TWO reformed drug addicts talk to GINA DAVIDSON about what drove them to heroin abuse and its vicious circle of crime and homelessness. After three months in the Lothians and Edinburgh Abstinence Programme (LEAP), 31-year-old Kane (above right) is finally clean from drugs for the first time in 19 years. Another of LEAP's success stories, David, 36, also looks forward to graduating from the programme on Friday. Kane and David are just two of 14 former addicts using the project to change their lives.
WITH his thinly-framed glasses and well-combed hair, slightly gawky stature and nervous lack of eye contact, he could still pass for a young teenager.
Yet 31-year-old Kane has lived a life of drug dependency since he was 12 and got his first taste of the effects of tranquillisers. By the time he was 14 he was addicted. At 16 he got his first methadone prescription, and for the next 15 years he took the green, sticky, fluid to keep his life on track.
It didn't work. There were always other drugs, in particular heroin. But now sitting in the tranquil surroundings of Malta House in leafy Stockbridge he speaks articulately about his wasted life on drugs – and the programme which has finally got him clean for the first time in 19 years.
Kane is one of a handful of people who have been through the three-month quasi-residential Lothians and Edinburgh Abstinence Programme (LEAP).
The first of its kind in Scotland, the two-year pilot project – funded by an £800,000 grant from the Scottish Executive but run by NHS Lothian – was established after research showed that only 3.4 per cent of methadone programme clients achieve abstinence after three years, despite the fact that 80 per cent of patients want to become drug free.
Open since September last year when just two patients were referred, there are now 14 people trying to change their lives at Malta House. Kane was one of them until February 10 when he "graduated" into the real world.
"I grew up in Wester Hailes, but to be honest it wouldn't have mattered where we lived, I think I would always have ended up involved with drugs," he says. "The first 'substance' I ever took was draining the bottom of a glass after one of my mum's parties, but from there I moved very quickly on to tranquillisers. I was addicted at 14.
"I was hurt emotionally very badly when I was a child," is the only explanation he'll give for his rapid descent. "I was trying to cover up emotional pain and drugs made that easy for me. My father was never there because he was in prison and I found that hard to cope with. As a result my behaviour was erratic and older boys used to find me funny and I wanted that acceptance. And because they were doing drugs, I did too.
"I was actually really good at school. I had been at a private school before we moved to Wester Hailes and I ended up at WHEC, so I was ahead of the others. That meant I was bored, so I took drugs at school and stopped going.
"That's when I got a social worker and I was going to be put into a children's home, but they decided I was too old, so that was it, I never went back to school."
For two years Kane's mother tried to get him to stop taking drugs, to no avail. "I was hurting too badly to care how she felt," he says. "Then on my 16th birthday I went to the doctors told them I was addicted to Valium and dihydrocodeine and I left with a prescription for methadone. I was on methadone for 15 years."
But Kane's drug use was still erratic and he resorted to heroin when methadone "stopped shutting me down".
Then four years ago, he says he met a "magnificent woman", Lynn Curran, a mental health addictions nurse. "She referred me here," he said
The future for Kane now involves going back to college again, through the Transition agency. He's starting a counselling course and hopes to go on and study psychology.
He admits it's not been easy. "At first the great fear for me was what would happen when the programme was over. But over the weeks I realised I could live without drugs. My soul cleaned out, my heart mended."
Another potential success story from LEAP is 36-year-old David. Originally from Niddrie, he was 13 when he first took Valium. By the time he was 17 he was an alcoholic, sleeping on the streets. Hitting 30 he started injecting heroin. And at the age of 35 he found himself in a coma, learning to walk again after being beaten up. But it was an attack with a claw hammer that made him realise he had to get clean.
"I've been taking drugs and drinking all my adult life," he says. "I got into it because my mates were doing it. It was Valium and cannabis at first. I didn't go to school much and where I was brought up, drugs were all over the place. I started making my home life chaotic because of my behaviour. I was taking drugs every day and drinking. Drink was the main thing for me. So I was sent to List D schools and children's homes. All the time, though, my family kept trying to bring me back into the fold. I just turned my back on them."
Stealing money from his uncle, David left his family for good at the age of 17 for a life on the streets. "
When I was sleeping rough there was a band of ten to 15 of us – we were just young kids but we'd all given up."
David went from homeless shelters to prison and back again for the next 13 years, always looking for his next drink. But then he thought of a novel way to stop – by taking heroin. "My life had been so f***** up with alcohol, I thought it couldn't get worse," he grimaces. "I thought I would give it a try as I'd never known anyone on heroin to be a drinker.
"I had used opiates a couple of times in prison, and I knew people who took heroin, so it wasn't difficult. I just knew where to go. I always said I would never get into heroin, my dad got a life sentence when I was 16 because he killed someone because of his heroin addiction."
The first night David did succumb he was in Princes Street Gardens with two other homeless men. "I smoked it that time, but the next night I said give us a shot of that (the needles). I was on it for a couple of years, then I got on the methadone programme. That meant I didn't need money for heroin, so the drink started creeping back in.
"But then I ended up in a coma after being beaten up and was in the Astley Ainslie for three months, learning to walk again. I couldn't really remember it because I was so out of it. But when I went out for a walk one day, I just never went back because I wanted to get some heroin. Nothing had changed."
The methadone programme brought him into contact with the Harm Reduction Team and a psychologist, and it was then that David's life did start to change.
"Even though I had a chaotic lifestyle there was someone I could speak to every week, to offload on which was great. Then in November I was set about with a claw hammer. I don't really know why I was attacked but I knew then that I really had to change my life and started to push to come to LEAP."
For David the last three months have seen an amazing transformation. "I had my last drink on New Year's Day and I detoxed from the methadone in here. Within four weeks I was off it. I came here on January 3 and was clean by the 30th. Physically it was actually quite easy, plus I knew it was what I wanted to do. I feel really good.
"It's been hard, but brilliant. I've had to change my thinking a lot. It's made me realise how s*** my life was. I had given up. My thinking was like that of a 70-year-old pensioner who had missed all his chances. Since coming here I have realised that I'm only 36 and there's still time, still a lot for me to do.
"I finish here on Friday, but I've got my friends around me when I leave. Now I know a lot of good people who want the same as me. Plus I'll be coming here twice a week for support as well. I've been in family therapy with my mum – she's just so happy that she's got me back. I've done a lot of laughing here. I feel happy in myself, which is a huge change."
LEAP JUMPS IN TO HELP BEAT ADDICTION
DOWN a leafy cobbled lane, a stone's throw from the trendy bars and boutiques of Stockbridge, sits Malta House, where LEAP is situated. The people who pass through its large black door every day are battling addictions to drugs and alcohol.
Running LEAP is Dr David McCartney, an addiction specialist, who has previously worked at Castle Craig rehabilitation centre in the Borders.
He believes that the abstinence programme offers an alternative to the methadone system for substance abusers.
"But it's not cold turkey," he says. "Cold turkey is coming off drugs without any support at all. We don't do cold turkey here. This is where we change their thinking.
"It's also here that we get to the root of why they take drugs or drink, and from there we can offer more one-to-one counselling if it's more suitable."
"We've only been going six months but the signs are promising. We will be evaluating the results but we're hopeful that we will continue to receive funding."
LEAP can be contacted on 0131-332 3228.
The full article contains 1734 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
