My fight against heroin

Standing in a studio filming a scene for a television show, or casting for a big budget film, I suddenly feel the buzz of a life that five years ago I would never have imagined possible.

I never thought I would be appearing in a Channel 4 TV series or casting a film as prestigious as Young Adam, starring Ewan McGregor. Modelling, acting, casting - these weren't jobs for people like me. Surely I was going to die in a stinking toilet with a syringe in my hand.

I first found heroin at the age of 15 when I was living at home with my parents in the Govanhill district of Glasgow, near the Gorbals. I went looking for it. I'd started off taking softer drugs with my friends, but was always on the search for new, more powerful thrills. Most of the people I went to school with were addicts. The first time I took heroin I was totally hooked. Very soon, my life became a cycle of getting drugs, then getting stoned to alter the physical condition of being strung out, and then needing more heroin. Every hit was going to be my last. I'd throw away syringes and tell the dealers not to serve me, then wake up the next day withdrawing.

My family was devastated. My mother was a home help, my father a builder. There were times when they found syringes around the house and the police would turn up to interview me. It broke their hearts. The guilt would inspire me to stay away from drugs for a couple of months, so I'd concentrate instead on heavy drinking and chasing after girls. I didn't have much success because as soon as nice girls realised the truth about my lifestyle, the party was over. I alienated myself from all the people I was close to.

My regular appearances before a court in Glasgow for petty theft - committed in order to fund my drug habit - eventually left the judge with no alternative but to give me a custodial sentence. This was the big one. I was going to be put away for a year. At the time I actually thought: "I'm exhausted. A year in jail away from Govanhill will do me fine.' But the lawyer intervened, and I was given the option of going into rehab for a year in Cardross in Strathclyde.

The first month was spent in a detox unit. The centre was run like a family home and, as you got stronger, you were given more tasks and responsibilities around the house. By the end, I was going to the cinema unchaperoned and able to reconnect with my family. I did get attached to the place but was aware that it wasn't a normal living for a 20-year-old kid. It was a bridge to real life, and I left heroin free.

I was now 21, and went travelling around Europe with money my parents had saved, supplementing it with the odd stints working as a waiter. I met a really nice girl and tried to grab a slice of happiness.

I became scrupulously honest. I remember other waiters asking me how much I stole in tips in a week, and I had the audacity to be shocked. But while visiting Milan I was spotted by a model-agency scout and came back to London to sign up with the Select agency. It was then that my problems started again. Modelling brought out all my insecurities: "OK, so I'm a model now with a big agency, but everybody looks good except me."

I think I disliked myself more as a model than as a heroin addict. For four years I was hooked on the huge fees, international travel and glamour of it all. I would drink insanely, binge on cocaine and ecstasy, but I kept away from heroin. I had a job, I wasn't stealing, I thought I was fine.

It was while modelling that I became interested in acting and I managed to get a place on a drama course at the Royal Scottish Academy in Glasgow for three years. But it only showed me how emotionally immature and insensitive I was. I felt I had to project some phoney image that I was smart and switched on, and the pressure of this, once I was back in London, led to even heavier drinking binges, culminating in me going back and scoring heroin. I could never escape the feeling that the drug would make my problems go away.

This time it was more horrific than ever. I was 28 and definitely not tough enough to be in the hostile environments that I had to be in to score the drugs. My days were full of fear. It was very humbling, I ended up back at my mum's in Glasgow, shooting up in my old bedroom, only this time surrounded by self-help books.

When the modelling money ran out, I didn't know what to do, but was determined not to return to a life of crime to fund my habit. I was probably the only junkie in the Gorbals with a sense of karmic retribution. An ex-girlfriend got me on a methadone programme and I joked that I'd gone to drama school to be a method actor, not a methadone actor.

The methadone calmed me down and, although the quality of my life was abysmal, I'd sit in churches and pray. My ex then brought me down to London and gradually reduced the amount of methadone I was on until I was able to detox in Clouds House, a rehab clinic in Wiltshire, for six weeks.

She also told me about this alternative treatment called the Metamorphic Technique that took place at something called the Life Centre in west London. The name really resonated, and I thought, "yeah, give me some of that". I phoned in early January and they couldn't give me an appointment until the end of March. I didn't even know if there was going to be a tomorrow, let alone another three months down the line. Over the months I looked at the practitioner's name on the calendar and it was the maddest feeling, because this was the first thing in my life I wanted to commit to and was excited about.

And believe me, I'd tried everything - shiatsu, acupuncture, meditating in my living room listening to Buddhist chants with Jaffa cakes over my eyes - but nothing worked.

Although I had been going to auditions since graduating from drama school, I was only going through the motions. When you are a drug addict you hand your spirit and focus over to the drugs. How could I shine and give of myself when I was constantly relapsing? It was no surprise that I wasn't getting the parts.

My last relapse was especially unbearable. It was like dragging a razor down my central nervous system. The escape I hoped the drug would provide just wasn't there.

Finally the date on the calendar came round and I turned up at the Life Centre having been clean for three days. I still don't know exactly how the Metamorphic Technique works, apart from the fact that it transformed me. The theory is that trauma is held within the body on a cellular level and these blockages are released by a fully qualified practitioner gently working on the spinal reflexes of the feet, hands and head. It helps you rid yourself of emotional baggage and patterns of behaviour that lurk within. You lie on a couch for an hour - you don't have to talk - while the practitioner strokes and taps the problem areas.

It is incredible, but since the first session, I have never taken heroin again. I had weekly sessions for many months and now occasionally return for a top-up, but I haven't touched drugs or drink for nearly five years.

Before I had the Metamorphic Technique, I'd go for auditions and meetings and think: "Why on earth would they choose me?" Now my attitude is: "Why not me? I'm clean, I'm clear, I work hard." As a result, I have now built up an amazing career. I started off getting small parts, and then became interested in the casting side of the business, too. It has changed me from someone who was fearful of life to someone who's embracing it. And if I can inspire anyone to change their life, then nothing I've been through has been in vain. Ever since I first took heroin more than 20 years ago, all I've ever wanted out of life is to be clean. Now, everything else is a bonus.

? Des Hamilton was talking to Anna Pasternak. He appears in The Book Group on Channel 4 tonight at 9.30.