| In his own words, Ray* tells his story and explains how he is rebuilding his life with support from Together’s West and Mid-Essex Personal-Development Service.
When I was 10 or 11 my mum and dad split up. My mum remarried and my stepfather was selling drugs. He was using heroin and I started using at 14. [When] I was about 16, my stepfather went to prison and we got robbed by men with guns.
It’s just horrible, horrible. You’re running around all day to find something to steal, then you’ve got to find someone to sell it to and then you've got to go and find the gear. I overdosed quite a few times and would wake up in hospital or strange people’s houses.
A few times I was arrested for shoplifting, basically getting money for heroin. I was beaten up by a supplier who threatened to use a stun gun on me. That was my turning point. I phoned organisations like Mind who gave me a list of detox clinics. At first I didn’t want to get clean for me, I wanted to get clean for my dad and my mum and my brothers. It was the wrong way to do it.
I was taken to a crisis intervention centre where I had 21 days' detox but after 19 I got asked to leave. I went to Crystal Palace and I was using there. After three months I thought: "What am I doing?" I did another 21 days detox and then straight to rehab, Thomas House Trust*. I came out and they couldn’t have put me in a worse place. There was prostitution rife and crack heads. Sheer hell again. From there I went to Wisends*, which was my first place of my own . . . but junkies knocked at your door in the middle of the night.
The place where I am currently living is convenient for ADAS [the Alcohol and Drugs Abstinence Service]. I used to have counselling sessions and massage there. They would let me in their offices, using their computers, and I liked that trust.
I got to know Roger [Together’s Personal Development Coordinator] through CDAT [Community Drug and Alcohol Team]. We talked about my life, where it was going, what I would like to achieve, and about college. We then drove to the college and I enrolled on a beginners’ introductory college course in photography.
When that was completed Roger got me a camera. I was paid to go to Holland for three weeks to take pictures, enjoy myself and work with kids. I gave up taking methadone to go to Holland. It gave me a taste of a better life.
The college was not running the second part of the course; my girlfriend lives in Crawley so we looked at Brighton College of Technology. I get bad anxiety at college sometimes. In the past, with anxiety, getting the hump, I would turn to drugs. It would just block things out but now I recognise the things that made me use.
I haven’t dropped below a merit yet. One more year and my course is over and hopefully I will get a job as an assistant. I would like to have my own photography business, to be successful, to be happy, to be clean. To have a life, to have the normal kind of stuff like house, kids, wife, dog.
*Names have been changed | 
