Running From It Never Worked

I was searching for a version of myself that didn't exist.

Completely out of the blue. An addiction story, which I've not written much about. I just wanted to write without having to think too much, and this is what came out.

By around the eighth year of my addiction, I don’t think I was fooling anybody any more.

Officially, my company never had proof that I was taking drugs. They’d sent me to a private doctor and, thankfully for me at the time, I was just about functioning well enough to think ahead.

I turned up with a Lucozade bottle containing my disabled brother’s urine, so I got through the drug tests without any problems.

Looking back, that’s a ridiculous sentence to write, but it was simply another day in the life of an addict. They couldn’t prove anything, although I’d be amazed if they didn’t know exactly what was going on by then.

I'd been working from home on a major project for well over a year. The strange thing about my addiction was that it didn't destroy the obvious things first.

Understanding how cocaine worked for me as someone with ADHD is important here, but that's an article in its own right. So is understanding what it did to my anxiety and panic disorders. They're separate stories, and ones I'll come back to another time.

My work remained to a high standard and one project, which I’d spent around six months working on, was eventually published. If somebody had judged me purely on the quality of my work, they probably wouldn’t have realised how bad things had become.

Everything else, however, had fallen apart.

Communication with colleagues was at an all-time low. Relationships had deteriorated and I’d become increasingly isolated.

So when voluntary redundancy was suggested, I took it. And it suited everyone, even if nobody actually said it.

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At the time it was a shocking decision because the package was substantial. I don’t want to say the figure because it isn’t important, but I received one and a half times my annual salary, had to cash in seven years’ worth of company shares, received my annual bonus and a number of other perks that came with leaving. And the first £30,000 of redundancy is also tax free.

It wasn’t the sort of money that would set somebody up for life, nowhere near, but it was certainly enough to change my life if I used it wisely.

But I didn’t.

I blew the lot in less than sixteen weeks, the first six weeks was utter carnage and the next ten weeks I spent in Ibiza.

By the time I came back to the UK, most of it was gone.

I had no income, limited savings and no plan.

Every attempt I’d made to stop taking drugs had failed. Every attempt to stop drinking had failed. Every attempt to stop gambling had failed. The scale of those failures was spectacular.

A few years earlier I’d spent forty-five days in a private rehabilitation clinic. On the day I left I remember shaking everyone’s hand, thanking the staff, genuinely believing they’d changed my life. I walked out of those doors convinced that this was it, that I’d finally beaten it.

I lasted three….

Months?

Weeks?

Days?

Nope. Hours. I lasted three hours.

Even then, I only managed that long because I put up a pathetic fight first. The story of what happened after leaving rehab deserves an article of its own because, somehow, it managed to become even more ridiculous than even three hours suggests.

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Ibiza was another attempt to run away from drugs.

I know that sounds completely mad because if someone told me they’d chosen Ibiza to escape drugs I’d probably laugh as well, but it was familiarity. I knew my way around the island.

It actually worked to a degree. Just not in the way you’d ever expect. And surprise surprise that’s also another story of it’s own.

I wasn’t clean, but my drug use dropped considerably while I was there. Unfortunately, almost everything else became chaotic instead.

I met a beautiful woman from the Czech Republic. She didn’t speak English. I didn’t speak a word of Czech. She could speak Spanish, but I couldn’t speak that either. Somehow, despite sharing almost no common language whatsoever, we ended up dating, if that’s even the right word.

We spent weeks together laughing. Whether we were laughing at the same things was very unlikely because we could barely understand one another even using a little book to translate, but we laughed all the same.

Like most things in my life back then, it eventually went spectacularly wrong. When I returned to the UK she believed she was coming with me to start a new life together.

How that misunderstanding happened, and everything that followed, is yet again another story entirely because it’s even more bizarre than you’d imagine.

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The bigger problem was that while my drug use had reduced in Ibiza, I’d spent money at a frightening rate. During those first few weeks I behaved like a millionaire. I spent money on everything and everyone without giving tomorrow a second thought.

By the time I returned home, the money was rapidly disappearing and, within days of landing back in the UK, I was heavily using drugs again.

So I decided to run again.

This time my plan seemed sensible.

I trained to become a live-in carer because I could complete the training in a week and be placed with somebody almost immediately afterwards.

In my mind it solved every problem. I’d be living in someone else’s home, responsible for another person, unable to wander off to meet people or find drug dealers. Morally, I told myself, there was no way I’d be stupid enough to take drugs while somebody depended on me.

I genuinely believed that.

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I was placed with a man called Steve.

Steve was quadriplegic. Years earlier he’d served in the Army and, on a day off, he’d gone swimming with friends. Showing off in front of some girls, he dived into a lake from a reasonable height without realising there was a rock beneath the surface. He landed on it, broke his neck and his life changed forever.

By the time I met him he was in his late forties. Unsurprisingly, life had been incredibly difficult for him and gambling had become his vice. Couldn’t have been a worse placement for me, but my issues were small in comparison.

Within three days I’d broken just about every rule there was.

Steve would spend hours sitting in the bookmakers, leaving me free to disappear and do my own thing.

The town itself was unlike anywhere I’d ever been before. I’d seen deprived areas before, but nothing quite like this. The high street was virtually dead. Buildings were run down, shops had disappeared and the only businesses that seemed to survive were bookmakers and tired-looking chicken and burger takeaways.

I was mugged twice while I was there.

The second time they even stole my trainers.

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Despite all that, I was actually doing well. I went to the gym every day, kept the house clean, studied whenever I had spare time and generally felt as though I might finally have found something that worked.

In the evenings Steve and I would often go to the casino together and stay there until four or five in the morning. I think I’d given him around a thousand pounds during the time I was with him. Saying I’d lent it to him would be generous because I never expected to see it again.

Then one evening Spurs were playing Arsenal.

Steve knew my history but he was also very relaxed about giving me my own space. He told me to go out and watch the match in the pub while he had a quiet evening to himself.

So I did… now, if there’s one thing drug users become very good at, it’s recognising other drug users and dealers.

Within five minutes I knew exactly who was who.

After a couple of pints I wandered over. There was the usual cautious conversation while they worked out whether I was genuine or whether I was police. Once everyone was satisfied, I walked away with a gram of cocaine.

Back then, a gram was what I would have called a tickle. It barely touched the sides. But after two weeks away from that life, living differently and carrying some responsibility, it affected me far more than it normally would have.

I knew that if I stayed in the pub I’d buy more, so I went back to Steve’s house.

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Getting Steve into bed wasn’t an easy job at the best of times and I wasn’t exactly brilliant at using the overhead hoist even when I was completely sober. That night I was clumsy, slow and a little all over the place, but I eventually got him settled and went back to my room where I carried on doing the last few lines.

I lay there wide awake, completely disgusted with myself.

Not because I was surprised I’d relapsed. By then relapse was almost expected. What made me feel sick was knowing that I’d taken drugs while responsible for somebody who couldn’t look after himself.

I’d convinced myself that becoming a live-in carer would finally stop me using because I wouldn’t allow myself to put somebody else at risk.

Within a fortnight I’d done exactly that.

At around three o’clock in the morning the buzzer went.

Steve needed the toilet.

I won’t go into the details because that’s unnecessary but anyone who has worked as a carer knows that helping somebody in Steve’s condition isn’t something you can do half asleep, let alone while under the influence of cocaine. I was painfully slow, completely incompetent and everything became far more difficult than it should ever have been. And things went very wrong.

I’d embarrassed him.

I’d let him down.

I’d let myself down.

I was a disgrace. A shameful utter disgrace.

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The following morning I contacted the company and told them there’d been an emergency and I had to leave immediately. They reminded me about the minimum notice period and the rules surrounding live-in placements.

I told them I wasn’t asking for permission. I was resigning and somebody needed to come that day because I was leaving.

I told Steve the truth.

He begged me to stay.

We’d got on really well. We laughed together, spent time out of the house and, in many ways, he’d been living more than he had for a long time. He genuinely didn’t want another carer. He was never getting another me. Thank fuck I hear most people saying.

But I knew I couldn’t stay.

Whatever happened to me was one thing, but I wasn’t prepared to gamble with somebody else’s life. I’d already proved I couldn’t be trusted to look after him properly and I wasn’t going to wait until something even worse happened.

So, once again, I packed my bags, walked away and ran.

The problem was that every time I ran, I believed I was leaving addiction behind.

I never was.

It came with me every single time.

Running from it never worked.

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