My name is Greg and I am addict. I am 37 years old and grew up in St. Helens in a small but loving family. I didn’t want for anything as a child and had a wonderful upbringing. My family was close and we always did a lot of things together. We had many weekends away and family holidays. Some of my best and fondest memories come from this time.

When I look back at my life now, I believe I was an addict before I ever touched drugs. From a young age I would always be obsessed with things and do everything 110%. It would be football, being out on a local field playing before training, then going to training, the back playing with friends. Later it would be skateboarding, going to a skate park every day after school or even just collecting football stickers. Whatever I did took over and my whole life would revolved around it.

When I was around 14, I first tried cannabis and loved the way it made me feel, it took me out of myself and any worries or problems I had would just be forgotten about. By the end of my teenager years I was smoking cannabis daily, all day every day. This progressed to class A’s when I began going out and partying and raving in my late teens and early 20s. When I first tried cocaine I loved the confidence and ability to drink more through the night that it gave me. Nights out became weekend long sessions until it had progressed to daily use. It wasn’t fun anymore, I wasn’t going out clubbing and raving with friends, I was at home with my then partner drinking and sniffing alone, trying to hide how much I was taking.

This was the same story for the majority of my mid to late 20s. I barely held a job down. I was working to pay for my cocaine habit. I would pay the rent then all the rest of my money would be spent on cocaine. Just after my 30th birthday my then partner had had enough, my whole life was about getting and using cocaine. I moved back to my parents to try and sort myself out. I managed to stop my daily cocaine habit but only did this by swapping the coke for alcohol. This didn’t seem to be a problem at first. My family were happy I had stopped a major cocaine habit and things looked like they were going ok. I was working for my dad and had my own van on the road, had moved into my own place and was doing well.

It didn’t take long before some cans on an evening became a few more cans, then a crate, then spirits. My drinking was spiraling out of control the same way my using of other substances had done before. No matter how hard I tried to manage it, it just got more out of control. I began drinking through the day and then drinking all day every day. I became so unreliable at work my dad had no choice but to stop giving me work. My drinking descended to ever deeper levels. I was waking in the morning and needing a half litre of vodka just to feel normal, but every day I couldn’t just stop there and was usually black out drunk by the afternoon. As I was no longer working, I was on Universal Credit and what little money I had was going on drink. I once again moved back to my parents’ house to try and sort my life out. This time I didn’t have anything to replace it with so really struggled to stop. I would get a few days or a few weeks before I would drink again. Despite trying I could not stop.

My parents did what they could and tried to keep me in the house to do detoxes and get me ‘off the drink’. This just resulted in me being angry and violent to the point where I would be not just verbally but physically violent with them. I was lying to them about everything, making up stories to get money, being deceitful, stealing from them and even selling their property to fund my addiction. It got to the point where I was no longer welcome at home and ended up street homeless.

My drinking had destroyed every relationship with anyone good I ever had in my life. I had lost everything, my family, my home, my relationships, even my dignity. I was alone, physically dependent on alcohol and broken. I spent my days drinking myself to blackout hoping that I didn’t wake up in the morning, then when I did wake, I would start all over again hoping today would be my last.

Luckily I knew someone who worked in a local drug service in my area who would see me when out doing homeless outreach and tried to help. He spoke with my parents and said if I could get sober he might be able to get me a place in a treatment center. My mum agreed to let me come back home to do a detox and after that I went into residential treatment at The Well Communities in Kendal. If I’m being honest I didn’t think that doing this would make a difference, I didn’t think going through a behavioral change program, taking with others about my issues and working the Narcotics Anonymous 12 step program would work. I had tried myself to stop drinking so much I didn’t think it was possible but I gave it a go as what else did I have left to lose? I’d lost everything.

So I began working through the 12 step program. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. Taking a look at myself and the things I had kept bottled up for so long was really hard, but the only way to deal with it is to face it head on and leave no stone unturned, no matter how painful it is. The most difficult part about starting my recovery journey was accepting I wasn’t special or different and was powerless over my addiction, no matter what the substance.

I accept now that once I take one drink, line or whatever substance I have no control over where that will end. I quickly learned that putting down the drink is just the start. You can take the drink off me but internally I was still a person who wanted to drink. My way of dealing with the thoughts, feelings and emotions of real life was to drink them away. I had to learn a new way to live. I had to learn hoe to deal with my feelings instead of running from them. I continued through the program and learned so much about myself. I began to pray and meditate, to build a connection with a higher power, something I completely disregarded to begin with, but as time went on I felt it working in my life. I learned about my behaviours and how my defects can cause me to behave in certain ways. I started to feel different and behave in a different way, by following a set of spiritual principles I learned while doing the program. I began to start to make amends for my actions that had caused people harm in the past and learned how to live differently, following a set of principles that will help me to not cause that same harm in the future.

A massive part of my recovery is the connection with a higher power that I have built on this journey. I am no longer alone. I have something more powerful than me and more powerful than my addiction working in my life. Another huge part of my recovery is the connections I have made with others in recovery. I have a group of people in my life now who just want what is best for me and don’t want anything in return. They will hold my accountable for my actions and will call me out if they see and bad behaviours creeping back in. They do this from a loving place. They’ve got my back and I’ve got there’s. For my all this is only obtainable by going through the 12 step program and clearing the wreckage of the past and becoming the best version of yourself that you can.

I’m not perfect, I’m far from it, but I’m aware today and I’m fully accountable for my actions. I hold my hands up when I make mistakes and try to rectify them. I’ve learned that no matter what happens in my life now, no matter how bad a situation, taking a drug will not improve that situation. I could never get to that thought before. Whenever I felt down, upset, angry or any other feeling or emotion, I would use drugs to give me a temporary reprieve from those feelings. I deal with them today. I accept them and work through them, by working my program and staying connected to my higher power.

I last had a drink on the 8th June 2024, a day off 15 months ago as I write this. I couldn’t go 15 minutes before I started this program. I owe a lot of this to The Well Communities. The Well Communities provides shelter when you need it, it provides a safe place for people struggling with drug addiction to come and work through their issues with no judgement or fear of repercussions.

They show you love when you’re not feeling it. I hated myself when I walked into The Well. I hated the way I felt and what I had done to the people in my life, I was supposed to love. I was welcomed by loving people who understood where I was. They had been where I was themselves and wanted to show me recovery is possible and there is a different way to live.

They show you how to fight when you have given in. I arrived at The Well, beaten, broken and ready to die. I had given up. I had resided to the fact that I would die in addiction and that was that. By having recovering addicts who work there to guide me through the 12 step program I learned how to deal with my addiction issues and make massive changes in my behavior.

My life today is so far from where it was when I first began recovery, I sometimes can’t believe it. I have a great relationship back with my family. I am in my sister’s life and spend a lot of time with my nieces and get to watch them grow up. I have made some lifelong friends, friends that care about me and mean something to me. I have moved into my own place. I’m in a loving relationship which is built on trust and honesty. I have a sense of peace that I spent years searching for at the bottom of a bottle and could never find. I am content and happy. After finishing treatment I began working for The Well Communities in Carlisle as part of the housing staff team. I have become one of the people who gave me a hug when I turned up broken and helped me change my life. I get to do that on a daily basis today. Life is good. Recovery is possible.

I said at the beginning I’m Greg and I’m an addict. I still am an addict but today I am so much more than that. I am in recovery, I am a son to my parents, I am a brother to my sister again, I am an uncle to my nieces. I am a partner to my girlfriend. I am a friend to many others in recovery. I am free.