EXCLUSIVE: Offshore bosses among 200 North East addicts

Northsound's revealing offshore bosses, doctors, and lawyers are among 200-North East addicts getting help from Narcotics Anonymous.

The group runs 15-meetings across the region every week at venues including Aberdeen Maternity Hospital and Grampian Prison.

Cornhill resident Hannah is exclusively telling Northsound how the 27-year-old hit rock bottom before seeking support.

"I went from a child to a drug addict" - HANNAH, 27

She told us: "I struggled a lot in school. I struggled a lot getting accepted. I struggled a lot making friends. I was very confused and angry. I kind of felt like a social outcast. I think I started taking drugs at about 13. Straight away I got accepted into a group of people.

"I'm confronted with my past on a daily basis because for 13-years drugs robbed me of everything. I went from a child to a drug addict. I didn't do the teenage years, the adult years.

"I pushed everybody away from me who actually cared about me, because drugs were so powerful in my life. I was left with these individuals who didn't care for me, but it was better than being by myself.

"It brought me nothing but misery, pain, confusion, hurt - no control over my life whatsoever, and just a real inability to succeed in any area of my life because drugs had such a power over me.

"You tell yourself: 'I need this piece of cannabis to get me to sleep tonight. I need this piece of cannabis to relax me. I need this piece of heroin because I'm having physical withdrawal from it. Drugs consume every thought process of your mind.

"A lot of people think that they don't have a problem with drugs because they work full time, they maybe have a family, they maybe have a nice car in their driveway, they have a mortgage, but if that drug consumes your thought process then maybe you have a drug problem.

"Drugs have caused me to sell my body, they've caused me to sleep on the streets" - HANNAH, 27

"Drugs have caused me to be homeless, they've caused me to cut ties with my family, they've caused me to sell my body, they've caused me to sleep on the streets.

"It robs absolutely everything from you. You don't want to live anymore. I had many suicide attempts, and many stays at a mental institution just feeling completely lost and out of control. I thought that I was going to die a drug addict.

"The lowest point of my life was just before I got into recovery when I was sitting in my flat that I live in now. I had no curtains, I had no furniture, I had no gas, I had no electric. I was sitting in a chair that I got from a charity shop with a needle with heroin in it. There was blood all over my walls. I lived in a feral state like an animal.

"I will be a drug addict till the day I die but I don't have to be an active drug addict. I'll be a drug addict in recovery but it's not something that just disappears. You don't just stop taking drugs.

"I work, I go to college, I am an active family member, I go to the gym, I do yoga, I read. These are all the things that, when I was using drugs I would look at people and think: 'why can't I do that?' I'd sit on the bus, or I'd walk down the street, or I'd look out the window and I'd see people, and I'd be like: 'what makes me so different that I can't live a life like that. Why can't I hold down a job?'

"My criminal record is extensively long, and that plays on my mind a lot, that I'm never going to get a good job. There is a lot of me that I hate. There's a lot of me that I have shame and guilt over - some of my actions, some of the harm I brought to people. It's consequences of my using that I have a criminal record, and that will most likely affect me in my future."

Across the Grampian area last year 92-people died from drugs.

According to the latest official figures on drug deaths across Scotland last year, the number rose 27-per-cent on the previous year with 1,187-people losing their lives.

It's Scotland's highest death rate since records started, the worst among any EU country, and means the country's situation is nearly three times worse than the UK as a whole.

MORE INFORMATION ON GETTING HELP:

Call the North East FREE phone helpline: 0800 048 48 12.

Visit the website.