DARRENS INTERVIEW

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DARREN:

I've had a difficult week with my mam, but I've got my 12-step programme and everyone in it to support me. I ask for help. I don't fight today. I'm happy, joyous and free but my heads still bat shit crazy. I can do daft things. That's when I pick the phone up- when my thought process doesn't seem right. That internal dialogue that addicts have, intrusive thoughts, it tells me I'm shit, but I have a process to deal with that today.

12 steps! I would put it into the world for everything. It makes you look at yourself internally. Who am I, what do I like? I didn't even know what music I liked til I got put on. It allows me to discover my passions. It taught me to look after myself and to put boundaries in.

CHANGE

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to the know the difference." That's the serenity prayer. We hold hands at the 12-step programme and we say it out loud. Courageous and realistic.

I joined a Prison abolition group. I'm tryna do summat different. There's no good and bad people- that resonates with me. There's not a victimless crime but there isn't a victimless perpetrator either.

If you haven't got much to lose then prison is be better than life on the outside for a lot of people, it's indicative of the Sadness! People feel like they've got no better choice … why is that happening!? I don't have the answers. The structure, 3 meals a day, they don't have to think for themselves, but what has society done to people to make them like that? marginalise them so much to make them feel like they need to be locked behind a 40-foot wall in a cell with bars on, I find that really sad. The trauma they must be going through to have to go through prison for somewhere to live.

I don't have the answer, but there must be some way of making these individuals feel more empowered, to take their own lives back.

I know prison doesn't work. There's such a thing called short sharp shock, that might work for some people but it most certainly didn't work from me. I wanted to rebel. Maybe it works for some people, but work in what way? You get a short sharp shock, and you get out and get a job, but are you happy? or are you just doing what society asks you to do? Society wants us to live our lives quietly, throw some mad things at us so we can't concentrate on what they're doing to us. There's a disconnect. It won't change til we get a prime-minister who was born on somewhere like Bransholme, who knows what people are struggling with.

I was in Job Centre the other day and I'm not a violent person but I wanted to throw the computer out the window- I felt powerless. There's no human touch. I felt like I was being treat as a number. Basically, the computer said no.

THRILLS

I'm gunna go traveling. I'm gunna go round Italy. I wanna go to Calabria, its real mountainous and beautiful, it's a hidden gem of the world. I've been kicked out of Italy in 1990 at the world cup. I was on the national news in handcuffs. It was football. My mam saw it, I told her I was going to my mate's house. That was a thrill; it changed the way I felt. In 2015 Hull city played Burnley, there was about 140 of us, the sense of power, no one could touch us, not even the police.

Now I get that thrill from mediation and prayer and being kind, compassionate. I get a thrill from being kind!

In the past, say I bought my mum a clock, every time I went round, I'd say, how's that clock? Is that clock alright for ya? I was making it about me and not the act of giving. In my fellowship, people gave me money for food, but they didn't want nothing back from me, yeh they just said pass it on. So now I buy newcomers food after a meeting. and I give them my own clothes. Just pass it on. We keep what we have by giving it away.

SCHOOL & PRISON

My mum n dad divorced when I was 5 and my mam left. In the 1970's divorce was unusual, getting teased at school cos you haven't got a mam. Even before that I had personality traits that I would identify today as being at diss-ease with myself. They couldn't get rid of my dummies and when they did, I took it out the bin and stored it. We used to have communal bonfires and we used to collect wood. I used to go out in the middle of the night and check how much wood we've got- totally obsessed. We covered it in my 12-step programme. Early signs of addiction, obsessive behaviour…. maybe I felt like I wasn't getting the love and tried to attach to different things.

They thought I was naughty but turns out I had ADHD as I found out when I was 48. I was feral, I was left to my own devices, my dad couldn't cope and there was 4 of us. At school, I couldn't listen, sometimes I knew the answers but I couldn't write them down. I needed tonnes more support. I thought it was better fun to play out and smoke from age of 9 instead of going to school. I'm basically the same age of when I first took drugs cos I haven't developed emotionally in some ways.

Mr Wilmot, my geography teacher, watched out for me, he saw talent in me and nurtured me. He said "If I could enter you in to an exam I would." (You had to have a certain percent attendance.) He was always real kind to me. I met a lot of people like that in early life who I aspired to be like.

When I first went to prison in 1987 there was a lot of my friends from Bransholme there, so it was fun in them days but for some people it wasn't fun, if you wasn't part of a group. Prisons are a bit of a mad place. I met peers, people like myself who did naughty things and it developed from there. My 1st experience of prison was unruly, you're locked up on a night, you can't go anywhere, it might have been fun but terrifying at the same time. People went on education classes to get some money and get out their cell. There was a lot of violence. I learnt how to do crime better.

In prison, it was like cities. Hull hated Leeds, Sheffield got on with hull, Leeds hated hull. It was gangs, you stuck together. Prisons are mixed now from more areas. In 1989, 56 of us got shipped out from the Young Prisoners Jail which was closing down. We had to go to Leeds. when we got there, there was a lot of violence. The conditions were 22 hour lock up. No classes. No activities. They kicked off and smashed us out our cells through the ventilation shafts, and we all rioted, millions of pounds worth of damage, but at the end of the day it worked, conditions changed pretty swiftly. You bottle summat up and its gunna fucking burst. We got treat bad all of us no matter what city you was from. But after that we was friends. We all became united against the prison system.

There was structure in prison. You go to bed and wake up at certain time…but I fought against the structure all the way through it. I rebelled against authority. I didn't need structure, I needed integration into society. More training on life, how to be a human being.

TRUST & RECOVERY

There was people who I met on my journey who had been through what I'd been through, who was helping people. There was a lot of friends in London who helped me, taking me in, making me feel part of something… but I caused chaos down there as well. What I learnt was, I can change location, people, places or things but I'm still me, still an addict. Some of the crazy things I've done you wouldn't believe. I bought 200 Valium to do my heroin withdrawal. 2 days later I've got no Valium left and I'm locked up in Bridlington.

I hated. I blamed everything. There was culpability from society but I made choices. I'm not a bad person, I never was, but I made bad choices. When I am accountable, I can make amends whether it be financial, personal amends, a "sorry". My sponsor wants me to make restitution to banks- I was pretty good at small print, fraud - but I'm struggling with that...banks have got enough money, but it's not about them.

I remember seeing my psychologist when I was young and he said "Darren's built a wall round himself and doesn't let anyone in" and when I was 46 another psychologist said "Darren's built a wall round himself and doesn't let anyone in". I don't think I knew how to let anyone in.

I learnt to trust other human begins in NA, and make myself vulnerable, which means getting honest. I used to think intimacy meant touchy feely but it means in IN TO ME SEE. It's when I pick the phone up and tell other guys my thoughts. I've made some beautiful friendships, they wanna be your friend just to be your friend, they don't want nothing from you. Today I have people I can trust. Our mutual friend- I trust that guy. He's a big plonker, we cry with laughter. We annihilate each other in a real free way. I have that connection with lots of people in the fellowship.

Now I'm a 'recovery champion'. I know 40% who come through the door. If I can do it, you can do it. But I don't believe you can rescue people. If you do everything for someone, you're enabling them not to do anything for themselves. I get that people are struggling, but we should guide people to do it themselves. If you're going to people who are desperate and camping out, there probably better off not on methadone, why add another problem? Why add another layer of complexity?

Let me see the drawing of me. Don't I look old!? I look like my dad. Don't go changing it, that's my ego talking. My sponsor says when you let your ego in, your easing god out. E.G.O., I have to supress it. In my early days I'd go in the fish shop and a lass would slightly touch my finger and I'd be like "she wants my babies" … really weird shit! One minute I'm the best looking cunt in the world and the next minute I'm the ugliest! Now I'm trying to find the middle ground, doesn't matter what people think.

Ey red bulls good shit innit!?