My crack crusade

When I was at my lowest point - I was a total mess, in complete despair with a £120-a day heroin and crack habit which meant that I was in and out of prison - I would never have believed it if someone had told me what I would be doing today: using my experiences on drugs to turn around the lives of young kids. Today, my charity, Energy and Vision, has a turnover of £250,000 and a full-time staff of eight. We lecture at schools such as Mill Hill in north London and Reeds School in Cobham, public schools and comprehensives in inner cities all over Britain, as well as all over Europe.

At the moment we are working in Camden with children, some as young as 10-years-old, who have been excluded from school and identified as either users, or very, very vulnerable.

At the age of 16, I was living in a shared house in Oxford with a group of friends. Everyone was doing drugs, and everyone financed their habit by shoplifting and stealing from cars. One day I came home and my mates were all smoking heroin off tinfoil, chasing the dragon. I didn't think anything of it because I thought addicts only injected. I asked if I could try it. In one moment, all my problems no longer existed. Just a warm, content feeling. Bliss.

I first started taking crack just after I started using heroin - it makes you feel really powerful but the high only lasts for about 10 minutes, so you need more and more. It's a killer. Before I knew it, I was taking heroin and crack all day, every day. I didn't shave, I didn't wash. I ended up financing my habit with more crime. I felt guilty, hurt and abandoned.

I grew up in Southend in a nice, middle-class home - dad was an entrepreneur - but my parents never really got on. I took on quite a bit of emotional responsibility for my younger brother, Lloyd, and my sister, Samantha. It was when we moved to Lincolnshire when I was 11 that things started to go wrong. I was a streetwise young Essex boy who didn't really fit in. My schoolwork started to go downhill and eventually I was expelled for assaulting the deputy head.

I'd begun to hang out with a group of boys who also had problems. I'd first tried softer drugs - cannabis and ecstasy - when I was 12. It was peer pressure, really, and an escape from my problems. Friends would say: "Have a smoke and it will make you feel all right." And it did. I moved on to speed, cocaine, magic mushrooms and LSD, and then I started dealing - I would do anything to make money. There were a lot of difficulties at home by this time - dad had moved out, Mum moved in with her boyfriend - and so I left home at the age of 15.

I ended up in Reading jail aged 18 for possession of class-A drugs, fraud and actual bodily harm. I had to go cold turkey, which was a nightmare. I really believed I was dying. I was determined not to go back to being a user when I got out, but within a week I was back on heroin and crack. Things went from bad to worse and at times I considered suicide. I knew I had a brain and that I shouldn't be living like this but I felt trapped. I'd lost touch with my family. I was completely alone.

Eventually, I was arrested again and it was while waiting for my brief at the police station that I read a poster about breaking the cycle of addiction. I saw a way out. I ended up getting into a programme at the Ley Rehabilitation Centre in Oxford. I really wanted to change. I was released after 15 months, totally clean and totally straight.

It was while working as a builder that I was asked by a friend who is a teacher to talk to the children at his school about drugs. It was amazing. I was scared stiff but, because my experiences were so fresh and raw, I could talk about the dangers of drugs - about my friends dying, what it really feels like - with amazing honesty. The kids were really affected by it.

It was then that I realised the only way to get the message across to kids was for those whose lives had been really affected by drugs, and who had come through it, to stand up and do something. I teamed up with a friend, Paul McCabe, whom I had met in rehab, and we set up Energy and Vision, a charity which would show kids what life on drugs is really like; we wanted to rub their noses in it.

Prison is the only place you are going if you use drugs, so we feel it's important to take children into prisons, let them talk to addicts, see how they live, really ground-breaking stuff. The kids ask if they miss family and friends, about how lonely it must feel and if they ever get raped. There is no skirting the issues. They go through the whole process from entering the front door, being confined in a holding cell, and are even shown where the prisoners are strip-searched.

We take them to meet the police, the drug squad, the dog handlers; by teaching them about the job the police have to do, we try to break down barriers. At first the kids try to be cool but soon they go very quiet and really listen; many of them seem to go into shock.

Children really sit up and listen if they know they are hearing about drugs from someone who has been a user and not from someone who is just reciting from a script or has a qualification.

That's what makes our work unique. Last year we talked to more than 20,000 young people, many of whom were on the brink.

We've recently started taking them to the Karmaa Holistic Centre in Camden to learn about how important it is to have a spiritual centre. They learn to meditate, practise yoga, do pilates, kick box, eat healthily - basically to challenge and manage their emotions. This all helps them channel their aggression and shows them that they can have a good time by doing something positive.

I've now built up a relationship with my family again. They are really proud of what I have done. I guess I've turned my life full cycle.

And I'm lucky I got out. One day I should like kids and I hope they would be able to make an informed decision about drugs. That's what it's all about.

Energy and Vision, Peregrine House, 19 Banbury Road, Kidlington, Oxfordshire OX5 1AQ. Tel: 01865 849800, website www.energyandvision.org.