June 27, 2025
68 | Steve Haigh: Royal Marines, Heroin & Salvation - Addiction, Prison & Spiritual Recovery
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Steve joins Believe in People to reflect on a life reshaped by shattered dreams, addiction, and spiritual awakening.
Once set on joining the Royal Marines, a sudden medical disqualification derailed his path, sending him into years of heroin use, criminality, and methadone dependency.
What followed was a long drift through the Acid House scene, multiple prison sentences, and deep grief after losing his mother. But at rock bottom, Steve experienced a vivid dream that marked a turning point. That moment sparked a journey of faith and service that continues to guide his recovery today.
Now leading Bible groups and launching a Christian-based 12-step course, Steve speaks with clarity about finding peace, purpose, and the courage to begin again. His story is a powerful reminder that no matter how far we fall, it’s never too late to rebuild and that the road to recovery can become a path to meaning.
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This is a toolkit for recovery & resilience. Whether you’re in recovery or seeking to understand addiction, there’s something here for everyone.
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🎵 Music: “Jonathan Tortoise” by Christopher Tait (Belle Ghoul / Electric Six)
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🎙️ Facilitator: Matthew Butler
🎛️ Producer: Robbie Lawson
🏢 Network: ReNew
00:00 - Steve's Early Life and Military Aspirations
11:21 - Drifting After Loss of Military Dream
21:43 - Introduction to Heroin and Addiction
31:02 - Crime, Prison and Methadone Treatment
38:10 - The Challenges of Methadone Withdrawal
46:28 - Personal Loss and Depression
50:35 - Leading Recovery and Finding Purpose
51:08 - Spiritual Awakening and Divine Purpose
WEBVTT
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This is a Renew Original Recording.
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Hello and welcome to Believe in People, a two-time Radio Academy Award-nominated and British Podcast Award-winning series about all things addiction recovery and stigma.
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My name is Matthew Butler and I'm your host, or, as I like to say, your facilitator.
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In this moving and deeply personal episode.
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I'm joined by Steve, whose journey through addiction, prison, prescription dependency and profound spiritual transformation offers one of the most compelling recovery testimonies we've heard, from a once disciplined young man with aspirations for the Royal Marines to years lost in heroin addiction and repeat incarceration.
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Steve's story is a powerful reminder of how our identity can fracture and be fully reformed.
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After multiple failed attempts at rebuilding his life, it wasn't a treatment centre or a sentence that changed Steve's past, but a vivid dream and a chance encounter with a food bank church leader.
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What followed was an unexpected spiritual awakening that set him on the course to leadership within a faith-based recovery community.
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Now free from methadone, crime and self-doubt, steve leads Bible groups delivering baptisms and is about to launch a 12-step base recovery course grounded in Christian teaching.
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I begin by asking steve about his background, and we delved into his early desires to head into the marines well, I ended up going to south africa as a kid for three years.
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My dad's got a transfer out there when we was younger and it was like a three-year contract.
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So I ended up going to school out there and experiencing the life, which was a bit of an eye-opener because it was all apartheid and everything.
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Yeah a completely different culture over there.
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Uh, then we ended up coming back to uk in 1984.
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I left school at 16 and I had my heart set on going in the military.
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I wanted to be in Royal Marines.
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So I went to see a careers officer when I was at school and he gave me all the info, what he needed to do.
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So I was close to school-leaving age and I started going running, getting myself as fit as what I had to be, because obviously's you know, heavy duty fitness, what you need to get in there.
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So you looked the part something came in and said I'll be fine, maybe not now, but when I was a bit younger maybe.
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yeah, so went to Limston in Devon, did have a, an academical assessment, a medical and then they do you a weekend PT.
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Did you have an academical assessment, a medical and then they do you a weekend PT just to test your basic fitness levels and see how you are and that and everything was all right.
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They said, yeah, come back, excuse me.
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So that was my tunnel vision to do that and what they'd missed on the initial medical.
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I got so far in months in where there's been quite a few that dropped out for whatever reason.
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I think it was down to like maybe 34 35, I was left out of about 150 and I was doing this 30 mile speed marching and there's a part of it where you've got to go through this concrete tunnel and it's all underwater and you've got all your kit on and pull yourself through, ended up getting water in my ear and an ear infection.
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So I went to see the medical officer and he said did you know you had a perforated eardrum?
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I said no, I said what's one of them?
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And he told me.
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He said, basically it's like a knoll in your eardrum and it affects your balance and we can't let you go any further because you've got this.
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So obviously I was like you know.
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I had my eyes set on that.
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But he said you know, what we can do is we can discharge you sort of thing.
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Go get it done, you know operation, and come back and you know if it's healed up properly and that we can have another go, sort of thing.
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But so I ended up going I'm having this surgery done and the graft, what they put on my eardrum, it didn't take.
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So, you know, started pissing it up and lost all my fitness and I didn't have a clue what I wanted to do after that because there was no plan B yeah, I think, when you've got your heart set on something for so long, and that's the only thing you want to do, and that's what you're working towards to have it ripped from underneath you.
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Yeah, so I think from that point on I just started drifting.
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I didn't have a clue what I wanted to do.
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I thought, right, I'll train to do this.
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So I went to college, learned how to be a brickie, worked on a load of building sites.
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Got fed up of that.
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So I started doing semi-skilled joinery work in that building port cabins.
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Got fed up of that, went back to college, got a welding qualification and got fed up with that.
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Went back to college, got a welding qualification and got fed up with that.
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If it's not what you want to do, you're going to get fed up with everything, aren't you?
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Yeah, I didn't have a clue what I wanted to do after that.
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Yeah, and then I ended up getting a real bad chest infection and that turned into pneumonia and I was ill for months, lost a ton of weight and I lost my job because of it when I was welding and I just died going downhill from there.
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Really the acid I was seen in the the 90s.
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I went from being a beer head drinking and that to taking party drugs like you know ecstasy, speed acid, mushrooms, you know all the oestrogenics and that and going to these like raves back in the.
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This was when it was still illegal initially, when I first started, and they'd have these big mass gatherings and a farmer would think a spaceship had landed in his field at four in the morning with all these lasers and lights going on and yeah, do you know?
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the Acid House theme is something that's come up a few times on this podcast.
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Yeah, a lot of people.
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I imagine for people my age it's been a trigger it's an addiction for a lot of people.
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I imagine for people my age it's been a trigger.
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Yeah, addiction for a lot of people so yeah, um, there was one guy, said he during it, similar to what you've just said.
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Then he said he was stood in the field and he said there he was, um, and he, you know, took an x amount of drugs and he said he just thought in that moment life will never get any better than that moment and he said it never did for him.
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Yeah, can you Can?
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you relate to that?
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I can, yeah, so I think it was the culture that came with it there was.
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You know, there was none of this.
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When you go out on a town on the beer and there's people fighting and you know, after they've had a skinful and getting arrested, it was all love and peace and you know.
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Like, you feel like how life should be sort of thing yeah, yeah, ideally it was just, you know, that was the last thing on your mind was wanting to fight anybody.
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It was the same for everybody.
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And I met some amazing people back then, you know, extraordinary people, people of all different kinds, all different backgrounds.
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It seemed to draw people from every different area of life into that sort of you know setting.
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I met doctors, I met people that was turning to be solicitors, homeless people, you know.
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Why do you think it attracted people from all these?
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different places.
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I just think the music it was.
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It was just like the music just changed like from I can't even remember, was it like sort of like hip hop before then?
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Yeah, and it just went in a different direction and everyone got grasped onto it and embraced it and just something completely new, that it's just.
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I always find it interesting as you just said, then your doctor, solicitors how it just attracts people from all these different walks of life.
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You know, I don't think other than, uh, this particular movement you don't often hear about when you talk about other things.
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It's normally like set groups that attract it.
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But for this, for it to attract as many people as it did, it obviously has some a lot of massive cultural impact, I think, especially, as you said, for your age group yeah.
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So got to about 1992 and I decided I wanted to, you know, go and work abroad for a bit.
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So for a couple of years, seasons, I went over to Spain and I worked the doors in the clubs around the Costa del Sol, costa Brava areas.
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Stayed out there for a few months, for a couple of years, just took meaningless jobs.
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And obviously still you know checking drugs are the party description.
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Obviously, still, you know checking drugs like party description.
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And got to about 90, 95, and I was introduced to this mysterious brown powder that I'd heard so much about over the years.
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And you know I saw myself it was the last thing I'd ever touch.
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Obviously we know it's heroin.
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You know I'll show myself it's the last thing I'd ever touch.
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Obviously we know it's heroin.
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And, yeah, the feeling of that the first time it was just out of this world.
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What was the circumstances that brought you to it?
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Because, like a lot of people, they say I'm never going to take heroin, but then end up doing it.
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So I don't really have an excuse, change your mind.
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Yeah, I don't really have an excuse.
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Yeah, I don't really have an excuse.
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Like, I don't come from a background where, you know, I was deprived as a child of anything.
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I had good parents, sad working parents, decent parents, from a decent family.
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I came.
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And.
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I just sort of like drifted to the wrong crowd Out of boredom, out of curiosity, or whatever.
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I just sort of like drifted to the wrong crowd Out of boredom, out of curiosity or whatever.
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I just went down a different path and it was no fault of anybody's but mine.
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And yeah, I think social circumstances is a massive thing, though, isn't it for drug use?
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We often talk about the deprived backgrounds that that people may come from, or childhood traumas, but I think there was a study I was reading not so long ago where it was talking about, like the um, the social interactions that your friends will have will have much more of an impact than that of your parents, and I often think about that because I think I'm a lot more like my friends than I am my parents.
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Some of the friends that I've got are the same friends that I had when I was six, seven years old.
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You know I'm still friends with them to this day, you know, nearly 30 years later and I'm probably more like them than I am my, my mum and dad.
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So I do find that interesting when um people you know go into um opiate addiction and the background is primarily just them social influences as opposed to them parental or home influences as well yeah, well, when this, when my mum got wind of what was happening, she, she was absolutely devastated, heartbroken, angry, everything you can imagine.
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I was a bit of a disappointment to her anyway because, like I was always switched on as a kid and growing up, and even from when I was a baby, she said you could count up to 20 before anybody else.
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Always ahead academically and at school I didn't even try and it just sort of was Just real natural Maths and English, yeah, naturally smart.
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Yeah, naturally.
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You know RQ, I just wasted it.
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She said you wasted it and she was right.
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I think parents will always get even more mad as well, because I think there's part of them that will blame themselves for yeah, I can see why She'll probably be thinking what has she done wrong?
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That's the instant, not necessarily looking at the social factors.
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And she didn't do anything wrong, exactly.
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But I don't think they think about that.
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They just think where did I go wrong?
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Not in a selfish way, but it does seem to be made to be about them as opposed to the individual that's struggling.
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Yeah, they say about there's an addiction gene.
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I'm not sure how much truth there is behind it, but my dad, he was a drinker and he liked to drink.
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He wasn't an alcoholic as such.
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He worked hard all week and he'd have a beer on a night and he'd go to club on a weekend take the dog with him.
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But he drank every day pretty much.
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But not too excessive amounts.
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I never saw him drunk, ever, me dad.
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I suppose that was cultural as well, though.
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Yeah, yeah.
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You don't really I.
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I mean, even in this office where we are in Beverly Road.
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Next door used to be a working men's club, yeah social access.
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Yeah, exactly but you couldn't go more than bloody two blocks before you got to a working men's club of some sort at one point and like, say, pubs have closed down working men's clubs, you just don't get them anymore.
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But for your dad that probably would have been the case, wouldn't it?
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Yeah, it's just a cultural thing.
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Finish work go and have a pint, I think for him he saw it.
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As you know, he was entitled to have a beer if he's been at work all week, If he's providing for the family, if he's paying the bills then yeah, but I think it's understandable when you talk about this tunnel vision that you had in working to the goal that you're working on, to have that taken away, I think you do just lose yourself.
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It's almost like you're trying to.
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To me, it sounds like you're almost trying to find your identity in other places.
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Yeah, and I always felt like, no matter what I did, there was something missing something.
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I wasn't satisfied with what I was doing.
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No matter what I did, there was something missing something.
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I wasn't satisfied with what I was doing.
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No matter what I was doing, and I think it maybe stems back from you know, I only had one goal and that was to get in the Marines, and when that failed, there was no plan B, so I've just been drifting.
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I was just drifting for years and years and years and I didn't even realise it at the time and I probably didn't care anyway for years and years and years and I didn't even realise it at the time and I probably didn't care.
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Anyway, can you talk me through what you said about the feeling a little bit then about taking heroin for the first time.
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What was that feeling?
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What was it like the first time that you took heroin?
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It's so hard to put into words.
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It's just like you feel euphoric, your body feels light, your head feels light.
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Just any care in the world.
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There's no care in the world.
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Complete detachment sort of thing, yeah and it's not like where you're off your head and you don't know what you're doing.
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It's just a warm glow sort of feeling, what you've got going throughout your body did you still feel like you was in control of yourself as well, or yeah?
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yeah, yeah yeah, interesting yeah, um, and it's that nice that you want to do it again.
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Obviously, and before you know it, you know you've got a problem on your hands.
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Yeah, so rightly so as well.
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When my friends found out all my pals and that what I was doing they didn't want to know, hmm, a lot of them was upset, a lot of them was disappointed.
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So I decided to get out of Beverley and I moved to Wool.
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Hmm.
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I came to Wool got away from it.
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I thought, you know, my mum was was absolutely devastated, so the last thing I wanted was for it to be in her face what I was doing yeah so I just left, left, went to, went to come and live in a hole.
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Erm, yeah, and naturally things just progressed from bad to worse then erm how, assumed you know obviously with with you say you took it once, it was so nice you took it again.
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How soon does it become, or do you notice it becoming a problem in heroin use, not just in terms of the expenditure but almost physically dependent?
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on it as well.
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The physical dependence if you're new to it and you've never had it before, I would say if you're taking it every day, you're probably looking about a month and being dose dependent as well.
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Back then I think it was about it was £30 for half a gram, if I remember right, but the stuff was it was more potent than what it is nowadays.
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Yeah, yeah now I don't think you can do the often, so it's not even really heavy when that's in it, it's just shite.
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Do you know?
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I wouldn't even know what they're putting into their stuff.
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Now it's been that long ago since I've ever had out to do with it, which I'll come to in a bit.
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Yeah, I can imagine you hear all the horror stories from America about what they're cutting it with and the deaths, the fentanyl, yeah, the scenes.
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Yeah, I think it's interesting.
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You said it kind of takes.
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You know, if you're takes a month, because everyone the misconception I'm saying a month, I'm saying thereabouts it's.
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Yeah, you know, it probably differs for different people but.
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But I think some people think that you'll take it once and you'll be addicted.
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You take it two or three times, you'll be addicted.
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Yeah, that's interesting um, yeah, I think it was about a month for me when it became a problem.
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Then obviously you know where's the money coming from to fund it.
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So everybody that I was like surrounding myself with in Hull at the time when I'd come to Hull was like into some sort of crime.
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There was people baggling, which was something I was never prepared to do Not casting judgment on anybody but for me that was a no Doing anything like robberies or you know, I don't have known how to go about it.
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Anyway, I'm not being committed.
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The only thing I'd ever been in trouble for in my life was fighting.
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And when I was in, when we lived in beville, when I lived in beverly, we used to go out.
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On a weekend there was a like an army barracks two miles up the road at leckanfield where all the squadders used to come to train for their HGV licence, which come from all different regiments and military, and that's where they come to get qualified to drive every goods.
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And in a weekend they'd spill over into Beverley Town to come and get leathered on the lash and it'd kick off every way because they'd end up groping our women and or doing or wanting to fight us, or every weekend.
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We'd run them out of town.
00:18:12.269 --> 00:18:24.260
Yeah, police wouldn't even get involved, they'd just end up picking all the bodies up off the floor and throw them into the back of the van and obviously military police dealt with them a lot and whatever happened to them I don't know.
00:18:24.280 --> 00:18:25.286
I can't imagine it was nice.
00:18:28.282 --> 00:18:29.287
Was that ever an option for you?
00:18:29.287 --> 00:18:41.730
Just going back to obviously being so focused on the Marines but the Army, the Navy, anything like that it got to the point where it just seemed like a distant memory from what I was indulging myself in then.
00:18:42.119 --> 00:18:48.213
And obviously fitness was not even a thing anymore.
00:18:48.213 --> 00:18:49.965
You have to be so physically fit.
00:18:49.965 --> 00:18:55.491
It's not just like your basic army or navy.
00:18:55.491 --> 00:19:02.712
The standards of the set are higher than your basic level of like.
00:19:02.712 --> 00:19:06.319
You say you want to be in the infantry or for the army or whatever.
00:19:06.319 --> 00:19:07.766
I can't even.
00:19:07.766 --> 00:19:11.428
I can't even remember now what you had to cover a mile and a half, I think it was.
00:19:11.428 --> 00:19:15.351
Was it 11 minutes for the army back then?
00:19:15.351 --> 00:19:18.126
I can't even remember now it's been that long.
00:19:18.721 --> 00:19:26.711
We have to do it in quite a short, but anyway you have to it cuts it down further when you you go for, like, special Special forces and all that stuff.
00:19:27.143 --> 00:19:31.420
So, going back to obviously being taken Heavy when you moved to Hull, it starts to become a problem.
00:19:31.420 --> 00:19:34.619
Not willing to obviously commit burglary.
00:19:34.619 --> 00:19:36.949
What was you doing then to fund this habit?
00:19:37.079 --> 00:19:43.227
The answer to me was to shortlift, because I saw it as the the least of all the evils.
00:19:43.227 --> 00:19:47.486
Yeah, and the only people that was getting targeted was the people that could afford it.
00:19:47.486 --> 00:19:52.483
Yeah, you know, like the big businesses and that Got the insurance.
00:19:52.523 --> 00:19:54.344
Anything goes missing, it's just covered in that anyway.
00:19:54.364 --> 00:19:58.930
Yeah, there's no fault, obviously, that it gets passed on to the people that are shopping.
00:19:58.930 --> 00:20:03.365
You know your customers that didn't register at the time.
00:20:03.365 --> 00:20:04.227
It was just like.
00:20:04.227 --> 00:20:09.224
This is the lesser of all the evils, which I'm not saying.
00:20:09.224 --> 00:20:19.646
That meant me better than anybody else but it's just that you know I was brought up with some standards of morals and decency because I come from a good family.
00:20:21.785 --> 00:20:23.890
Trying to hold on to something of your old self.
00:20:24.030 --> 00:20:24.471
I get that.
00:20:24.471 --> 00:20:30.547
So that's what I ended up doing, and naturally, you know, you end up getting caught.
00:20:30.547 --> 00:20:34.509
Yeah, so I was in trouble with the coppers a lot.
00:20:34.509 --> 00:20:39.468
Subsequently, you know, I ended up in prison.
00:20:39.468 --> 00:20:41.386
Then we were doing a few prison sentences.
00:20:41.386 --> 00:21:01.405
The last one was 2000, and I think I got out of Lindholm in 2004, the last time I was in and then it got to the stage where I just had enough Mm-hmm, I just stopped doing it.
00:21:02.201 --> 00:21:06.086
Was there a particular moment that made you think right, I'm just not fucking done with this now?
00:21:07.520 --> 00:21:15.731
I just got sick of the lifestyle and everything that went with it, never having anything, you know, in and out of prison.
00:21:15.731 --> 00:21:20.907
Yeah, I just got fed up of it.
00:21:20.907 --> 00:21:25.589
It just wasn't fun, so I just turned my back on it.
00:21:25.589 --> 00:21:35.526
I went on a script and turned my back on it, but even then, still, what am I going to do with my life?
00:21:35.526 --> 00:21:36.429
I was still drifting.
00:21:36.429 --> 00:21:51.269
I ended up in a relationship with this lass for 12 years and you know, she was nice, she was decent, but she was also an ex-drug user and still using some substances, whereas I wasn't.
00:21:51.269 --> 00:21:52.853
I was just on my scripts and that was it.
00:21:53.201 --> 00:22:08.707
Um yeah, how did you find moving to the prescription like, uh, obviously with methadone it being an opiate substitute, uh, replacement medication, um, was the relief in that.
00:22:08.707 --> 00:22:12.525
And like, not having to chase, constantly chasing heroin to avoid withdrawal.
00:22:12.525 --> 00:22:20.238
Like, how was that transition moving into a methadone prescription, because some people argue that methadone is you just replacing one addiction with another?
00:22:20.238 --> 00:22:23.826
Like, what would your answer to be towards a statement like that?
00:22:24.689 --> 00:22:27.282
yes, you are swapping one thing for another.
00:22:27.282 --> 00:22:47.905
However, it's keeping you stable and, with it being long acting, you only need to take one, one dose per day and that's going to hold you, whereas when you're doing the other it doesn't you know, you get maybe six to eight hours and then you, you know, and you're not.
00:22:47.905 --> 00:22:53.701
You're not committing any crime, you're not, you know, making a nuisance of yourself to anybody.
00:22:53.701 --> 00:23:01.634
You can sort of like plan on getting some sort of a life back together again.
00:23:01.815 --> 00:23:04.804
Would you say it provides like a stability, then yeah, yeah, having methadone yeah.
00:23:05.444 --> 00:23:07.728
It does, but it's if you want to come off it.
00:23:07.728 --> 00:23:09.611
Eventually it surrenders it's.
00:23:09.611 --> 00:23:11.814
You know it's a lot worse than what the gear is.
00:23:12.994 --> 00:23:13.234
How?
00:23:13.234 --> 00:23:14.155
What was the highest?
00:23:14.155 --> 00:23:16.786
When you was on a methadone prescription, what was the highest dose you was on?
00:23:18.480 --> 00:23:25.171
I think at one point I was on 100.
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