Drugs and Alcohol (young people)

Just don’t feel pressured into anything. Because I think when you are younger it seems such a big deal and it seems like a really like, ‘Ah people will remember us forever or if I don’t do that or I don’t do this, and I’m so un-cool.’ And like now you look back and you’re like, ‘No’. And I like at the time you’d be just like, ‘Oh stop patronising me. That’s a really patronising thing to say. You don’t know what it’s like, you don’t know what it’s like to be me’. And I can totally take that point on but it really doesn’t matter what, like you should only ever do anything that you feel comfortable with and I think like teachers and parents and stuff really need to impart that on their children. That they should only be doing things that they feel comfortable with and that they feel in a safe environment and. And then if they want to talk about things then there are places that they can go and that there should be openness about these things.

I think the best thing is to seek knowledge from people who have had drugs experience themselves before you try drugs because you don’t know what you are getting yourself into. When I started to use heroin I’d only used cannabis before that and tried a few other drugs. And I thought, ok I knew it was highly addictive but I thought it was just the same as being addicted to cannabis but worse, worse in that you’re just going to crave it. I didn’t know there was any physical element to withdrawal symptoms. You know, I thought I’d still be able to get up in the morning and function. And that’s not the case you can’t, you can’t move. You can’t do anything. It just grips you. So yeah make sure you know what you are doing before you try it.

Although you think you are grown up if you just gave it that little bit longer you might realise that certain things aren’t a good idea and, you know, the main thing, just to have aspirations, you know, you’ve got your whole life ahead of you, your whole future and no-one gives you a future and says, “You are going to be a doctor and here you go now you are one.” You know, it is, it is very much about you, people work to get to where they get to and people’s lives go the way that their, they go from the situation you are in and the situation you want to choose to put yourself in, or if you haven’t chose to put yourself in the situation somebody else has put you in, you know? And always sort of fight for what is right as well, by that I mean, like don’t let anyone put you down, especially men because, young mums can do extremely well, very well in fact and it doesn’t, it is not a stereotype, it doesn’t have to go a certain way. I think as long as you hold on to that and have aspirations for the future.

I can’t give the advice the government would want me to give. That’s for sure because I, it’s a big part of my world is having a drink and using it to unwind. I don’t think there is anything wrong with it. And I don’t like the growing pressure that is on people for it and the guilt. But I would say, ‘Just know when you’ve hit your limit’. But my biggest trouble when I was younger was that I would drink until I got ill and that has an adverse effect on everything. Education when you don’t go in, work when they have to send you home and that’s happened to me several times. And it’s, it’s not good and it doesn’t feel good and you say every time, the cliché that you won’t do it again but you do. And I would just say, just know your limit and try not to mix your drinks too heavily. And they say have a pint of water in between each drink. Apparently that’s a good idea but I’ve never tried it.