A back injury at work led to a drug addiction which took over Tom’s life – and led him into homelessness.
With the help of The Wallich’s Drug and Alcohol Wellbeing Service, Tom is now living in his own place, in recovery and looking forward to the future.
READ HIS STORY
“Before I met The Wallich, I was using heroin and I was on methadone prescription every day.
I was homeless, living in a hotel in another town from my family that I didn’t grow up in. I didn’t know anyone there. My life was on pause.
And I was trying to stop, but I had no reason to do anything. I’d sort of given up at that point.”
FROM WORKPLACE INJURY TO HOMELESSNESS
“It started when I was working. I hurt my back and someone just gave me a strip of codeine tablets. And I loved the feeling. The next day my back was still hurting, and I asked for another tablet. And he said, I’ll bring a box in for you. So, I just started taking them, even when my back was all right.
And then I went from that to Tramadol and it just kept getting worse. Then I was buying oxycodone. And when I couldn’t get them, I was withdrawing and they were way more expensive than heroin, so I just ended up swapping over to heroin.
I couldn’t keep working because I couldn’t keep the money up with how much drugs I needed to not be sick – because of the physical withdrawal. And then I think it was a couple of weeks after that, I ran out of money, ran out of everything.
I went on to methadone, but it really didn’t help me that much, so I ended up just using on the side as well.
I think it was a month after Christmas, I was still living with my mum and dad. I overdosed and my mum found me on the kitchen floor, blue, and had to give me CPR.
It got to the point where my mum was just out of her depth. Obviously she didn’t want to kick me out, but she didn’t know what to do because I was taking money, stuff from the house, all sorts, police around. So she had to kick me out.
I rang the homeless helpline in Rhyl and they housed me in a shared accommodation house for two weeks. And then I had to go to a homeless hotel.”
READY FOR DETOX
“After about 3 months of just doing the same thing, it got to the point where I was like,
‘I’m just sat in a hotel room, going to the chemist every day, coming back, doing nothing, waiting to get a little bit of money from Universal Credit to buy some drugs that’ll last a few days.’ And I just kept doing it and I just got sick of it.
So I thought, I’ll actually just try and stop, I’ll just take my prescription and just give it a proper go for once.
And I started feeling better.
One of my support workers mentioned detox and Buvidal injection to get off the methadone. So I agreed to go.
I think it was a week before detox, Jess from The Wallich phoned me up. And she said, ‘We know you’re going into detox. We heard about what’s happening. Can we come and speak to you? Because we might have somewhere for you to live after you come out of detox.’
I was optimistic about detox, but I was scared. But once I spoke to Jess, I think it was about 15 minutes later, I had a phone call saying, ‘We’re going to give you the house’, and then I went to detox.
I thought, well, I’ll give it a good go.”
INTUITIVE RECOVERY
“The support workers, they’re amazing. There was a guy called Phil. He was the one who got me into the first intuitive recovery course.
The course tells you how your brain is begging for the drugs that you were taking.
It’s not like AA meetings, they never really worked for me. But intuitive recovery is a bit more like: you don’t have to be an addict for the rest of your life.
You can decide this is where you stop and you don’t have to be that forever, you don’t have to have that addict label. I just want to leave it in the past and this course was really good for that.
When I’d done this course, everything just sort of clicked. And that’s what started me off on thinking, right, I can actually do something if I give it a go.”
MOVING ON UP WITH THE WALLICH
“The Wallich has helped me by giving me support with housing.
They’ve pretty much set me up to start my life when I come out of detox. Like I’m not just coming into an empty house and having to rebuild it from the start.
I’m literally 10 minutes away from my parents’ house, when [before] I was in a completely different town, so I had no support around me.
I can text them anytime, I can text Jess anytime and get support. But because I can’t even see myself going back to how I was, I’ve not needed to ask for too much.”
FAMILY AND FUTURE
“I speak to my mum and dad daily. When I was in Rhyl using, it was like… once a week at best. And usually when I was reaching out to them, it was because I wanted money, something.
The things that I’ve done, put my family through, I think a lot of families would have just wiped their hands of me, to be honest, but they never gave up on me.
And now, we’ve never been closer. My mum and dad seem happy again. That’s all they wanted. They just wanted me to be all right.
I’m lucky.
I’m finishing off the Buvidal injection. I’m back in the gym. I used to train quite a lot, that keeps my mental health in check, and I just completely forgot about it, obviously, when I was using.
I’m just happy that I can actually wake up in the morning, do something with my day and not just wallow about and feel sorry for myself.
Just having my own place – going from living with my parents, using, to homeless, still using, and then all of a sudden I’ve got my own place and I’m free of addiction.
I thought I was going to be either dead or just using, going through the same cycle til I was like 50, and still homeless.”
OUR SERVICES
The Wallich offers drug and alcohol support across Conwy and Denbighshire, Flintshire and Wrexham.
This includes harm reduction advice and referral to mutual aid groups and treatment programmes.
You can contact the service directly to arrange a time to chat about your support needs.