Recovery Stories – Making a Difference

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…

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…

…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…

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…

…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…

…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,…

… 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 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.

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…