Saving heroin addict’s life and reading Trainspotting set me on the write road
THE first moment that changed Graeme Armstrong’s life was when, aged 16, he had to fight to save a drug addict who was dying from an overdose.
The second was a few months later when he was handed a copy of Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting.
Having spent his youth in a tough Airdrie housing scheme, fighting in gangs, drinking Buckfast and taking drugs, it was only when he was faced with the horrific endgame of that lifestyle that he wanted to escape. And when he read the novel, he realised how he was going to do it.
Now 28, and hundreds of thousands of words later, Graeme’s dream has come true as his first novel – published by Picador – hits the shelves as one of the most eagerly anticipated titles of the year.
The Young Team is all about the world he grew up in, of drinking tonic wine, then rattling the empty bottles off
Thanks to being inspired by Irvine Welsh’s iconic novel, Graeme Armstrong left behind a world of drugs, drink and violence to launch a new career as an author
the bodies of rival gangs and taking drugs every day.
Raised by a hard-working single mum after his dad died, Graeme rejected his solid upbringing in favour of gang culture, drink and drugs.
He joined local gang the Glenmavis Young Team. Graeme, back in Airdrie after time in Stirling and London, said: “This is quite a violent place. There’s lots of it around you.
“I started fairly young, about 13 or 14, and was fighting all the time. When I was 16, three of our extended circle died of a heroin overdose in a year and I got seriously assaulted and bottled.
“I wasn’t scarred but I had friends who were left really badly scarred, so I was counting my blessings that I’d seen all these drug deaths and my face wasn’t cut to ribbons.”
His own drug taking extended to cannabis and later ecstasy and valium. But another man’s heroin overdose was the worst thing he’d ever seen.
He said: “This guy had taken heroin without us knowing and I went in and he was blue. I checked his pulse and he was alive so I ran out to the hall and the phone was dead. His best friend had pulled the cord out of the wall and said, ‘No ambulances here, wee man’. I threatened the guy and said, ‘If you don’t f***ing put the phone cable back in, I’m gonnae punch f*** out of you.’
“His other friend then assaulted him when he found out he did that, so there’s two guys in their 20s fighting, their friend in there lying dying and I’m 16 and running about in the middle of all this trying to get the paramedics in. I saved the guy.”
After being encouraged to stay on at school because there
were no jobs, Graeme, who had always been described as bright but troublemaking and been expelled from his first high school, stuck in and was handed a book that would change his life.
He said: “One of the first tasks in English was a book report and this girl next to me said, ‘Why don’t you do Trainspotting, you’d be into that.’ I said, ‘F***, I didn’t even know that was a book.’
“It saved my life. That was the lightbulb moment. It spoke to me and I started telling people I was going to go to university to study English, which was met with healthy scepticism because I’d been expelled from high school and they said, ‘Aye, right’.“
Graeme went to Stirling University but his drug habit got in the way of study. He went from gang kid to wild, pilled-up raver.
Finally, on Christmas Day 2012, he’d had enough and went cold turkey and started writing.
Within months, the first draft was done and his lecturers were impressed, signing him up for a Masters in creative writing.
He was mentored by acclaimed author Janice Galloway, who loved his story and his personality. After graduating, he got a job selling cars, moved to London, then back but just kept writing and re-writing and “carpet bombing” agents and publishers.
One clicked and his book is being compared to the title which changed his life. He said: “I’m very much obliged to even be mentioned in the same breath.”
● The Young Team is out now and Graeme will be speaking at the Aye Write Festival, Glasgow, March 12 and Airdrie Library on April 23.
Trainspotting saved my life. That was the lightbulb moment GRAEME ARMSTRONG ON WRITING CAREER