 2010. Where had the time gone?…
…After two years I was pregnant with a much wanted child, I was still a ‘social drinker’ so I didn’t drink during my pregnancy. After giving birth to a healthy baby boy, eight weeks later he had a sudden illness which proved to be near fatal. As a result of the illness my son has been left profoundly handicapped and has extremely high round-the-clock nursing needs…
…There was a point at school where I was picked on for about 6 months by the school bully until one day, I actually hit him. From then on I had a reputation to keep, not only in sports but also amongst my mates. This carried on through to drinking. I had to be the one who drank the fastest, drank the most and always the last one to leave the pub…
…I carried on like this until about 2009 and that’s when I was introduced to MKAT (Methadrone), THE drug that was to take over once and for all. By this I mean unlike all the other drugs I had done; speed, ecstasy, cocaine, alcohol etc., while you do feel some kind of emotion while taking them, MKAT to me, is like cocaine, ecstasy and speed all rolled into one. It made me, from what I am told, a cold shallow and calculated personal, I just remember like being a zombie,…
…There’s an invisible line you cross from being a heavy drinker to becoming addicted and I don’t know when I crossed that line. I was always the “piss head” whenever I was out with friends. I would be the one who had to go to a nightclub when others were heading home after the pub. I was always the last one at the bar. Even at 17 I would buy a bottle of rum and drink it neat on the way to the pub…
… I never expected this to be easy, and it’s not. It has been mentally very challenging at times. I have spent a lifetime making myself ill so I know there is no instant fix. I know I have to work hard at this and I will. I’m not a bad person, just a sick person getting well. Today, life is looking really good. …
…My life seemed to get worse, I was out of control. I was carrying on drinking even though I now had a daughter to look after. I couldn’t even look after myself and was so wrapped up in my own misery and selfishness that I tried to take my own life. This time (yeah I had done it before, more cries for help I guess), I woke in intensive care…
…My first drink was given to me by an uncle at a party at the age of fourteen. By the age of fifteen I had my first joint and by of sixteen I was spending all weekend, every weekend drinking, smoking dope, speeding and ‘tripping’ on LSD. And being a ‘Hippie’ I was looking for as much sex as I could get, protected or not. After Three years of that I met my first wife. After I married I took a good job and ditched the drugs.
… I guess I always had a rebellious streak within me. I think that stems from being abused by my dad when I was younger. Mum didn’t want to know about the abuse and tried to sweep it under the carpet until eventually she listened and we had to go to court over it. It was on the way to court that I found out he was not my real dad, but my step-dad…
My mum and dad had split by the time I was six. Dad was a violent alcoholic and he and mum used to fight all the time, to the point where mum could no longer put up with it or he would have killed her I’m sure. I remember him running around with an axe one day, can’t remember why. So mum moved us around a lot and I attended many schools. I never seemed to fit in though…
“Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you”
