It’s 11pm and in John Smith’s cold, desolate flat, he prepares his needle for injection. 
 

The unemployed 21-year-old couldn’t afford his heroin this time. He can’t even afford three meals a day. But he was able to steal £80 out of his mother’s purse earlier in the week. He knows it was wrong. He knows he shouldn’t have done it. But he couldn’t help it. 
 

John straps up his arm as tight as he can and he searches to find a vein along his pock-marked skin. This part is harder than it used to be, he says. 

He locates his entry point and injects the chamber into his blood. 
 

Then immediately, all of John’s pain - all of his torments that keep him up at night. All of his angst and grief and sorrows and sadness, fade away. He knows it will be short lived. He has been through this enough times. But that short burst of euphoria is all he needs. Because for that tiny segment of time, John feels happy. 
 

This is why John keeps doing it. This is why he can’t stop. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Three years ago, John was a young, happy, promising student from Leicester - a boy with top grades who according to his teachers, his parents, and all of his friends, had the brightest of bright futures. Today, he is drowning in the depths of drug addiction. 
 

He didn’t choose this life. Few addicts do. But from three years of emotional torment, tears, grim experiences and slow, tentative, steps into his new world, John sees no way of turning back now. 
 

“Back then everything seemed so clear,” says John. “I had just left school and I was ready for my fresh start. 
 

“I didn’t have the easiest time at school. I was constantly picked on, constantly belittled, so this new start is what I needed. I thought to myself that in this new chapter of my life, I could be anybody that I wanted to be. 
 

“But what I have become is nothing short of embarrassing. My mum thinks I’m a disgrace. My dad says I’m a disappointment. And to be honest, they’re not wrong,” he says, with a shaky quiver in his voice. 
 

People like John don’t automatically end up in his position. It’s a slow and painful process. It’s a messy mosaic of blame and fear that has ruined not only John’s life - but the people who have cared for him and loved him. 
 

“I had never done drugs before I left school. But it didn’t take long until I was introduced to them. I was offered some marijuana at a party on the outskirts of Leicester. The minute I tried it, I knew what my life had been missing,” says John. 
 

“My world went from black and white to technicolour. I felt alive. 

“So, I kept doing it. And I didn’t stop. 
 

“It’s a very easy hole to slip into. Smoking pot almost became part of my routine. It started being the part of the day that I looked forward to. Then it started being the only part of my day that mattered. 
 

“But I wanted more. I needed more. So I started experimenting with other drugs,” says John, while he bites his blunt, blackened fingernails. 

For John, marijuana was the gateway for a whole new kind of euphoria. Pot turned into ketamine. Ketamine was a colourful diversion before cocaine. Cocaine led to methamphetamines, and methamphetamines was just a sidestep to heroin. In three years, John had managed to do the whole pantheon of illicit substances.

 

“I just wanted to fill that hole in my life. When weed could no longer do that for

me, I needed something stronger. But the more drugs I did, the bigger that hole

got. By the time I tried heroin, I was trying to fill a hole that couldn’t be covered. 
 

“But it does the job. Heroin isn’t like the other drugs. It makes you realise what

living really is. If weed lets me see the world in colour, heroin is like you can

smell that colour - like you can feel it. You feel like a god. You feel indestructible. 
 

“Until it slowly wears off. And you gradually come back to reality. And then you

realise you are just in your cold flat, alone, miserable, waiting for that next hit.

Waiting to feel indestructible again,” says John, as he scratches his arm with his

broken nails. 
 

It’s disturbing to see the effects of John’s hideous addiction to his body. He constantly looks frail and fragile, like there is a crushing weight on his shoulders. He looks tired. He looks pale. His skin is dry and covered in scratches and needle punctures. His teeth are yellow and grinded.

His flat looks like it has been raided. There are pots and pans that are piled up in the corner. His room is dark and dingy, and smells equally of marijuana and bins that haven’t been taken out in weeks. 
 

But his hands are what stand out the most. They look like he has done a lifetime’s work of manual labour. They’re covered in open wounds and dried scabs, and the skin looks like tarnished leather. His nails are fractured and wisened and blackened. John’s hands perfectly reflect his life - gritty and grim. 
 

“I have asked for help before. I asked my family to help me through this. But they have no sympathy. They told me to go home, have a cup of tea, and rethink my life choices,” he says. 
 

But a cup of tea doesn’t fix John’s situation. 
 

“I am now in £400 debt and I am trying to do better. I want to get my life back together, and I believe I can do it,” he says. 

“I just want to be happy again.” 
 

But John sees no way of being happy without his heroin. This is why he keeps doing it. This is why he can’t stop.