Luke - Interview 20

Age at interview: 17

Brief Outline:

Luke is 17 and works fulltime. He started using recreational drug use of cannabis, magic mushrooms and cocaine as a form of 'escape'. His drug taking and alcohol gradually increased and made his depression worse. Luke stopped taking drugs by making a conscious decision and has been clean ever since. He feels that cannabis can easily lead into heavier drugs. Luke's life is back on track now and he enjoys travelling and spending time with his girlfriend. He is also on antidepressants.

Background:

See 'Brief outline'

Luke used to do cannabis and magic mushrooms and says it 'messes with your head'.

Went to college, “oh mate try a bit of this joint, it’s pucker”, all right, tried it and liked it. That was cannabis, um. And then things got a hell of a lot worse, I was using you know, twenty, thirty pounds a day worth of cannabis, and eventually you go to a party and somebody says, “Oh you’re not right, do you want anything.” So that was, and then eventually I started taking it in, smoking tiny amounts smoking and swallowing magic mushrooms, to essentially get out of my head …and long term messes with your head even more, and it makes you ten times worse.

Luke has been clean for over 6 months now. Having seen a heroin user in hospital is a 'permanent reminder' in his mind never to go down that road again.

Then eventually the girlfriend just turned around to me and said, “If you want to take cannabis you can. If you touch cocaine, if you touch magic mushrooms, if you touch hash, if you touch ecstasy, anything, I’m gone.” Because you know it, cannabis is so common, everyone, you know I think everybody, if you haven’t smoked it, you know someone who has. Do you know, does that make sense, you know everyone does, everybody’s been near it, everybody knows what it smells like, it’s just so common and she’s fond of that because she knows it does help in the short term. And in the in the long run I know she’s there and she’ll always support me. So that helps me as a, as a thing, but I turned round I said to her, “No,” And I’ve been clean from anything above cannabis for, it’s about 8, 6 months now, and clean from cannabis for 3 months.

 

And I didn’t get any support, no support about that, I just went cold turkey. I just said “No. Enough.” It’s making me a million times worse, I’m not coming back down that road, I’m not going, you know. And again the scars were a permanent reminder I don’t want to go down there again, I don’t want to be there, so that helped.

 

I actually, from being in hospital from one of my suicidal attempts, I have seen a heroin user well he was actually in hospital for a, well he’d, he’d hit a vein, so yeah, so um, you know I’d seen that road, and that’s a permanent reminder in my head. Follow that again, you’re there, you’re him. That, you know, he was what, twenty seven, he looked, he looked as old as my granddad, he was looked about 70. So that’s me in, you know, ten years if I don’t buck my ideas up.

Luke says his life is much better now. He's travelling, learning to drive and plans to move in with his girlfriend.

And how is your life now?

 

Better, a lot better, more happier with my girlfriend, with my work, with, just with my life in general you know, I can walk down the street smiling. People look at me and go, “Oh what are you smiling about?” But I’m, don’t you know? you know I can, I’ve just come back from Turkey on holiday, Paris, you know I’ve done, I went to New York a couple of years back. I’m planning to move out and get my own place next year, so that’s kind of a big milestone, trying to get my driving license, you know everything’s starting to look up and, what I should’ve been doing about five years ago really.

 

But that’s life, and that’s the way it goes. You know? Life lessons and hopefully through this I can help someone from avoiding all what I’ve had to go through.

 

Absolutely yeah. And you are very, very young still.

 

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Only forty three!

Luke says it was easy to move from Cannabis to heavier drugs and get hooked.

As soon as you start taking Cannabis it leads onto bigger, worse, better, well not better, but more illicit things, um, you know?

 

‘Cos you’ll never know if somebody’s coming around you selling a joint, you don’t know, could be heroin in it. Bam you’re hooked. You know, that’s ten years of your life gone before you can start getting better.