My name is Chris, I am 28 years old and from the North East of England. I am a former drug addict with extensive experience with substance abuse, multiple addictions, the problems caused by addiction to the sufferer, there friends and family and the recovery process. I always had an addictive nature and a very curious mind for as long as I can remember. I found it impossible to take advice from anyone, I always had to do learn lessons for myself, suffer the consequences and learn from my own mistakes.
I started using drugs regularly at the age of 13 and way addicted by the age of 14, I went on to suffer multiple addictions until I was 23 years old. In those ten years I have suffered with a lot of physical and mental addictions to substances including heroin, cocaine, amphetamines, ketamine and many prescription drugs. I would have to say that one of the biggest and most intense addictions that I ever had, was to the needle itself and the whole process of injecting. I can remember times when I have injected boiling water on its own, just to go through the process.
I am 29 next month and have been free from addiction for the last six years. I look back now at some of the things that I’ve done in my life and the extremes that I have gone to with drugs. I feel like the luckiest Man alive to still be here, there was a time I never thought I would ever see my 22nd Birthday.
When I was young, I started to take ecstasy and amphetamine at weekends, and used to skip school to take acid and go walking over the local forests. I was only a young teenager at the time and I fell in love with the feelings that my body and mind where experiencing. However I quickly started taking these substances during the week and being of such a young age, I started struggling with the financial side of addiction. This problem led to the end of my naivety that these good feelings would last forever without consequence and life became very hard in every aspect. After a while I injected for the very first time using alcohol. This without knowing at the time would lead me later to suffer addictions and an obsession with needles that would haunt me and take over my life.
Through my teens I had been introduced to cocaine, which I only took a couple of times because of the price and the fact that I was already having massive problems with money and mounting debts because of my addictions. This was a very bad place for any teenager to be in and I didn’t think it could get any worse until I found heroin, which later in my life would cause me a pain that I never knew existed. At 15 I hated every aspect of my life and it was the first time I realised that addiction is a very vicious circle. My addictions and mentality had grown out of my control and at to the point were they were having massive effects on not just me, but my family. I moved out of my parent’s house and lived with my Grandparents, who should never have had to see, or go through the things they did to help me beat my addictions. They were always there for me and still are to this day, they really did save my life and help me find a life outside of addiction.
After a few months I turned 16 and while people my age were having leaves balls and taking GCSE exams, I was addiction free for the first time in a few years. I have to admit that at the time I thought I would be forever, but hinesights a wonderful thing and young ignorance along with an addictive personality is a dangerous combination. I applied for an apprenticeship in joinery and was accepted, so I started working in a restaurant as a waiter until I started my apprenticeship in September.
I met a girl and we became inseparable, I was in love, had a future and for the first time in years, I was truly happy. Over the course of the next couple of years I made some terrible mistakes and decisions regarding our relationship that would haunt me for a long time. I soon discovered that I had other issues aside from drugs. I had a fantastic group of friends and we went out drinking every weekend, as you do. I realised that for some reason I could not stop myself from seeing other women and I craved the attention like a drug. I loved the girl I was with more than anything in this World. We had a fantastic relationship, but I was destined to destroy it. I know you will be thinking you can’t love someone and cheat on them, but I was young and very stupid. I later would get a huge dose of karma and pay the price for my selfishness, ignorance and stupidity. We knew each other inside out and our sex life was amazing, we were both into the same things in every way and knew each other inside out.
I still could not stop myself from seeing other women and getting myself into ridicule’s situations. I have always been a very confident person and been able to talk to anyone, this has helped me a lot over the years, but also led me to cause myself a-lot of problems and heartache.
I would go over and talk to a women when I was out or if I was at work, and it was never for the want of having any kind of relationship with them. All I really wanted out of doing it was to know that they wanted me, and I would get a satisfaction from knowing that I could talk to a girl and she would like me. I liked making the person I met feel good about themselves and feel beautiful, but in hindsight it ended up causing a lot of them pain, heartache and in time had the opposite effect.
When I think back a lot of it was just manipulation on my part, to just be wanted and the feeling it gave me. I would be in a taxi with a woman or on my way to their home, and all I would be thinking about, would be why are you doing this? I knew I was going to get caught out at some point and break my partner’s heart, yet I still couldn’t stop no matter how many circles I walked in trying to understand why I was doing it. I would have sex with women and all I would be thinking about was the person I loved and late myself for doing what I was doing. I would always call nearly every woman I was with by her name at least twice, it was psychologically fixated in my head and all I can say is, that I was full of stupidity, ignorance and guilt.
I was obsessed with putting myself into crazy situations all the time, just to see if I could get out of them and how far I could push things. I have missed flights from different countries with no money at all, and thrived on the adventure of getting back home.
At this time I had not taken any hard drugs for around 2 years but I did still smoked cannabis, which to this day I still think should be legalised. I also still took magic mushrooms at weekends, which were legal at the time and although I know there not for everyone, they always had a very positive effect on my thought process and me. I know that magic mushrooms can have a negative effect on people, and taking to many when you don’t know what you’re doing can lead to some people doing things they wouldn’t normally do. I am not by any means telling people to go out and take magic mushrooms, it’s the hypocrisy of the government I am making a point of and the way they categories certain things to their own benefit. The fact of the matter is that drugs like cannabis and magic mushrooms are naturally grown plants and fungi, yes they can have a negative effect on some people but can we not say the same about alcohol? Alcohol is full of chemicals and has a huge negative effect on a lot of people, it causes people to do a lot of things they wouldn’t normally do or say. Alcohol also causes more violence, domestic violence and deaths than cannabis and magic mushrooms put together, yet the government seem to be quite ok with this fact. They also seem to be ok with the damage that these man-made, chemically manufactured, so call (legal highs) are doing. They also have a much greater negative effect that natural substance like cannabis. I have never heard of anyone smoking cannabis then wanting to fight, argue or cause damage to anything, apart from maybe the contents of the fridge. I will go into more detail about this in my book.
Back to what I was saying, I had moved into a one bedroom flat and I used to take ecstasy and amphetamines again recreationally at weekends when I was out. This did not lead to any major problems or relapses until cocaine came into my life with a bang. I had a job and income now and I had no costly addictions like when I was a teenager so I started taking far too much cocaine. It quickly escalated, as it does! To taking it every day, all day, weather I was at work or home. My wages did not cover what I was taking so the debts mounted and the problems started to build up very quickly. It got to the point where I couldn’t do very much with my partner because all my money was going on cocaine.
I was in a huge hole with debt and frustration, mainly at the disbelief of what I was doing and how much I was hurting the women I loved. I hated the position that I had put myself into and I was taking my frustrations out on her. She was trying to help me and I was just blocking it out and seeing other women who didn’t know me, or what I was doing. This was the start of a spiral into addiction that was more extreme than anything I had ever known or witnessed before was. I left my job to start working self-employed but every penny that I made went on cocaine. I started coming up with schemes and crazy ways to make money from big companies; these stories however are for a different time.
At this time me and my partner had been together for around 6 years and I was putting a lot of pressure on our relationship. I was taking far to many drugs again on top of the amount of cocaine I was using, and I just kept putting myself in crazy situations that were getting more extreme all the time. Not surprisingly my partner and myself split up completely after she could not take anymore of the drugs, women and my general life-style. I think she was amazing to stay as long as she did and it kills me every day that I caused her the pain and hurt that I did. She always was and still is a beautiful and amazing person inside and out. After I had totally ruined my relationship and the realisation of what I had done hit me, I was heart-broken because I knew there was no going back.
I quickly started seeing someone else, just for the fact of not wanting to be in my flat full of memories and also because I knew I was in a bad place in my head. I hated being in the flat we had shared as it just reminded me of her and the life I had thrown away. The women I started seeing had a house so I thought if I spend my time there, I would be able to get over her and try to stop taking drugs again, I was wrong!
I went on to meet a person at the wrong time that was involved heavily with heroin. I started to inject it regularly. Which I tried my best to hide from my friends and family. The thing with heroin is that, at first it gives you a wonderful feeling of contentment and it takes away the pain your feeling at first. But after a while your tolerance builds up quickly and you don’t feel the same contentment from injecting the same amount. It also does not take away the pain your feeling or give the contentment you are craving.
This lead’s you to chasing the feeling it used to give you and I never succeeded with managing that task. After a while all it does is stops you from feeling ill for a short time and I could never be content for long, as I knew I would need to take more very soon to feel any sense of well-being. I can honestly say that I hate everything about heroin and what it does to the user.
The brain has its own defences against feeling pain, torment and distress, this is called dopamine, when you are in pain it is released into nerve endings called receptors. The brain has its own natural opiates that don’t just react as a pain relief but also feelings of pleasure, and because heroin is an opiate it effects the brains natural chemical messages like dopamine, and lock on to the pain receptors. This is why after taking heroin for a period of time, the body stops producing its own opiates and you feel ill, in pain and have no sense of well-being when you stop taking it. It is a vicious circle that leads to having to take it to feel well. This is why it is a huge curse and a physically addictive drug to the body; it’s an illness.
It was like leading to lives, especially when you have a very close group of friends. We where all, and still are huge lovers of music and when we were younger, we get together at weekends to have parties and take recreational drugs. This leads you to having to make excuses to sneak off and have a hit when necessary. It was also getting harder and harder to hide it from the person I was living with at the time. I would have to make excuses to go to the car or nip out for half an hour for my fix.
It became even more difficult when I started injecting ketamine regularly as well. Injecting ketamine used to give me what can only be described as an out-of-body experience, which I loved very much. When you take too much and keep taking hits, you are in your mind awake but really you are unconscious wherever u land and I would wake up in a different place to where I thought I was. Many times I have woke up on a bathroom floor and without realising it, been in there for 45 minutes.
When I would come round if someone was in the house and told me how long I had been in there, I wouldn’t think they were exaggerating As in my mind I had been some where else entirely. The marks on my arms and legs off the constant injections were also becoming impossible to hide, especially as when you’re not seeing straight off earlier injections of ketamine, it becomes harder to hit a vein and you end up with your arms and legs being a mess.
There is a number off other factors to injecting ketamine and heroin, and many more crazy experiences I had while taking them but like I said, these are stories for another time as I am writing a book and I am just giving a brief account of my life. I was at this time at the point were I got to my worst and hated myself for getting in this position, I really could not see any way out and thought each day would be my last. I was injecting heroin, ketamine, amphetamines, cocaine and any pharmaceuticals I could get my hands on. The thing with strong painkillers and sleeping tablets is some have what you call blockers in them to stop you injecting them. When you try to melt them down they just go to a sticky mush rather than liquid. I still would try to just keep on putting more water in to the spoon, trying to get the thick into my vain, with does not end well and an almost impossible task but when you have that kind of addiction you will try and try until you get something.
I have got to say out of all the drugs I have injected, cocaine is by far the most intense feeling I have ever had but it doesn’t last long and leaves you with a very intense craving and a feeling of anxiety. Like crack cocaine it is a very short buzz and leaves you craving more instantly, but the as smoking crack makes you very paranoid and crave it can’t be compared to injecting real cocaine. The feeling you get off smoking crack cocaine was never intense enough for me and it was one thing I never had an addiction to. Injecting the real stuff was a different story all together as the feeling is so much more intense.
Unlike heroin were after a while you are basically taking it just to not feel ill and you don’t get the feelings off it that you use to, cocaine is a different story all together. It’s like a totally different life and feels very surreal when I look back all these years later, but I can honestly say at the time I had lost all hope. I was doing such extreme things that I thought each hit would be my last and that would be the end of me. I got to the point when I was surprised every time I came round and was still here, I have defiantly had some one watching over me because I really can’t explain how I’m still here.
This went on for a while later until one day I injected too much cocaine and thought I was having a stroke it was that intense. After that every time I injected I was coming out in bad rashes and blotches all over my body and behind me ears, there parts of my body were swelling up. It was at this time I came to a realisation, that was it and I was going to start getting over this affliction starting with cocaine and heroin. My philosophy now with addiction is that until you come to the point in your mind were you know you have to and want to get clean, there is no words anyone can say that will make you stop.
It really does become a full-time job just finding the money and getting the drugs to try to keep you at a certain level, and especially with physically addictions. I injected ketamine for the out-of-body experience that it gave me, as I was always a huge fan of hallucinogenic drugs. With heroin it became like a daily medicine to take away the sickness and pain. Injecting cocaine was just too much of an intense feeling that no other drug had given me in a long time, to stop taking it. Like I said earlier, I took far to much cocaine one day, and the after effects I was getting, give me the realisation that enough was enough and if I didn’t sort it out now, I wasn’t going to see my next birthday.
The effect it was having on my family and friends was horrible but what people don’t understand is, that when you have these sort of addictions, especially heroin, you are not doing it out of selfishness because you are feeling amazing all the time. I hated myself and yes at first its amazing and gives you contentment and lets you forget your troubles for a while, but it becomes a massive curse that you can’t control and becomes more of a daily required medicine and takes over your life.
My sister and guardian angel took me to an addiction clinic to get help with my heroin addiction. They wanted to put me on methadone which I did not want to take as I had seen people just exchange heroin for it then continue to take it for years after. To me that was passing one addiction to another, so I took subutex and went every day to the chemist for my dose for a week. After a week they wanted to up the dose and I didn’t go back as I thought I needed to just get it out of my system. My sister sat up with me day and night while I went through detox and like I say she’s my guardian angel. Detox from heroin is horrific and indescribable pain; your body is not producing any dopamine so you have no help with the pain your feeling, its horrific and I would not put in on anyone.
By the way I better mention that even though I did come off the heroin and beat the curse, I learned later that not detoxing the right was can be very dangerous and that much of off a shock to your system it can kill you. So anyone that’s doing the same should make sure they detox correctly and get professional advice and support. I still say that subutex are better for detox than methadone, just as I know a number of people who have huge methadone addictions after coming off heroin. Don’t get me wrong, subutex are highly addictive aswell, but in my experience I have seen more x heroin addicts become addicted to methadone.
I did beat heroin all the same and never took it again, after that the next step was the cocaine. I stopped injecting that all together and never touched it again either. I was still injecting ketamine and amphetamine for a short time after then started taking lines instead of injecting it. This was very hard for a long time as I had to take huge lines to get any were near the feeling I was looking for and I still took sleeping tablets and pain killers a lot too.
It took me a long time to honestly say I was addiction free as I still had cravings for a long time for the intense feelings that injecting cocaine and ketamine gave me, I will be honest and say I missed the needle itself for a long time as well. It was like reality had hit me with a bang and all the problems and heartache were still there, It took a while before I got to the point were I didn’t have any cravings for anything anymore, and had finally put my demons to rest.
My friend and myself who is, more like a brother, moved into a flat and my life started having some normality again. Like I said before the group of friends I have are amazing and we are like a family. I still smoked cannabis but to be hones like I said earlier, I think and always have though it should be legalised. It is a natural plant and has far less damaging side effects than alcohol and a lot more positive effects on a lot of things, I am not going to get into that now though as it is a subject for another time. I started working again as a joiner and after a year or so me and my two best friends moved into a house together and I started my own small building and joinery company. I just concentrated on work and tying to build up the business for the next few months and it was going very well.
A short time later I met a girl and we fell in love, I had sworn to myself a long time before, that I would never make the same mistakes again and she would never cheat on or hurt anyone again, which I never have. I made sure I told her every day how beautiful she was and how much I loved her. I think you should always make people and especially your partner feel good about them selves and never put them down. Everything was amazing; I was truly happy and more content than I had been in years. We had a wonderful relationship and everything was perfect. I shortly after started having blackouts and seizures, my speech started to change and I was having a lot of strange feelings. At the time I jut but these down to the hours I was walking and the damage I had done to be body with drug abuse.
I finally went to see a doctor about it and they thought it was diabetes then epilepsy. I was sent for an M.R.I scan which they lost the results off and a few weeks later I had a massive fit at work and I was lucky my friend was there when it happened. My sister came and made me go back to the doctors and they did another M.R.I scan, I went to the hospital and they told me I had a brain tumour on the left side of my brain that had been growing for some time. I was then referred to a specialist and was very lucky. There was a surgeon who had just came to the hospital that had been working in Canada for some time. He had experience with awake craniotomy, which is basically putting you under anaesthetic while they open your skull up, then they wake you up to do the operation. It’s so they can stimulate parts of to brain while your awake and see the effects it has on you, if they touch a part that is doing damage they cut round that part of the tumour and try to leave you with as little damage as possible.
It was strange but I was never worried about the operation or something going wrong, as the way I looked at it was, after everything I had been through with addiction and the times I shouldn’t have been dead. There was no way that at the happiest time of my life was this going to kill me. It obviously crushed my girlfriend, family and friends but I just stayed positive and tried to tell them it was going to be fine.
I watched the operation on you tube a couple of days before I had surgery so I knew what to expect. I then went in and had the surgery and I am basically the luckiest man alive. I came out of surgery and they took as much of the tumour out as possible and I instantly felt better. I recovered and didn’t lose any feeling down my right side, the only after effects I have are epilepsy and short-term memory problems, which I think is amazing considering what could have happened. I owe my life to my sister and the surgeon that did the operation, also my friends and family for all their support throughout. I then recovered at home and had to have 6 weeks of radiotherapy to try to shrink the part of the tumour that was left.
I now only have to have scans every six months to check on it, and see my specialist. I can’t do my old job anymore as I can’t go up ladders or drive but there is always a positive to take out of every negative situation and I am now training to be a drug counsellor and writing a book about my life. I had wanted to train to be a counsellor for a long time but when u have a house and bills it gets harder to change careers. Now I have the time to do it and help people who are in the position I was in back then. It has given all of us a different outlook on life and brought all of us closer together which is another positive, it just shows life has a funny way of working out and I appreciate every day I have. One thing I can say is always make sure the people you love know you love them and never leave anything on an argument, because you never know what is going to happen and life is far to short to be fighting and falling out over trivial things.
My girl friend and I moved into a new house and life was good, she developed depression when I was ill and she went on tablets, which sorted it out, but she came off them and it escalated into something else. She then became two different people and I just tried to give her more love and support and tried to get her to go back to the doctors. It’s a horrible thing watching the person you love change into someone else with different morals, opinions and moods every day but I loved her and tried everything to help her get through it. Its like I said though, you can’t help someone unless they want to help themselves as well. It got to the point where she was her beautiful self one-day and everything I loved in a person, then the next day she was the opposite. She would be violent, and go crazy for to reason and she didn’t know why, she would try to hurt herself and I would have to keep a hold of her hands to stop her pulling her hair out and hitting herself. It just got worse and worse and there was nothing I could do about it. She would admit she needed help when she was herself but the next day be totally different. I was terrified she would lose her self for good and that’s exactly what’s happened.
Its broke my heart watching such a wonderful and amazing person change into everything she used to dislike in a person. Although I had to ask her to move back to her Parents house after a year off this, to see if it would help, she is still getting worse. I have had advice of nurses and I know exactly what it is but until she comes to terms with it, it’s only going to get worse. I am still there for her every day making sure she is ok but I have had to come to terms with the fact she is gone.
We are now separated, but at the same time I will always be here for her. I worry about her every day but the thing is, there’s only so much you can do when it’s like two totally different people living inside one body. I will always remain positive about the situation; I have no doubt that eventually some good will come from it. I just got to a point where the weeks were turning to months and the months were heading to years. I was hit with the realisation that life is short and time is very precious,
I have to try and concentrate on my course, book and my own health aswell.
Life could become shorter at any time and I want to help as many people as I can and get my book finished. With having such a bad short-term memory, the doctors said I wouldn’t be able to remember enough to do my course but I am getting there. Although its taking me twice as long with the course and there is books and books of notes that I have to keep ha, I will get there.
My long-term memory is still in tact, which is a huge positive as I can still remember my past in great detail and I can continue, writing my book about the story of my life story.
All I can say is make the most of life and always be positive, for every bad time you have there is a good one round the corner and everything over time has a way of working out. There is nothing we can’t overcome and we should just always appreciate the good things we have.
Well that’s it from me for now, even though it’s a few pages. That really is a very brief look at of my life so far, I haven’t even got into any stories or the adventures I’ve had along the way. I will finish my book and hopefully you will get to read the details and it becomes some use to people who have or are going through the same things.
It has been eventful and a short but colourful life up to now, there are many good times in-between the bad ones and I have had many unbelievable experiences along the way. I have learnt many lessons from my mistakes that have made me a much better person. The way I look at it is if you learn from your mistakes and the terrible decisions we all make some times and they make you a better person. You can always look at the bad times in a positive way and take some good out of them. Life is far from easy at times but if you learn from past mistakes and smile more than you cry, you are defiantly on the right track for contentment. It’s just my personal opinion but contentment in your heart and soul is what I would call the meaning of life and the key to happiness.
By Chris Atkinson
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