Rays of Hope & Glints of Sunshine

"Rays of Hope and Glints of Sunshine
A Rehab Story

Taking the Plunge

Grovelands: - is a 'concept house' based therapeutic community for the rehabilitation of people with severe drug and alcohol problems. It has a fierce reputation as being one of the most successful and toughest rehabs in Europe. Nottingham and its main drug service, the John Hope Clinic, has for years sent the hapless and hopeless amongst its long term problem drug users down the path of its winding drive, and to its credit it has enjoyed excellence rarely rivalled. Sometimes people consigned to life on high-dose Methadone scripts, and whom society has all but written off have gone through the programme and have had miraculous turn rounds in their lives after completion. A majority of the staff, including management and the programme director first ever stepped on Grovelands soil with nothing but their blind faith. I've named this story "Rays of Hopes not only to take a line from the places philosophy, but as a literal truth, the glimmer of hope, a lonely ray of sunshine ' may be the only thing you bring with you from the darkness travelled.

So much more though than just drugs and drink, there is such much intensity to the Grovelands like there is so much more depth to you or to me. This is a story about human emotions, interaction and dynamics, about struggling with our integrities and regaining our understanding of whom and what we really are. Are we all the scared child within, or issue riddled adults no longer coping, screaming at the mounting cycle of our failure? The story is not yet another just about the battle with the rising drug issue. The target is not societies fawning, fatal attraction for the culture of instant gratification or morally swiping at its lust for intoxicated heady heights. Not to argue that these banshees don't mark our times, but my rehab story is about friendship, loyalties, disappointments, successes and failures, romance and rejection, hope, acceptance, wisdom and folly but most of all - the most thing of all these is LOVE. Biblical references aside and before you get out the 'Tibetan Book of the Dead; episode IV and I implode inwardly, pull out a yoga mat and GO WAY OUT MAN - SO very San Francisco 1969 dudes! There is something I want anyone reading this to take way with them ' it's this - during this account of my stay in a rehab, I do hope that you find that amongst other things and true to the spirit of my time at Grovelands that you laugh, you cry, you enjoy and find amusing no matter how heartbreaking some of the subject matter may be or close to the bone and even harrowing as it was for me!

'A hardcore rehab for hardcore junkies' is one of the many reputations precede the Grovelands. Many myths abound, the majority of which, I was to discover, probably had some good basis in fact! My drugs worker short listed me as a prime candidate down for a candidate from about mid-2002 after I'd contracted a nasty case of Hepatitis A ' I'd read the blurb, and the whole thing smacked of 'boot camp.' Perturbed I contrived to hinder my application with a dose of self-inflicted psychotic illness (delaying my application process by about 12 months. The bummer was -convincing the psychiatrist I'd duped that in fact I wasn't mad after all. Consultants as it is commonly known do not like to eat their words or do U-bend changes of diagnosis overnight!) ' The saga brought more time enjoying my amoral existence as an unredeemed addict, as I wanted to sink lower into the mire for a good more few months before giving up my perverse notion of what freedom was.

2003 was a terrible year, my mental health was suffering. A brief kidnapping and having my keys stolen off me was the design of a working girl and her partner so they could assume control of my council flat. My low-rise crack palace was at a prized strategic post in Nottingham's red light district ' a whistle call to dealers or punters. A few dreadful days of having scolding water tipped on my face, being burnt with cigarette nubs but worst of all being deprived of Crack & Smack by these malevolent cuckoos was causing me to break down. The means of control employed by my captors did not break me though and I contrived an escape. Almost dying I clambered out of a tiny window and then down and out across several balconies resulting in a 40ft scrape down slanted concrete to freedom and a tip of to CID (they were wanted for something else ' I just had to wait for the doors to go down to get my flat back).

Danielle 25 years old, petite, blonde and potentially gorgeous (sadly ravaged by her addiction), was with me for a good part of that year. We had this weird love/hate relationship: her working the streets and feeding our habits, me doing all the scoring and occasionally I'd going out shoplifting during daylight hours as a to supplement her earnings. Tragically and romantically underneath our arguing and fights we had some kind of love, perhaps attraction for one another. My health was in decline that summer, I was losing weight and getting really weak, and my teeth were completely blackened, rather like Shane McGowan from the pogues!. There couldn't have been more to me than 9 ½ stone and to literally add insult, the St Ann's school kids would shout out abuse with names like 'Bag Rat', 'Filth leech' as I slinked past them under one of the subways or alleys on the massive concrete enclave of the 1960's housing estate.

Summer 2003 drove on, getting hotter; it seemed relentlessly to be adding to my oppression and persecution. As things progressed getting worse and worse, one week I received a host of beatings. Once I was robbed for drugs, and then minutes afterwards some local hoodlums, exploiting my weakened state, decided to smash my face up for the second time.

Double glazed and south facing, my flat sweltered. It began to stink and soon I was sharing the place with the hundreds of flies attracted by the shit on an upstairs balcony. Danni, Christina, Rosalyn, Lisa, Terri and Emma - my little gang of self-confessed fiends - were regular visitors. We shared needles, drugs, bodily fluids, and infections like impetigo - cooking up our gear with the juice squeezed from rotting lemons. A few months later I learned that this had led to Rosa developing a fungal infection which ate into her eyes, leaving her as good as blind.

After getting my door kicked off by C.I.D to sort the early flat problem - I'd had to balance it with a settee blocking the door, so anyone could get in. Some of the big bad smack boys got in and would cook up infront of me and not offer me a hit, it was like torture but what could I do. People had some respect for me until 2003 as I was falling apart and had prior to that kept myself quite together and in control of my flat. Now it was just chaos.

The Hep A, the beatings and constantly being underweight, not to mention the nervous demeanour, fusty smell of my person and dirty clothes and black teeth meant that I was undoubtedly losing what remained of my good looks. I didn't realise this at the time ' but I was a mess when I went to the Grovelands and it took a long time to regain them in some ways. Even now, it's hard to believe how ruined I was by 3 years of relentless hardcore crack and heroin addiction. My physical and mental heath, my self worth, my identity, my emotional capacity and integrity were all crushed in this self-inflicted torment.

In June I went for a day placement at the Grovelands. It's all a bit blurred as I was bang in the middle of one of my minor petty criminal scams and it had almost come on top the day before. I didn't sleep and then got all spammed out on 8mg of Subutex to hold me through the day. I didn't feel welcome at all (which was more to do with how uncomfortable I felt in myself), the place gave me the creeps. I stunk, I was blind as a bat as I had no contact lenses or glasses ' the day placement report on me wasn't the best one. A few residents did state that I definitely needed to be there tho' and for that reason weren't gong to deny me my place. I remember that the place seemed very oppressive, very ordered, structured, bells every hour and everyone congregating in the lounge area. At dinner (which was very unimpressive) several people were in silence around the tables on 'contract' I didn't no what this meant and of course it wasn't explained to me clearly. When it came to interview I was asked if I was 100% sure that I wanted to go¦¦..I just said in all honesty no ' not even 50%. The kindly admissions lady Rachel, who was to be a great help to me later said I could come back again, when I was surer that I wanted it. My drugs worker was disappointed, we were going home early.

When I got back to my flat ' I began to compose a letter slating the place and asking for as little intervention from drugs services as possible, I was going to let my addiction run its natural course. My line of thinking at this time was that it was going to be prison or more likely death. My parents of course knew of this day placement and hoped that the Grovelands would offer salvation ' I phoned them after some gear and 3 litres of White Star cider and told them I'd prefer prison to such a horrid place. It was very upsetting again for my Dad. He was now beginning to write me off totally.

As the swelter of the summer of 2003 intensified things got worse. Danni was with me for a few weeks here and there, I'd also resumed heavy drinking which was always a bad move. Long before my problems with Heroin and Crack I'd been a heavy amphetamine user and alcoholic whilst at University which carried on until 1998 when I discovered Heron. Gear was a relief as my mind frazzled to bits with the speed and alcohol was teetering on psychosis ' my drinking throughout most of the 1990's was obscene and I was a blackout drunk, getting in all kinds of scrapes. In fact although the horrors of drugs in recent years seem appalling emotionally it was the alcoholic years from 1995-1999 that were worse as I tried to live in normal society and I had the bitter loneliness of the alcoholic. Drugs promote social interaction to a degree and so it was a move forward from the lonely drink fuelled nights of madness of the 90's, when I was in and out of hospital every month from half baked suicide attempts.

My drinking was reaching proportions of self lobotomy again ' one day I was that crazed ' Rosalyn even stayed over as she said she'd never seen anything like it. I had gone mad she said and she even gave me half a bag, injected me to get me to calm down and help me get some sleep. Another blackout followed shortly after and with it a box of 100 or so co-proximal had disappeared ' had I taken them. How many days had passed? If I'd necked them I was in for a slow painful death from paraceatomal poisoning. I did feel totally ill, I got through 10 or so litres of filthy muck White Star ' alcohol and poison was seeping through open sores on my face and skin. Had I thrown them way? Or in a fit of drunken desperation taken the tablets? I limped down the local resource centre, where only as recently as a year ago I'd been on the Neighbourhood board committee to use their phone free of charge' I spoke to my drugs worker, he was saddened, "Let's just hope you haven't taken them all, Steve¦. "It's too late if you have though, it will just be a question of palliative care when you're liver starts failing.

I was frightened ' I wasn't sure if I had done the ultimate in stupidity, but anyway it was at this point I phoned admissions at the Grovelands. They gave me a date in September for another interview and day placement, my drugs worker was pleased, I phoned my mum and told her to. It was just a question of staying alive until I could get down there for interview.

My Mum came up to get me a couple of days later, it was just into August and I sold my PC for 2 white (rocks of crack) and 2 dark(heroin). The PC was actually on lease from the council I'd got it on a 'Build Your Own PC' course I'd done in 2001. I remember it was a heavy old thing lugging the monitor a mile down the St Ann's Chase and then going back for the base unit. It had lots of personal stuff on, photo's music I'd recorded and writings, very sad. It was the only material possession I still had left. The crack was gone in seconds and made me violently sick and I spent ages trying to get a dig in my arms ' I damaged a vein and my circulation went very bad in my right arm going almost completely numb. Eventually it kicked in and I gouched (went on the nod) out for about 30 minutes, my Mum wouldn't be arriving until about 8pm. I did the other bag at about 6pm to hold me. When my Mum arrived I was being sick still (the weeks of cider abuse making my withdrawals worse) so I convinced her to give me a fiver to by some Librium from an old alcoholic at the bottom of the block in the low-rise. He gave me about 10 (5mg tablets) which really wasn't enough, they were gone by the time I got back and I suppose on that night I slept quite soundly ' however it's day two when you get really ill coming off the gear. The next day I was in a terrible state, the bed sheets drenched and I was perversely both hot and cold together, deep kidney pains and mentally very foggy. I spoke to my drugs worker in Nottingham who kindly arranged for me to pick up some Morgadon and Valium (about 1 weeks worth) from a local GP who was very unfavourable to drug addicts generally - so I could get some sleep (in theory) and take the edge of the distress.

When I picked up the script I was so grateful, but sleep was to elude me now for getting on for almost 3 weeks. I'd double up on the Nitrazepam and Valium at bedtime (at most I'd pass out for a few minutes) looking at the clock to see no time at all had passed. Thankfully I had access to the internet and spent the evenings downloading random MP3's. At one point after a fortnight with no sleep my body literally packed in and went to sleep but my mind was switched on. Even so this was a blessing (just that 20 minutes or so respite seemed to revive me.)

It was much easier being in the West Midlands I had no connections for scoring and gave the majority of my money to my parents so it wasn't a temptation. I still plotted excess to go back to Nottingham to use, but my parents were wise to this now and stated I could only go under their supervision. My Dad (who didn't agree with me coming to their house) didn't speak to my Mum for 2 weeks when I got back and just cursed under his breath when I was in his presence it was very disturbing and I think my parents had to go through marriage counselling as a result. My Mum had gone against his express wishes and he saw this as an insult. It didn't add much to my feelings of vulnerability; coming off Heroin is like opening a floodgate of random emotions and for days I spent crying my eyes out. My Dad showed me nothing but contempt, (he'd tried his own way to assist and lay down the rules before, making the situation worse, now he was sick of trying). My money was given all to him in terms of rent and I had no money for Tobacco so I used to collect the dog-ends from his cigarettes to make roll-ups. He didn't once offer me a fag and demanded £80 a week rent which was basically all my benefits. My Nan gave me an odd tenner here and thee for fags, which kept me going. I also had a small stash of about £80 for a planned use up before I went to the Grovelands.

Things did gradually get better with my Mum and Dad. Eventually I managed to get some sleep, my Mum giving me Amitryptaline on top of spare Valium which helped. I went and saw a locum and told him about my admission to the Grovelands. Also, I explained the difficult situation caused by my lack of sleep and the impact this was having on my family.(in spite of this, actually I was very well behaved). He was sympathetic and gave me two weeks worth of Zopiclone (another sleeping drug) which again eased things. (Even with these drugs though I was probably averaging 4-5hours sleep per night.)

Soon it was going to be time for my second day placement ' I was dreading it, I knew that once part of Grovelands personal space and privacy wouldn't exist. Grovelands was like a huge goldfish bowl - a fishtank full of tortured souls and feelings all raw amplified from what I'd discerned on my day placement. The regime was so strict (up at six thirty am, bed at ten and full structured days, of groups, therapeutic activities and arduous work tasks). There wasn't much time to read, generally no access to television (although this wasn't a great shame to me) and sometimes even newspapers and contact with the outside world was banned. It was harder than prison and harsher than prison in some respects (although it was trying to achieve noble ends and teach difficult life skills and how dealing to with emotions), some clients on DTTO orders actually came and went took a look at the place, stayed for a few days and realised in horror what it was like and then got straight back on the phone to the prison service demanding to be taken straight back to their cosy life in a HMP.

The second day placement came and went and it was a totally different vibe. I was kept away from the Houses for the most part and taken down the farm on a glorious summer day. Angus the goose attacked me and I was shown around by a really affable and vivacious southerner called Pat Breecher. He was quite honest and told me he thought the place was a cult when he arrived, people standing on logs, playing bizarre games the like 'Animal Quackers' and 'Parish Priest', dancing in the morning to the morning tune! He spoke eloquently and as I was to get to know him very, very well later he really sold the place to me. The idea of some of the games seemed to me to smack of ritual humiliation, but he explained how he'd come to love them and that the Grovelands Community was about 'caring' and 'love', something I hadn't picked up on my first day placement. It was funny talking to Pat down on the farm though, every five minutes we'd have to move away or climb over the fence to prevent being totally ravaged by the marauding geese and goats. The gorgeous early September weather and the residents playing the pool, tanned and looking a million miles from what I'd left behind in St Ann's and the enthusiasm of some of the guys that had met me and remembered from the first day placement touched me too. "Glad you've seen sense and made it back, dude ' one said. "It's not all great here you know ' but you need to be here, we all do man¦ That was a guy called Graham Roberts; he was intelligent and had talked to me at length moaning about the lack of personal space on my first day placement. He clocked me as some kind of an intellectual and talked about books and how he had no time to read, but that he had won some awards for prison writing before arriving at the Grovelands. Again he was to become a very close friend of mine during my stay at the community and there after.

Rowan in admissions then saw me at about 12.30pm ' the interview was length and about issues in depth and my detailed account of my substance misuse history from Alcohol to Benzodiazepines to Smack and Crack. She said I looked so much healthier (the stay at my parents had done much to fortify me) and had some confidence back. I reflected on how ruined I must have appeared back in June, I even clocked the visitor's placement feedback to see one of the most negative assessments ever written about a prospective resident and felt ashamed. Pat was doing today's tho' and although I don't think he could really make out what I was about he'd taken a shine to me in some ways. The admissions department had spoken at length to my drug worker in Nottingham; he assured them that although I appeared quite meek and studious I was 'hardcore' in terms of lifestyle and addiction. The next stage was a big meeting on the next Wednesday when I'd get the decision on whether I could get admitted, my current presentation and interview performance meant that I'd managed to dispel the mental health myth which for a while had scuppered my chances of admission. The lengths I'd go to, I was the extremist's extremist in every respect of the word.

My parents, my drugs worker in Nottingham and family were over the moon when I finally got offered my place. It had been a long, awkward and winding journey from start to finish with many false dawns and promises along the way. To be honest deep down I was ambivalent in wanting to be totally free from drugs, but I knew that the long programme and intensity of the place, the brainwashing that was associated with the place and the miracle stories would give me a change to perhaps make up my mind in the programme. Of course I had my planned use up in Nottingham ' making some dodgy excuse to get something from my flat (which I was cleverly keeping on as a back door and to get compensation when it got knocked down). My Dad escorted me up there but then went for a lie down in which I scored two rocks and a bag of gear. I smoked them in a lock up garage at the bottom of the premises. It wasn't particularly memorable ' it was just like we hadn't had the change to say goodbye before properly.

I was still absolutely bricking it about going to the Grovelands, the whole concept was so scary, se I'd never been locked up before and was an arch libertarian in every sense ' so much of it offended my natural instincts and sensibilities. I knew that I didn't want to go back to the fear and illness in St Ann's ' that was flooding through my dreams in the form of nightmares still as my mind and body cleared the years of abuse.