Pastor writes on how feeling unwelcome at top school lead him to methadone addiction before turning life around

I GREW up in Easterhouse and won a scholarship to fee-paying Hutchesons Grammar in Glasgow.

It seemed a good opportunity but I was like a fish out of water there. The truth is my parents couldn’t afford the books and I stopped going to classes.

The drugs and gangs started at 14. I ended up on methadone at the age of 22.

I couldn’t believe my luck. If I said the right words to the doctor I could get free drugs.

I stopped taking methadone within a few months but I kept collecting and selling it because there was a brisk black market.

A few years later, I was on methadone again and insisted on detoxing with it.

Every day I’d collect my script at Easterhouse Health Centre and by this time you had to take it in front of the pharmacist.

At that point, I had been on drugs for about 10 years and EVERY waking thought was about my next fix.

My 9.30am daily appointment just became my next fix.

My life changed through an organisation who used to sit outside the needle exchange at the health centre. Teen Challenge offered a hope worth fighting for and the “tools” to deal with life’s issues.

I went to a Christian rehab in 1997, six days after I had a gun put in my back by gangsters who accused me of stealing.

My experience with Teen Challenge involved me embracing the Bible. I know that can be off-putting for some people but it really did give me something in my life when I had no direction, no grounding.

I got support after I gave up the prescription and that was long term, so I didn’t relapse.

In 2001, I got married and was working full time and enjoying life. Dark times held no fear as I had a hope to get me through and the coping mechanisms and life skills to deal with them.

In 2009, we moved back to Scotland where we helped out at Teen Challenge and the Haven Kilmacolm. In 2011, I started a church (part of Assemblies of God) in the Easterhouse shopping centre I spent most of my life in.

I was sick of seeing friends die. Many old friends are still dying today due to the ongoing health consequences of drug abuse.

We are hoping within the next few weeks to bring the Teen Challenge bus to Easterhouse.

For me, the drug craving was replaced by faith, something to build a life around.

I think a major problem with methadone programmes is that they focus so much on the drug that is ruling the users’ lives and install nothing to replace drugs as a key focus.

I turned my life around. My beautiful wife Tracy is a nurse and my three girls do not need to grow up in a home full of addiction and all it brings.

There is hope.