Confessions of an English Opioid-Aficionado: Shagging Shanting & Shooting Up Thru Peru

I'm your regular English bloke, born in Bromley, and have spent most of my life in the County of Kent. On leaving school I started my career felling trees on my doorstep - the neighbouring Ashdown Forest. It wasn't long afterwards, suffering from physical as well as emotional pain, quite apart from trauma, that I took a lifestyle choice. A resolute decision to start using skag. I then spent another twenty years hooked on heroin and other opioids.

But there comes a time when one gets sick and tired of being sick and tired. I've tried Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Narcotics Anonymous (NA) where they display a (usually faded) bright yellow card which reads: "WHO you see here, WHAT you hear here, WHEN you leave here, LET IT STAY HERE". Unfortunately, not everyone stays schtum, and there sure are a lot of blatherskites you cannot count on to keep their big mouths shut. I wouldn't go so far as to say they've caused me to fall off the wagon, but they've caused me countless hardships so that I question my commitment and sometimes think it's wiser to stay away from the rooms.

Apart from sobriety, anonymity is the foundation stone of these meetings, so if it's disregarded the whole edifice that's AA/NA comes crumbling down. Certain people, having had their anonymity broken have gone back to the booze and drugs; some of those have died. There're also those in AA who think that people with drug issues have no place at their meetings; in this day and age and in my experience, it's rare to come across an alcoholic who hasn't also had a problem with some drug or another.

Some ignorant arseholes fail to see that alcohol is the most destructive drug of them all. And do you know what? there's a saying amongst the people that go to AA and NA who want to stay clean 'n' sober and distance themselves from all the craziness that surrounds it, and it goes like this: "There are a lot of sick people in these rooms". Which is true. If they weren't sick, they wouldn't have fetched up there in the first place. And that's why I no longer attend meetings.

I believe that for those with addictive personalities it's actually harder to drink or do drugs in moderation than stay teetotal: "Temperance is harder than abstinence" is what I say, and I prefer it that way, but since a serious head injury I've been unable to drink more than two or three pints of beer without falling fast asleep. Nowadays I enjoy the occasional glass of white wine with my Sunday lunch and Tequila or mezcal (sipped - they're spirits like whisky or gin) in the local cantinas, that's all.