It could have been me. I lost everything

Jardine Simpson should have been in the prime of his life and enjoying the rewards of a legal career.

Instead, at the age of 41, he was a suicidal wreck, his life broken by an addiction to drink and drugs.

He knows he could all too easily have become another statistic as a death of despair as his life spiralled downwards.

“I was at the stage where I didn’t want to live but I didn’t want to die either,” he says. “That is a terrible place to be when the future used to look so promising.”

Jardine, now 52, was raised in a middle-class home in Glasgow. His parents were teachers and his sister became a headmistress.

Jardine did well at school and went on to study law at Glasgow University.

But, in his twenties, his world started spiralling downwards because of an addiction to drugs and alcohol that was ignited with his first taste of alcohol at 12.

“At the weekends and in the evenings I was hanging around with some bad boys,” he says.

“I was soon on cannabis, speed, LSD and cocaine.”

Jardine left university before he was thrown out but found it difficult to hold down a job.

“By the time I was in my thirties I was smoking heroin.”

His relationship with his partner foundered and he was only allowed to see their son at weekends if he was sober.

It was the shame of his 11-year-old son watching him breakfasting on Valium and vodka that led Jardine to see sense.

“I was suicidal but didn’t have the courage to carry it through,” he says.

Jardine entered a recovery programme at Castle Craig Hospital in the Borders.

For the past 11 years he has helped others overcome their addictions and is now chief executive of the Scottish Recovery Consortium, based in Glasgow.

“The number of middle-aged people in trouble because of drink and drugs doesn’t surprise me,” he says. “When you realise what a mess you’ve made of things it is not easy to find a road back. I am living proof it can be done.”