I was brought up in a single-parent family on a council estate in Manchester, surrounded by heavy drinking, domestic violence, and people with mental health issues. Life was a tinderbox and I was constantly on edge. Living in an impoverished environment, it was a no-brainer to sell drugs.
My business selling ecstasy to university students flourished, until the death of Leah Betts. I had just bought 10,000 tablets and knew I couldn’t sell them. I owed a lot of money to my dealer. When I tried cocaine, it immediately alleviated the sense of impending doom I had experienced since childhood. I spiralled down fast, using more and more drug; the sense of doom returned. When I started to receive threats about my debt, I did a bunk to Bangor.
Whilst sitting in a pub a month later, I saw my dealer knocking on the window. I dashed out the back door, only to be banged over the head by his two colleagues and bundled into the boot of their car. I was tortured in Manchester for two or three days.
On my release, my sister paid my debt and I moved to Bangor with my girlfriend. I was on the edge of a nervous breakdown. My substance use escalated badly, particularly after my girlfriend left me. Feelings of impending doom overpowered me and I became suicidal.
When my girlfriend returned from Manchester, my mood improved. We married and had a child, but I was still drugging and drinking. My daughter started screaming one night when I returned home from a heavy drinking session and I couldn’t touch her. I felt so tainted by my own ‘dirt’ and realised that if I didn’t change my daughter would end up dealing with the same shit I had experienced. It was an epiphany moment.
I decided to rehabilitate myself and become a good father and husband, which involved stopping drinking and drugging. I did not access any treatment service.
I worked as a chef for a period, rising up the ranks quickly. The thought of being a chef for 30 years, and seeing other chefs develop substance use problems and experiencing broken marriages scared me. I didn’t want another addiction.
I decided to work in the mental health field before going to university, but my six-month interim work period lasted four years. I loved the job, but eventually became disillusioned when a person doing well lost his full support team and started going backwards. I began to develop a cynical view of the agenda of certain organisations.
In 2008, I started as a Drug Interventions Programme (DIP) worker for the drug and alcohol treatment service ARCH Initiatives. I really liked the ethos of the programme, and thought that I could affect change at an individual level. I started some recovery coaching and guided relaxation for the DIP clients.
However, most of the treatment system was focused on prescribing methadone to heroin addicts, and not providing other forms of support. I was frustrated by the thinking that you could medicate people out of addiction—clients just moved from one addiction to another. I became very disillusioned with the treatment system.
By 2010, I was full of passion and enthusiasm, and wanting to set up a recovery group outside the treatment system. At the first Recovery Academy conference in Glasgow, I was totally inspired by Mark Gilman and his ideas, particularly around recovery, and the need for treatment services to refer their clients on to mutual aid and other recovery groups to help them stay off drugs and alcohol. He also talked about Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD), and I realised that this concept would be an important foundation of the recovery group I wanted to build.