March 23, 2026
Cara Cox: The Detox Factor, Heroin Addiction and Recovery After Repeated Relapses
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She had the “perfect” life on paper and still didn’t want to wake up.
In this episode of Believe in People: Addiction, Recovery & Stigma, Cara Cox joins us to discuss trauma, addiction, repeated relapse, and long-term recovery. We explore how childhood loss, family alcoholism, emotional instability, and internal loneliness shaped her relationship with substances from an early age.
Cara speaks openly about drinking to blackout as a teenager, using cannabis and ketamine, and later progressing into heroin and crack use. She reflects on the devastating impact of her mum’s alcoholism and suicide, the instability of moving between schools as a child, and how substances became both escapism and a way to feel confident, connected, and temporarily at peace.
This episode also examines the realities of ketamine addiction, including physical harm, rehab admissions, near-death experiences, psychiatric units, and the mental health crash that often comes when substances are removed. Cara shares what changed after years of relapse, how connection and fellowship helped her recover, and why creative recovery, peer support, and lived experience now shape her work through Chase Recovery and The Detox Factor.
This episode offers practical insight for people in recovery, family members, frontline practitioners, and anyone interested in real stories of change.
Search terms: addiction recovery podcast UK, ketamine addiction recovery, trauma and addiction, lived experience stories, relapse and recovery, peer support, substance misuse, Believe in People podcast.
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Believe in People is a platform for lived experience, recovery insight and honest conversation. Whether you’re in recovery, supporting someone who is, or working on the frontline, this podcast exists to inform, challenge stigma and inspire change.
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🎵 Music: “Jonathan Tortoise” - Christopher Tait (Belle Ghoul / Electric Six)
Listen & Subscribe:
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🎙️ Facilitator: Matthew Butler
🎛️ Producer: Robbie Lawson
🏢 Network: ReNew
Chapters
00:00 - Welcome And Cara’s Story
00:42 - Childhood Moves And Mum’s Drinking
05:35 - Bullying School Instability And Self-Doubt
13:15 - Substances As Confidence And Escape
16:52 - Ketamine Dependency And First Rehab
19:35 - Near Death Overdoses And Mind Recovery
21:23 - Ten Treatments And The Aftercare Gap
25:43 - COVID Turning Point And Finding Fellowship
31:59 - Stereotypes Recovery Capital And Progression
36:10 - Building Chase Recovery Without Lanyards
41:52 - The Detox Factor Films Music And Theatre
51:02 - Advice Quickfire Questions And Closing
Transcript
WEBVTT
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This is a renewed 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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Today we're speaking to Cara Cox about addiction, trauma, recovery, and the long road back from repeated relapse.
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Cara shares how childhood loss, her mum's alcoholism, and years of internal loneliness shaped her relationship with substances.
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From alcohol and cannabis to ketamine, pepperone and crack.
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She talks candidly about rehab, near-death experiences, creative recovery, and how connection ultimately helps save her life.
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I had a really, really glorious childhood.
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My dad was a sergeant major in the army, so I was actually born in Germany.
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My first school was a Dutch-speaking school in Holland.
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I can't speak Dutch, so I think by the time I finished my education, I'd been to about 14 schools.
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But in early, early childhood, it was amazing.
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We lived in Hong Kong, we saw a lot of the world, and it was just it was just, yeah, everything about it was amazing.
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But unfortunately, my mum started to get really unwell.
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And I think I was probably around about 10 or 11 years old, and my mum soon started to drink to cope with what was going on with her, and it was in the 90s, and I just remember feeling so hopeless in eight that I couldn't help her.
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And the the problem is, as a child, even with an alcoholic, as much as the family wanted to see my mum get well, and as much as we wanted to do everything to support her and and and to see what we could do to get her better, she drank to an extent that was in in lots of blackouts.
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And I can remember being at school and just being completely consumed with how my mum was when I got home.
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And I suppose that's where I often say it was confusing because I absolutely adored my mum.
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You know, she was she was beautiful, she was amazing, she was very loving.
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But this is where when I reflect back, I can see that real Jekyll and Hyde character and and the devastation that alcohol can put in the family.
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And when I was 13, that's when my mum made the decision to end her life.
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So I think as a family, you know, we were quite fortunate in that I've got these two incredible brothers.
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They're they're amazing, they they've been my constant support, and and my dad is absolutely awesome.
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So fortunately for us, we we we became a close unit.
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But the impact that my mum's death had on us, I think it was often when you talk about trauma and something affecting you, it's like that invisible rucksack scenario where you're sort of walking around and you put your first boulder in.
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I think my the death of my mum was certainly the the first thing, and I can remember being very, must have been about 11 or 12, really despising alcohol and despising everything that it did because it completely and utterly transformed the woman that I'm loved most in the whole world.
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So I despised it.
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But I do remember this, I do remember tasting it and thinking I don't get it.
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It was then when I was sort of in my teenage years that at school I was introduced to to cannabis and drinking, and straight away I drank differently to all my friends.
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Straight away I drank to blackout, straight away I was drinking, I was smoking cannabis sort of daily or weekendly, and I just knew I knew that you sort of almost get that warning sign that this isn't going to go too well, and I can remember just feeling different, and I remember feeling like my head was going quieter, that all of the internal struggles that I often feel, because fundamentally I feel uncomfortable in my own skin a lot of the time, not so much now, not even close, but as a teenager, I just felt different.
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As a teenager, I just felt like I was always watching and I just couldn't be present or get involved.
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And there was lots of things that I use as escapism, it was music and drama and all of those things.
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But when I found substances, even as a teenager, that's where something slightly started to click.
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Yeah, I I can see the need for for the need for escapism because I suppose there's the few things that I picked up on there, and and and correct me if I'm wrong, but I guess being in a military or your dad having a military background, was he quite regimental at all or quite strict at all?
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Yeah, he but in a but in a in a necessary way, not in a because with my dad, he's so kind and compassionate, but there is there's there's this directness, and I think the other day I was I was with a mentor that I worked with with the clearer, and they said, Whose leadership style do you admire the most?
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I sort of said, Well, actually, my dad's leadership.
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But yes, there is this expectation when you're in the army, and I remember with my mum and and how much she struggled with her mental health and alcoholism.
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When you're in an army barracks and an army compound, it's very much swept under the carpet.
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You can't expose the fact that you've got an alcoholic in the family.
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It's in the 90s, there's not the help that there is today.
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So there was this huge, massive stigma attached to it.
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There was this huge shame.
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And fair play to my dad, you know, as strict as he was, and yes, he was strict in in many ways.
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You know, he was he was 36 years old, left with three kids and a full-time career in the army.
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So he was still showing up being a sergeant major.
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So, you know, uh it's it was really tricky.
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And of for me, I suppose that's where I sort of tried to grow up quicker than than than I needed to.
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I was gonna say that was gonna be the the next part, really, because I I suppose the one thing that we we talk a lot about you know when we're looking at you know childhood is is the need for stability, and I suppose you know, even with a a strong family unit there, moving to all these different locations, there's gonna be a massive lack of stability there in yourself because you're not necessarily gonna be able to make the connections with friends in the way that's quite important during childhood as well.
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Did how how did that impact you in in those teenager years as well?
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It it impacts massively because the thing is I children can be quite cruel, teenagers can be quite cruel, and I and I did I'd get bullied quite a lot in quite a few different schools and over silly little things.
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I remember once I had to go to one school and we didn't have time to get the new uniform, and I had to wear trousers because that was the previous uniform and that was it constantly straight away, and I always had to work really hard to try and fit in.
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Fortunately, I suppose in the last school I did, but it was all it's as soon as you sort of make a friendship group, then it's it's time to move on, and then you start a new school, and then you have to go through all that constant pressures, and so it's almost confusing.
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I mean, as silly as it is, I remember being sat down once, and then the question was E17 or take that, and at that time the pressure to answer this correct correctly was it felt immense.
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So I'm like E17, obviously.
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So fortunately it was the right answer.
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Yeah, so but it's those silly little things, and um yeah, so it is tough.
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And I suppose for me, my education did take a battering for it.
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I I'm I probably I'm pretty dyslexic in many ways.
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But that'd be harder to notice if you're moving from school to school as well as it's harder to notice, and of course, I would look for loopholes so I wouldn't have to go into the to the slower classes because if I was in the slower classes, then it made me look like I didn't know what I was talking about.
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I've always been quite bright, but maths, spellings, all of those things, it just holds you back because I knew that when it came to doing my GCSEs, I needed four C's in order to go to college to get to university.
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So you know, the four C's are focused on the big ones food technology, media studies, drama, and um I think it was English.
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So I was in I got the big four.
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But that's what I had to focus on because I I couldn't, I wasn't very good at math.
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I I'm awful at math, and and I'm and so and of course when you're changing schools, teachers teach differently, and then you're trying to, you know, and you don't want to ask questions because if you ask too many questions, it's so it's all of those sorts of things.
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And I I think even you know, quite uh I guess uh an underrated or underacknowledged thing is the importance of those relationships with teachers as well.
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I feel quite lucky during my secondary school that I had some stability there, and when my parents went through a divorce, I felt really supported by my teachers because they knew me well enough as well.
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And I think you know, the idea of jumping from school to school, not even being able to have that, I suppose, that connection with with those teachers.
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And it's interesting to talk about your mum and her alcoholism as well, because it kind of brings us back to the adage of is alcoholism is it hereditary or is it like learned behaviour?
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So I guess looking at at your mum's relationship with alcohol, it is I suppose how do you view it?
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Because I guess the argument there is you maybe picked up on some things because you were in the same environment as her, or do you kind of have that belief of it's a disease, it's in my genes, it's in my DNA, that I was always destined to be an alcoholic because of my mum and her dependency as well?
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Do you know what I don't know is the answer because the way in which I look at it, so I, the addict in my family, so I went on to alcohol and drug addiction, and I've got my two brothers who drew up, grew up in the same household, uh, suffered the same trauma, went through the same things as me.
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My older brother, who then joined the army, he went on to do four tours.
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He was in Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Iraq, all of these places.
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He hasn't come back and he hasn't needed felt the need to drink himself to oblivion because he doesn't know how to to deal with life.
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Um and my my little brother certainly he you know he he doesn't have that in him either.
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So I don't know is the answer because I've certainly if it if it is a a hereditary thing, maybe I got the gene and and it missed the boys, but I do feel that a lot of it is it's my own internal dialogue and it's my own internal unmanageability, it's that sort of self-sacrifice, that thing that keeps on driving me to say that you're no good or you'll never be able to do this, you can't achieve this, or or I would want to achieve so much and aim for so high, and then I'd get to that place and I'd be like, I just can't do this anymore, and I just need everything to go away again.
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I'd you know, it was just busy all the time.
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Where does that voice come from, do you think?
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That that telling you, you know, you can't do this, you know, you're not good enough.
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Is that something that you've just built up yourself, or is that something that has kind of been instilled in you?
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I'm just thinking about you jumping from school to school or all these different environments.
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How how did that inner voice come to be?
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I think it's a mixture of things.
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I think it's I think it's failed attempts at different things where and I think it's not I think it's it's been you know, it's it's that constant comparison, and I suppose for me when I have to when I was going from place to place, there would be that person that was really amazing at stuff, and then I'd have to compare and try and get, oh, I'll never be like this person, which is it's quite a sad way of looking at it, really.
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But at the same time, within me there have there has always been this sort of kick in the guts at the same time because I have always pushed things to to to achieve and to strive for better and to do more.
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But unfortunately for me, the drugs and alcohol took all of that away for a very long time.
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And that's you know, the the the opposite it's I suppose when you get into recovery that sometimes you can reflect, well, I know I do, I reflect on so many missed opportunities and so many things that that could have happened that didn't as a result of of drug and alcohol addiction.
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And I don't, you know, once you've passed through that sort of cutoff, it's very hard to come back.
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It's interesting you said about the the the comparative behaviour that and I think we all do it.
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I guess one of the things that was shared with me, which I've always found very poignant, and and whenever I do find myself reflecting on what other people are doing or what other people are achieving, it's the the quote of uh comparison is the thief of joy.
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And I always loved that because I think that's right, once I do start comparing everything, I'm just stop kind of enjoying what I'm doing because I I see what other people are doing and I want to be as good as them or better that you know.
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That's the sort of thing, but it it's something that I think we all deal with, especially in this day with like social media, especially.
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Do you know?
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Yeah.
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Always seeing people, you know, posting the highlights, and no one ever really shares the lows, do they?
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No, I suppose that's that's always the interesting thing.
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I guess going back to you know the teenage years as well, you said you noticed there was a a distinct difference between yourself and others and the way that they were using substances.
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What was you trying to achieve by maybe drinking or taking substances to excess in the way that other people wasn't doing?
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Um who were you trying to I guess who were you trying to be?
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Do you know that there's the there's the question.
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Well, who I was trying to be was the authentic me because that's what drugs and alcohol enabled me to be in those early stages, that it was absolut you know, it is better than any prescribed medication in the whole wide world for somebody who is you know suffers with this awful anxiety of being around people and stuff like that.
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I know for me that drugs and alcohol did for me that that nothing else could do.
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So I was able to be more confident, I was able to party more, I was able to talk to people, I was able to chat to boys, I was able to feel attractive for the first time ever.
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It's like everything comes up in colour almost.
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But I know that um in my college years and my and my teenage, sort of my early years of going to university.
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When I got to to Brighton, I went to to do a degree in theatre arts, and I can just remember it was that that arrival point, it was just like I can be and do whatever I want.
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I am I am free, and that's where I got introduced to the to the rave culture of the party scene.
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I was still sort of at uni, but the thing is, it was just like it is that old sort of purely living for the weekends, but my weekends would go from Wednesday to Monday, and it was and it was constant, but it it just meant that I could be I I found a piece of freedom in it.
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I found connection, I found love, I found all of those things that I wanted to do.
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But when I was at home on my own and everything's worn off, suddenly the world cut starts coming into my head again, and suddenly everything's shouting at me, and suddenly everything just feels unmanageable and unbearable.
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And at that time, I was when I was at university, that's when I started using ketamine.
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Um and it was ketamine that took me to my first rehab, and it was ketamine and alcohol, but ketamine in particular, I became a slave to that drug, you know, horrific health consequences.
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And I can remember going into my first rehab, and and I'm getting K cramps, and my bladder's going, and and you know, it's my gallbladder's been removed.
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I was very unwell, and the the counsellors were were telling me the effects of ketamine because it was quite a new drug, and I was like, Well, I know I know what it does, but but how do I stop?
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How do I stop taking this?
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Because every time I just wanted to escape reality, I just didn't want to be in the world, and I think I was fortunate enough to to get through my degree and a and a pass, and I and I got and I was working in a corporate world, and I was uh I was working as an actress and I was doing all of these wonderfully creative things, and then on paper, my life looked really brilliant in my I mean I know I'm going to my twenties now, but in my early 20s, on paper, my life looked really successful.
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I was working for a corporate company in in Brighton.
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I had a seafront property, I was married, had a lovely little sports car, but I wanted to kill myself.
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I didn't want to wake up and I would and I and I would take these big attempts on my life, and it would be psychiatric units, and then it would be rehabs, and it was just it it was horrendous.
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And that that's sort of almost the beginning of the the progression.
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It wasn't about what I had, it was none of that mattered.
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It was about how I felt about myself and and and it all goes back to that void.
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I didn't know what I was filling, I just knew that I just didn't want to be here.
00:17:03.360 --> 00:17:08.799
Yeah, it's interesting you said that because that takes us again back to that social media analogy of where people's lives look perfect.
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Yeah.
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You had the seafood property, you had the nice car, but inside there is there's something, you know, that that just can't be filled.
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I've I haven't had anybody really talk to me about Ketamine on this series before, despite its popularity now growing exponentially.
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To be introduced to it, how old was you when you first started taking it?
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So university years, early 20s?
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So I'm 43, so it was a good, you know, I was tw about I must have been 20 when I started using ketamine.
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Can you can you tell me how how when you take ketamine, how does it make you feel?
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So it's it's quite undescribable, really.
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There's a a sense of almost euphoria, but the the the the thing with ketamine is that it's a disassociate, so it's almost like an anesthetic type quality.
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So what can happen is that you'll go into almost like a psychedelic world, as it were.
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So you have this altered perception of reality, so you don't know what's real or what's not real, and within that, you I was able to sort of manipulate the reality, and of course, for me, you know, the the the the high would last 20 to to to 30 minutes and then you you snap back into reality again.
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I don't think anyone knew back then how how horrendous it is for the body.
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Um I didn't know it anything was going on as a result of of ketamine use, and I think when I was under these horrific pains, I'd start drinking lots of alcohol, vodka, to to just to make me pass out, just to make me black out.
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And it it was horrendous.
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And you know, I can I can remember so many people sort of saying, you know, there's there's there's a real problem here.
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And my poor dad at the time, um, I was you know, I I said I lost my driving license for drink driving.
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I just it was my first, what I felt was my major consequence, but he helped me into my first rehab and and and I hadn't told him at that stage that I was on drugs, so it was really hard for him when I when I did say, and my my drug use got worse after after that.
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But ketamine at the time, it just stripped everything.
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It's like it's like this zombie that I became.
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I'm lucky that my body has healed.
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I think that's the thing with addiction in general, is that physically consequences are horrendous, you know.
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Some of the consequences that I've had through my drug addiction, you know, and and I've I've I've been I've had three cardiac arrests.
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I've been, you know, I've near I've pretty much nearly died.
00:19:46.400 --> 00:20:03.200
You know, was that whilst under the influence of substances or like a long-term effect of use and no, that was I overdosed on on heroin, so it's it's very lucky to be here, and also as a result of wanting to end my life and lots of different things.
00:20:03.279 --> 00:20:10.799
I've had a head injury through through taking drugs and falling on my head, and that that was also so I'm very lucky to be here.
00:20:10.960 --> 00:20:16.160
But the physical consequences that alcohol and drug addiction strip away are horrendous.
00:20:16.240 --> 00:20:18.079
That they are you are near death.
00:20:18.720 --> 00:20:27.039
The difficulty is that when you come into recovery, of course, physically I get well really quick compared to to everything else.
00:20:27.200 --> 00:20:30.480
Physically, I can heal myself really quite fast.
00:20:30.640 --> 00:20:37.680
I can I can start showering, I can start presenting better, I can start eating well, I start putting nutrients in my body.
00:20:37.839 --> 00:20:41.920
But the problem is I haven't managed anything that's going on in my mind.
00:20:42.000 --> 00:20:48.720
And what I know is that with addiction, for me, it centers in my mind, it's my mind, and that's where it's at most powerful.
00:20:48.880 --> 00:21:02.160
No matter how physically dependent I've come on drugs and alcohol, when I put the substances down, my mental health gets worse, my feelings come back, my emotions aren't regulated, and I feel so much worse before I get better.
00:21:02.240 --> 00:21:05.039
And that's where I have to tap into something that's bigger than myself.
00:21:05.119 --> 00:21:08.880
So I've got this spiritual aspect of me that says, Well, what next?
00:21:09.039 --> 00:21:10.000
What do I do now?
00:21:10.160 --> 00:21:12.319
Because and that's the tricky part.
00:21:12.640 --> 00:21:18.480
So when when you we sort of say is, you know, so why does this person keep doing it?
00:21:18.559 --> 00:21:20.160
Why does this person keep doing it?
00:21:20.319 --> 00:21:27.599
And that's because in in so in many ways, when you wake up, it's hard to live with with all of that.
00:21:28.240 --> 00:21:30.000
So I'm really fortunate in that.
00:21:30.079 --> 00:21:43.039
I've I've I've found a network of people that have helped me along the way, but it took me 10 years to get well, 10 rehab centers, psychiatric units, detox units, because I couldn't listen.
00:21:43.279 --> 00:21:47.519
And I felt that I could just do things in my own in my own way.
00:21:47.759 --> 00:21:59.759
I think one of the rehabs, you know, I I I went in, I think it was my sixth rehab, and I made the the the decision that the relation my marriage wasn't working.
00:22:00.640 --> 00:22:10.960
Which it wasn't, and it it was a really hard decision because I'd been with my husband from the age of 19 until the age of 32, but we were not right for each other.
00:22:11.119 --> 00:22:18.319
He was still in his sort of drug world, and and and I was, you know, in rehab after rehab trying to come off drugs.
00:22:19.279 --> 00:22:27.039
I think what tends to happen though is the rehab will say, you know, change everything, change your environment, do this, and then I did all that.
00:22:27.279 --> 00:22:35.759
Um and the the the constant the I don't know, I don't know how to put it in words.
00:22:35.920 --> 00:22:42.960
It's that support afterwards, and I made the mistake of well, my feelings are rock bottom, everything else feels awful.
00:22:43.119 --> 00:23:01.599
I'm four months in my recovery at this point, and I needed somebody else to validate that, so I I met someone new, and that person that I met, which resulted in me trying different drugs, so that's when it was it was heroin and it and it's and it's crack and it's a whole different world that I I did not belong in.
00:23:02.640 --> 00:23:12.079
It's interesting so that you've been there to do detox or and and a rehab ten times, you know, and I I just trying to get myself into to your headspace there.
00:23:12.160 --> 00:23:19.920
There must be an element of when you've gone in after maybe the second or third time, there must be an element of you going in there that's thinking, this isn't gonna work.
00:23:20.079 --> 00:23:21.359
This is a waste of time.
00:23:21.680 --> 00:23:22.880
Did that ever cross your mind?
00:23:23.039 --> 00:23:31.119
Because I I I'm just trying to get made around going that many times and knowing each time you've gone before it hasn't worked.
00:23:31.680 --> 00:23:40.880
I think um I think I treated rehab like a hospital, i.e., I've got a broken arm, I'll go get an operation, I'll leave, and then I'll be alright.
00:23:41.359 --> 00:23:50.160
I wasn't I didn't put the the work in afterwards, and the thing is, you know, each rehab I learnt so much from.
00:23:50.319 --> 00:23:56.079
I mean, I went to an all-female rehab for one of them, and it was incredible, you know, and I and I learnt a lot.
00:23:56.640 --> 00:24:21.279
The the the the problem with rehab, and and I suppose this is where I'm so passionate about Leroes, and I'm so passionate about the work that Leroes do, and I suppose it goes back to meeting my boss Paul Jackson, the basement project, is that when you get someone who's is sort of dying in their own soil and they're using and then it's their environment, and they're like this wilted flower that's got you know all darkness, everything else.
00:24:21.519 --> 00:24:24.640
You dig that plant up, you put them in a res residential rehab.
00:24:24.720 --> 00:24:32.160
Well, in that residential rehab, they're getting fed and watered and nutrients and all of this, and they're there, you're brilliant, you're the best version of yourself, and that's three months.
00:24:32.240 --> 00:24:32.559
Yeah.
00:24:32.720 --> 00:24:40.240
Now, drug addiction's 20 to 25 years, and in three months, they look like a flower that's bloomed that that that Alan Titchmaster's grown.
00:24:40.480 --> 00:24:46.880
So, but the problem is you then put them back into the soil that they're originally in, into the dark room where they're not getting the new shit.
00:24:47.119 --> 00:24:47.519
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:24:47.839 --> 00:24:54.160
So, and this is where Lero work is so important because if they're back in there, well, then what do they do?
00:24:54.319 --> 00:25:09.839
Yes, there's fellowships, and I I I'm a member of a fellowship myself, and I wholeheartedly had to embrace everything about the fellowship, and I had to do what my sponsor suggested, but I just remember those early days how overwhelming everything is.
00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:28.160
Um, and so that's where if you can make new roots in your in the own soil that you've got and start making new connections and start building up relationships from that, then you start changing your environment, and that's the thing that you've got to look at doing because I know that I'm surrounded by people that that that really want the best for me.
00:25:28.480 --> 00:25:47.039
I'm very fortunate in that some of my friends from Brighton, the the the the decent friends, you know, that I'm still friends with a lot of them, but they had to they had to part ways with me for many years because they couldn't watch what I was doing to myself, they couldn't watch the self-destruction and the path that I was on.
00:25:47.200 --> 00:25:48.319
I mean it was horrendous.
00:25:49.279 --> 00:25:53.440
Throughout this story, the the thing that I'm picking up on is connection.
00:25:53.519 --> 00:26:00.799
I think looking at that childhood where you were moving from country to country, school to school, you're not getting the chance to really develop those connections.
00:26:00.880 --> 00:26:07.200
When you first started using substances and you talked about the rare scene, you talked about the connection that you had with people.
00:26:07.519 --> 00:26:15.680
And it's interesting to say that because they often say the opposite of addiction, it's not sobriety, it's connection.
00:26:16.640 --> 00:26:21.599
And I've always I've always loved that because I think a lot of people in addiction are isolated.
00:26:21.680 --> 00:26:25.119
It goes back to the the flower metaphor of being in that dark room, being by yourself.
00:26:25.440 --> 00:26:30.799
You could be sat in a room with you know four other people all using, but you really are by yourself, aren't you?
00:26:31.039 --> 00:26:31.839
A hundred percent.
00:26:31.920 --> 00:26:33.519
I was the loneliest person in the world.
00:26:33.680 --> 00:26:37.599
The internal loneliness that I suffer with, I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.
00:26:38.079 --> 00:26:44.079
And because of that, I'd push my family away in that they don't understand me, I'm so misunderstood.
00:26:44.240 --> 00:26:49.920
You know, it's that terminal uniqueness, my uniqueness and what I understood about myself was gonna kill me.
00:26:50.559 --> 00:27:10.480
And it is when you open up your heart and you start getting connection to to the people around you, and that's where my recovery I've been so lucky, so lucky with the people I've met, JP from it who who were we founded the detox factor, Port Jacks, where we launched Chase Recovery.
00:27:10.559 --> 00:27:15.200
But it's all the other people that I've met on the way, and I got well during COVID.
00:27:15.599 --> 00:27:23.279
So I was so May 2020, I was in a tent in Southampton.
00:27:23.440 --> 00:27:26.160
I'd told my family I didn't want anything to do with them.
00:27:26.319 --> 00:27:45.440
My family had tried to detox me again, but I made the decision at that time that I was just going to be an addict and I was gonna die an addict, and I and I just made this sort of resolution, but COVID happened, and for I think for everyone else in the world, it was the worst thing ever.
00:27:45.759 --> 00:27:59.440
For me, it it saved my life because my my family sort of said, you know, you've got one more opportunity here that COVID is, you know, because when you're at that time there was nowhere for me to go, there's no facilities open, there was nothing.
00:27:59.599 --> 00:28:15.359
So it was either stay in this place or go to that final rehab, and and I did, and I went to this uh place in in Leicester, and my brother picked me up, he didn't recognise me, he said I don't, you know, it was just horrendous.
00:28:15.920 --> 00:28:28.240
And I walked in, and you said a moment ago how each time I've been into a rehab, you must have thought, Oh, this is this is never gonna work, this is never gonna work.
00:28:28.400 --> 00:28:36.480
And I got to chestnuts in Leicester, and I don't know why, but Debbie who came out, she said to me, You never have to be alone again.
00:28:36.640 --> 00:28:48.640
And where we've just spoken about loneliness and connection and all of those things, I'd like, you know, and I I heard her, I just heard her, and it was like something did melt in me that day.
00:28:49.200 --> 00:28:53.759
Um, and so she took me in, and it and it was it was just so different.
00:28:53.839 --> 00:29:05.519
She straight away she taught me how to pray, she was giving me affirmations in the morning, she gave me this horrendous task of looking at myself in the mirror, but it it built up from there.
00:29:05.759 --> 00:29:14.799
And when I left treatment, I went into a sober living house, and I can remember sitting in this sober living house thinking, oh, I don't I I don't know what to do with myself.
00:29:14.960 --> 00:29:18.079
And Zoom happened, and all the fellowships went on Zoom.
00:29:18.160 --> 00:29:18.720
And you know what?
00:29:18.799 --> 00:29:20.880
I was smashing five meetings a day sometimes.
00:29:20.960 --> 00:29:27.119
It became a bit of a new thing, it was an escapism, and I was going to like morning meetings and afternoon meetings.
00:29:27.279 --> 00:29:35.839
And for me, I think COVID actually gave me a bit of clarity and focus because I I didn't have anywhere to go.
00:29:36.160 --> 00:29:47.839
I mean, I know that drug dealers were still operating, but you know, it is interesting because I again I COVID was a very isolating time for a lot of people, but you're not the only person that has mentioned founding connection during that time as well.
00:29:47.920 --> 00:29:56.640
And I think it it's it's funny how do you know by kind of being isolated from from everybody, it almost gives us a time to like okay, this is the time to work on yourself, yeah.
00:29:56.880 --> 00:29:58.319
Because there's nothing else to do.
00:29:58.480 --> 00:30:01.759
Yeah, you've got you're allowed out your house an hour a day or something like that, you know.
00:30:02.000 --> 00:30:03.359
Now is the time to focus on yourself.
00:30:03.599 --> 00:30:05.039
And that's exactly what I did.
00:30:05.119 --> 00:30:24.079
And I and I got a sponsor and I went through the work, but then I started to do other bits and bobs, and it's I think it's all I think I keep going back to your question, and I and it's ruminating in my head because why would I think it works that time?
00:30:25.039 --> 00:30:36.559
But I think part of me there's there's been so many times where I've been sat in a situation or or somewhere where uh where in my head I've I've known that actually I I shouldn't be here.
00:30:36.720 --> 00:30:45.680
There's there's got to be more to life than this, and I know that a lot of people say, you know, you can't get well for your your family or your children or that love isn't enough.
00:30:46.079 --> 00:31:04.400
I and I don't think love is enough to could to get well past like this, but at the same time, I think in the back of my head, I've got this your family actually do it all you, you know, you've you've got you've you you don't have to die like this, you know.
00:31:04.480 --> 00:31:10.000
You've and so I I suppose there is that one it's that window of opportunity, isn't it?
00:31:10.160 --> 00:31:16.559
Um I know that when I meet people who are starting in their journey, the window of opportunity is tiny.
00:31:16.720 --> 00:31:31.039
Yes, and you're not always gonna, you know, it took me years to listen, years and years and years to listen, and it was a really painful I think in some ways it's more devastating for my family to to have to have watched all of that than it is for me to have lived it in many ways.
00:31:31.359 --> 00:31:42.960
I think I think that the families of loved ones get a much harder time in many ways, um, because it's the it's the renewed hope and then it's down again, renewed hope and then it's down again.
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