Case study: Peter Cochrane
seemed logical at the time until the drugs and alcohol became the problem.
‘They were the most amazing people you would ever want to meet and what a shame we lose those people all the time. All they’re doing is medicating suffering, as everybody does in life to varying degrees.’
Michaela now works as a national policy officer with the Scottish Recovery Consortium supporting, representing and connecting people with lived experience.
Michaela said: ‘Addiction is about disconnection. You disconnect from everything, including yourself. You’re in such pain and you can’t get out of it.
‘In order for people to get well they need to be connected to other people. We are human beings, we’re not conditions. We tend to treat the presenting symptom not the underlying symptom. The underlying symptoms are loneliness and disconnection and we’re trying to find ways to feel better. Unless you show people how to feel better, they’ll keep doing the same things over and over again.
‘Stigma, especially in workplaces, leads to silence. We might be worried about someone in work but we’re too frightened to say anything, so these people end up in decline. And that is where stigma is dangerous, because we are ignoring something we know is happening.
‘I’d worked where I worked for 13 years, and I didn’t get any support. I was just made redundant and that very nearly killed me. I don’t blame my employer, but I blame a society that doesn’t know how to talk more openly about addiction.
‘I think if you can shift people’s perceptions of addiction, it could really change things. Show a bit of compassion, don’t walk away, speak to that person you’re concerned about. It’s about people who are suffering every day. I think people tend to be judged as groups, but when you speak to someone on a oneto-one basis, I think that stigma and judgement lessens.
‘To break stigma, you’ve got to see people as individuals with their own story. And taking time to understand that story can change lives.’
Peter Cochrane, 45, is in recovery from harmful drug use which spanned 29 years, coming off street drugs in May 2020, and then medication assisted treatment in November 2020.
Peter now works with Recovery Scotland (formerly ASC) – the service he said saved him. The charity facilitates Recovery Communities and provides further education and employment opportunities for people with lived experience.
As someone who has been both homeless and has held down full-time employment whilst in active drug use, Peter has shared his experience to highlight the stigma experienced in those two different environments.
Peter’s drug use started in his teenage years with cannabis, and progressed very quickly to cocaine then opiates, methadone, crystal meth and opium. Heroin followed in later in life and then cocaine and benzos followed. He was homeless by the time he was 16, and experienced periods of homelessness well into his 30s.
Peter said: ‘Looking back, I understand my addiction came about as part of a trauma response. I didn’t know how to cope with life, with feelings.
‘People think drug taking is a choice, and maybe in the beginning it was a choice, but when your thinking isn’t informed by consequences, that’s when things change.’
When he started to get stability and tried to carve a life out for himself, the amount of stigma he faced was at times overwhelming.
‘I was on maintenance medication for a long time, and when my employer found out I was on that medication, marched me out the door midshift and took my ID off me.
‘I’ve worked alongside people who have made snap judgements based on the grab and go headlines they’ve read in newspapers, not realising the ‘junkie’ that they were talking about was sitting right next to them. That kind of language was really isolating and made it very difficult for me to get help as I was terrified my employers would find out. When you try to access treatment and get help, people expect you to be chaotic, so when you turn up in a shirt and tie, they don’t know how to treat you. I was still chaotic, but because I was seen as ‘socially stable’ that actually made it harder to get help.’
He eventually got help from Recovery Scotland during lockdown when isolation forced him to connect via Zoom. He has now been working for Recovery Scotland for six months and is at university studying psychology.