I met some colourful characters, but it was mainly middle-aged alcoholics from the home counties. I would spend the next 28 days with 25 or so other patients, each on their own seven-, 14- or 28-day journeys. Like most rehabs, this one enforced abstinence. “I have,” I replied.īefore my mum left, I asked: “Do you think I’ll be allowed a glass of wine with dinner?” The answer was no. “Have you ever injected?” the doctor asked. Checking in, I became aware that my situation was becoming pathologised. But I was not in the mood for a jolly meal. My mum suggested we stop in Chichester for lunch. On the way to the clinic, I had the distinct feeling of being driven to my own funeral.

If I have a disease, why do I have to admit it? Photograph: Jon Tonks/The Guardian A privilege, I know but one I have to pay back. My parents arranged a “soft loan” from an extended family member. I had an en suite room, and didn’t have to share a dorm. I was desperate, so I chose a small facility at the bottom end of the scale, at £13,000. Running through my options, she said it would cost between £10,000 and £28,000 for a month’s stay. Encouraged by my despairing family, I picked up the phone.Ī woman answered. When someone finally suggested I might go to the Priory rehab clinic, I was all ears. This triggered a return to using crystal meth as an analgesic, and bouts of severe paranoia. I tried to detox at home, but found myself sobbing, feeling as if I was falling apart. I was dependent on Valium it helped me carry on functioning, at least for a while. Before long, I was in the car outside the local drug recovery service, curled up in a ball, my face pressed against the window. Now, aged 29, I had made a decision to move back in with my family – temporarily, I assured myself – in order to clean up.

What started off as a bit of misguided fun very quickly got out of hand. It has ripped through the gay scene, where it is used in conjunction with sex, in an epidemic known as “ chemsex”. Now I was told the root of my problems was my own moral failingsīut crystal meth was to prove my nemesis. I had started drinking, then taking recreational drugs with friends to numb the pain I felt as my parents went through a divorce, and the confusion I experienced around being gay. Signed off work, with my hand in a cast, and tending to a set of difficult emotions, I turned to a coping mechanism I had discovered when I was 15. There was a painful breakup, a redundancy. The events that led me to rehab are hazy. My life had fallen apart so dramatically over the course of the previous year that I was in desperate need of any solution. On check-in, I was told I have a disease that’s progressive, fatal and incurable, and that I have a one in three chance of dying from it.

Powerless over my addiction