How Havilah helped save three people from a life of addiction

CHARLIE SMITH

A reformed Dundee alcoholic and heroin user, Charlie is brutally honest about what Arbroath’s Havilah project has done for him.

“This place saved my life,” he says. “I’d have been dead years ago if it wasn’t for Tracey and everybody that helps me here.”

Originally from St Mary’s, Charlie, 47, was put into care at the age of six months because his parents couldn’t cope.

An alcoholic in the city for 20 years, he became hooked on heroin when he moved to Arbroath from Dundee seven years ago.

As a drug addict for four years, he and his partner, who he met at a rehab session, would shoplift prolifically to feed their £90 a day drug habit.

He became a regular in court. Sentenced to “plenty of fines and community service”, he retains pride that he was never sent to jail.

However, Charlie, who has now been clean for three years, says his wake-up call came the day his criminal justice worker predicted she’d find him dead on his couch one day.

“You have to get it right up here,” he says tapping his temple. “If you don’t want to come off you never will.”

Charlie, who now works in a recycling job at Abbey Fruits, recalls that at one point he was banned from every shop in Arbroath.

So when he came off drugs, and determined to turn his life around for good, he wrote letters to the managers of every shop in the town pleading with them to let him in again.

“The only one that got back to me was Morrisons – so I now shop there,” he says.

Charlie says the most important thing about Havilah is “they don’t judge you”, allowing clients to build up “complete trust” with the volunteers.

However, he still worries about the wider drugs problems in Arbroath and towns like it.

“There’s absolutely nothing for people to do – especially if you are on the ‘broo’ and someone comes along one day and says ‘try this’ and before you know, you are hooked.”

JOHN OHREN

John is proving to be a rather nifty pool player – even with only one leg.

The 30-year-old from Arbroath is still coming to terms with the amputation of his right leg in May due to drug abuse.

“I injected into my leg and it got an infection in it, “he explains. “I was delirious for a couple of days and was told it could spread to my kidneys.

“The doctors at Ninewells did a brilliant job taking my leg off. But I don’t think it’s really sunk in yet that I’ve lost it.”

John has been visiting the project for most of its existence. He first got into drugs in 2004, citing the trigger as a period when the authorities stopped him from seeing his son, among other issues at the time.

He has been in and out of rehab ever since, spending various periods clean.

John hopes to get a prosthetic limb fitted at some point but adds, with a laugh: “I’m taking life one step at a time.

“I started coming in here because it gave me somewhere to go to get out the house. They didn’t judge me and was a nice place to go,” he adds.

“Coming here is my one steady thing.”

TONI SIMPSON

Toni, who turns 27 tomorrow, is visibly shaking when I’m introduced to her.

It’s not nerves but the effects of long term heroin addiction and the methadone she is taking as a substitute.

Born and raised in Arbroath, Toni says she came from a “good family”.

However, she made “one mistake” when she was 17 and became hooked on the drug.

“I think it was just the people I was around,” she says, explaining how she dropped out of a hairdressing course at Angus College.

“I started smoking it. That led to injecting and I became hooked. That was it. If I could speak to my 17-year-old self I would say ‘Don’t do it. Just don’t do it…”.

Toni fed her “at least £10 per day” habit through shoplifting and spent time on remand at Cornton Vale.

Ironically, she believes jail was a positive step as it gave her a taste of structure.

“Life on the outside was that chaotic, the jail was structured even for that small amount of time,” she says.

She has been visiting the Havilah project most days for seven years. Most importantly it gives her “something to go out to do,” she explains.

“I also like it because no one judges you. Everyone in here is welcoming and friendly to everyone.”

This place has saved my life. I’d have been dead years ago