JAMIE’S ADDICTION STORY

May 4 2008 by Sarah Manners, Wales On Sunday

jamie’s addiction story

AT the height of his addiction to heroin, Jamie was spending over £400 a week to get the drug that his body craved.

He was just 15, still at school, and shoplifting daily to finance both his habit, and that of his girlfriend Sarah (name changed to protect her identity).

“I was doing about half a gram a day,” says Jamie, now 17.

“That was costing me £30 and then Sarah was using the same amount. Your whole life is about getting money to get your next bag.”

Jamie’s descent into the addiction that cost him both his job as a trainee plasterer, and his place in the family home, started when he was in primary school.

“I was smoking cannabis regularly at 11,” he says.

“I was hanging around with a gang of boys and we were all doing it.

Things became more serious when, at 13, Jamie started to experiment with Ecstasy.

“It was what we all did. It was OK,” says Jamie, whose glassy eyes and slow speech are the only real clues to the addiction he is now trying to fight.

Then at 15, while studying for his GCSEs – he got five – he took his first puff of heroin.

“I was out one night and we’d run out of weed,” he remembers.

“This older boy was there with heroin and said why not try it. I didn’t know anything about it but he said it was just like weed, but better.

“I had some and that’s how it started.”

His addiction rapidly spiralled into him needing a fix every morning before he could even go to work.

“My boss knew something was up,” says Jamie. “I don’t think he knew it was heroin – I think he thought it was drink, but whatever, he sacked me.

“I was gutted.”

Not long after this things went from bad to worse. Jamie says he was thrown out of the family home by his mother’s boyfriend.

Now reliant on temporary accommodation in a city centre hostel for the homeless, Jamie’s unstable accommodation adds yet another layer of problems to the drug addiction and family breakdown that he has to contend with.

“My mum is good as gold,” he says.

“She doesn’t like me taking heroin, but she’s there for me and tries to help me,” he says.

“It’s her boyfriend who doesn’t like me being around.”

At his worst, Jamie says he was dealing in heroin to finance his habit and injecting daily.

“It was all I did, every day,” he says.

Yet for all his problems – and criminal convictions for shoplifting – Jamie is one of Sandpit’s success stories.

Desperate to help her son rid himself of heroin, Jamie’s mum introduced him to Sandpit’s service a year ago. He now attends twice weekly meetings with drugs counsellors and has cut his heroin use by half.

He is also taking drug replacement Subutex to help deal with withdrawal, is keeping his nose clean on the Youth Offending Programme, and looking forward to his first kick-about with Sandpit’s latest venture, a football team.

“Me and Sarah are engaged,” he says.

“And I’d love to be a footballer.

“We just want to get ourselves sorted.”

* Names have been changed