I first picked up a drink when I was about nine. I remember pestering my mum to give me a drink. Drinking alcohol was very normal in my family and me and my brother were given alcohol when we were young, I was also told that my dummy used to get dipped into alcohol. My grandmother used to say it made a child strong.

I then progressed to cigarettes, drinking and smoking weed with friends. When I was about 23, I started smoking crack cocaine. Things went down really quickly, and in the end I lost my son. He was taken from me by social services when he was five. I would leave him at my mum’s on many occasions and would go off for weeks on end. On one occasion I left him and my mother called social services to come and get him. She thought she was helping me, but actually it got worse. I then started to visit crack houses on a regular basis.

Things really got bad, really desperate. I started doing things I thought I’d never do. I carried a lot of shame when I first went into treatment due to this. I hurt a lot of people, but most of all I hurt myself and my son. I had a few prison sentences back to back, all to fund my drug use. I nearly killed someone due to being really high.

I remember one day waking up in a crack house clucking off heroin, broken. I had run out of resources, in fact, I was so tired, both physically and mentally. I remember sitting in a park and a man going past asking me if I was alright and me saying ‘no I’m not alright’. He happened to be a drug worker and he invited me to visit him at his office to discuss my problem.

With his help, I decided to go to detox. I had to ring every day for two weeks to see if they had a bed and I remember one day them saying they have a bed and being unsure whether to go in. However, I remember looking around the crack house at that time and there was a person injecting in the neck and a person suffering with paranoia, looking out the window thinking the police were coming to raid the house.

Detox was really hard, people used to just walk out after one or two nights, and there was a part of me that wanted to leave too and use, but I didn’t as the thought of being with my son was overwhelming and strong.

I feel strongly today that God helped me through this, and put people in my path as I don’t believe I could have done it on my own. I realised, with the help of staff in the detox centre, that detox was not enough for me and I decided to go off to a treatment centre in Bournemouth. I stayed for six weeks and learnt a lot about myself. However, in the back of my mind was an old breach of licence charge that was not going away. The staff at the treatment centre said I could stay but all I heard in the fellowship meetings was it’s about being honest.

I decided to hand myself in and had to serve an eight-month sentence. I remember feeling scared, and I felt that I needed to finish my treatment so I decided to go on the RAPt course in HMP Send. Initially, I found it difficult, especially with the connection I had made with the treatment centre in Bournemouth. I really missed the friends I had made. I was put on a seven-day lay-down due to running on self-will and not engaging with the programme, but the staff on RAPt never gave up on me. They believed in me. My counsellor was very special and if it wasn’t for her I would not be here today. The staff team at HMP Send loved me back to health.

I came out of prison and done a couple of counselling courses and went and got some voluntary work in a treatment centre. After three months of voluntary work, I got offered a job.

I’m currently in my third year of university doing a degree in addictions counselling. I also work as a support worker at weekends, and I’m a volunteer for the Princes Trust, where I go into the prison as an ex-offender supporting offenders. It’s an amazing programme because I remember when I was in prison I used to have good intentions when I got out not to use drugs, and go straight to my mum’s house to see my son, and I’d end up drunk on the train on the way home. The one-to-one project aims to support young offenders when they’re most vulnerable in or out of prison.

From a hopeless crackhead, who lived in crack houses, I am now a productive member of society. RAPt helped to save my life. Without them, I don’t think I’d be here today.


Sonia Bailey