They Thought I Was Dead: Sandy’s Story

48 Jersey, Channel Islands, 2011

I can’t even remember when it was that my pity had turned to hate but I truly hated Nicos. He’d lost his wife and kids. That’s got to have a massive impact on anyone’s psyche, so for a while I tried really hard to feel something for him. He had shown me kindness when I needed it, and without him I know I would not have been able to leave my previous life behind without a trace. So I always felt I owed him for turning up at the right time. Sadly, any hope of him loving me in the way I first loved him never came, he played on my weaknesses like the bully he was. The heroin. The threat always hanging over me that he could reveal who I was at any moment. I was putty in his hands. I needed some of the balance of power to swing my way. And it took me a long time to find the strength and the right time to do something about that.

When he started hitting me, I knew there was no going back. I had to get off the heroin and get out. But that is no easy task. Heroin gives that euphoric high that takes me away from all my shit, but the addiction is overbearing. I hate myself for it.

He was raging at Bruno last night, another major incident. Bruno had done nothing wrong. My poor boy was so desperate to get away he fell over, cracking his head on the corner of a glass table so badly I had to get him to A&E at the hospital, where they put in eleven stitches. I couldn’t even drive him there as I was drunk and drugged, which makes me so ashamed and I’m sure the taxi driver was judging me.

This morning I had woken up more desperate and determined than ever to get off the drugs, to be free from this. I just took a little hit, promising myself it would be one of my last. I’d got good at negotiating with my inner voice about why it was justified this time, and that it would be my last or one of my last, in order to give myself a little way out in case I slipped back or needed another hit. It was 11.32 and I thought Bruno was playing in the room next door. I came round in my drug daze to see him sat opposite me, my needle in one hand, pressing it tentatively against the skin of his opposite arm. My heart literally stopped.

At 11.37 this morning, I vowed to change.

The tipping point. No more drugs. Ever.

Seeing my vulnerable, curious son sitting there with my dirty drugs in his hand. The dirty drugs that Nicos got me hooked on. It couldn’t get any lower.