Hello, my name is Elliott, I am a recovering alcohol and cocaine addict.
I began life as any normal teenager and experimented with substances (mind altering chemicals/drugs) and found they took me away from my problems. I naturally started to use them more and went onto harder stuff – cocaine. I got involved in a life of football violence and the criminal world. I found that using drugs and being part of a firm gave me a sense of control, and I liked it as I’d always associated “vulnerability” with pain.
My dad had left when I was 13 and my mum would say horrible things to us as children about how our dad didn’t love us. I felt abandoned, hurt, unloved, unwanted. This life I had with drugs took me away from the pain of not being wanted by either my dad or mum, as I felt at the time. Then in my early 20s I joined the British Army and that too was a very cruel and violent place to grow up in.
However, I felt at home here as this was all I knew of men, and I’d been taught by my uncle and the firm that if I wanted something just to take it and if I couldn’t then to take it with force/intimidation. I was a very very angry young man and I saw things on my tour over in Afghanistan that still haunt me today. I used cocaine whilst in the forces and was picked up on a cdt, and dishonourably discharged. When I came out of the army I went back to crime, and so it continued like this for quite some time.
Then I had my daughter, and i thought that would change me and for a while (1 year) it seemed to be working. I was very unhappy with my daughter’s mum, and our relationship became toxic as we were both using alcohol and cocaine. I left the family home and decided that I would start up on my own two feet, and rid this disease once and for all. I gave birth to a new construction company which I witnessed grow over a six year period into a group of companies – but it was not to be tho. As my revenue went up, so did my expenditure along with my habit. As I got into the last 2 years of running these entities I’d developed a £5,500 a month habit on cocaine and alcohol, going from visits to the Shard in London, to extravagant parties and hotels to hiring Lamborghinis. Then one night I was on my own and I looked up to the sky in my car and said please help me, “I cant do this anymore!!!”.
I had been given the “gift of desperation” and I rang a rehab centre in Oxford to admit myself. They said we can fit you in, in 2 weeks time? I said NO, please you don’t understand I need to come in now, I can’t handle this anymore. So today I am a little over a year in sobriety and have relapsed twice since the 3rd April last year, Iam today (as I write this) 83 days clean and sober and am working a programme whilst trying to help as many people around with my vlogs as I can.
I’m extremely passionate about helping people and saving lives. Thank you for letting me share my story xx
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