'Heroin to Honey'

I'm pretty certain, if I hadn't of gone to prison when I did my trajectory in life would be very different. It kind of wore down my self-worth enough to get me into a place where I considered taking heroin, and when I started taking heroin, that violent aggressive angry streak in me was numbed down, there was no time or space for it and I was so weak physically that I avoided it anyway. In prison, I mixed with other heroin addicts and people who could get me cheap heroin; it opened up another world for me. If it weren't for prison, likely I wouldn't have started taking heroin or found recovery and I wouldn't be in the position I'm in now. So there's this conflict within me. But on a logical level, I know that prison is terrible, I feel it in the core of my being that as human beings we can do things differently.

In my life when I look back, I can see that people was trying to help me; had no ability to measure the consequences of my actions, so I'd get me sen into these situations, and when people would come along and try and help me to get out, I wasn't capable of accepting the help; it was really difficult. Maybe in the future, we'll have systems in place where we can correct this stuff before it goes as dark as what it did for me. I couldn't accept love, that's what it was. I believe I was full of shame, the family I came from was dysfunctional, and I was full of shame because of it, even though I didn't know it at the time, I felt I wasn't worthy of help.

The teachers used to put us disruptive kids under the desk, all 3 of us became heroin addicts. No-one asked us what was going on at home. Maybe sometime in the future, there'll be a process to help them kids that are unruly and disruptive, realise they are worthy of love, worthy of accepting help. The world can be terrible, but on the whole, it's a kind loving place! I just had to step out of my victim mentality and feeling like the world was against me to realise that.

My overriding memory of school is looking out the windows thinking, why am I in this classroom when I wanna be out there? I do not understand, someone explain to me! I just felt trapped. I really struggled in school but you gimme a motorbike to do up or take apart and put back together, I was capable of that stuff. I was given short lived opportunities to attend these things, and once they came to an end, I just drifted towards people that showed me things that I thought was love which I found exciting, low-level crime, drug taking, girls, stolen motorbikes… I needed something that I found interesting, practical. I am 43 years old and I'm at a place where I feel peaceful about the journey I've been on but I do wonder that if I was given the right kind of ongoing guidance, and support back then, how different my life would have been.

I got to about 30 years old, and I was living in the crack heroin areas of Grimsby. My grandad had died of addiction and I found my best mate Matthew dead, we was taking heroin together, and I thought: "I've gotta get out of Grimsby, if I can get away from the reputation of my family and this area, my life will change." Even though I had all these doubts and insecurities, I also knew on an intuitive level that I was capable, when I get focused on stuff I seem to really get the grasp of it. I started attending access to higher education course, and people there started to build me up, there was a tutor there called Anne, she used to pull me aside when I was struggling, and tell me I was capable. I can see that universe, life, god, or whatever you wanna call it, was sending this woman to ensure that I survived the course. I completed it and applied to university in Leicester to do a criminology degree. I really struggled in Leicester; I was in that much pain and discomfort, and felt that odd at university that I could not stop using drugs... but it sparked summat within me. I realised that if I'm learning about stuff I wanna learn about, I enjoy it! If I'm not forced to do stuff I don't like then I can pick stuff up. I think choice is healing in some sense, as well as inspiration, enthusiasm and curiosity, I think that human nature is ignited by them characteristics. I was interested in societal theory and how we could do things differently; that time in education began to change my life.

I couldn't stop taking drugs and ended up on the streets. My drug use had got more desperate, things got darker, I ended up committing crimes that I thought I was above, my state of being really declined. It goes back to being a kid and not being taught the consequences of my actions, so by the time I'm 35 and I'm living on the streets, I'm just a traumatised shell of a human being that can't function; paranoid, delusional, unable to make a reasonable choice based on logic, I was in survival mode.

9 years previously I was introduced to 12 steps, I just thought it was a load of shit, these are all weird, they're praying, they're all stood in a circle, giving each other hugs, weird. But my friend, a street addict like me - she got it, instantly. She fell in love with the 12 steps and her life, from that moment began to change. I stayed in contact with her and during that 9-year period she got her kids back, got a home, finished university, she was happy go lucky, and I just thought WOW. She'd always tell me it's because of the 12 steps, come, you might find recovery. When I got to the point where I was sick to death of myself, I thought "maybe I'm gunna give this a go", and it's the only thing that's worked for me- complete abstinence from all drugs, and a really loving kind group of people around you that just want the best for you- it's just really empowering. I was literally dead. I couldn't see the light or goodness in people, but every time I spoke with April, I could feel the truthfulness and honesty within her voice, it ignited something in me, seeds of hope - maybe there is a way out, maybe my past doesn't determine who I can be. So, I stopped taking drugs, got around a group of people that had been where I'd been and my life has gradually improved. Yey.

When I was at university, I started to go to a garden place called Saffron Acres, and one of the guys there, Dave, shared his interest in bee keeping with me, which sparked summat off in me. Years later I ended up in hull and I'm volunteering at Rooted In Hull, and Martin and Adrien decide to get some beehives, it went from there. I was in early recovery, 4 or 5 months clean when I was doing the bee keeping course, and my mind was racing. I was deeply traumatised, stuck in my fight, flight and freeze mode, in a state of anxiety, of adrenaline. It was really loud and I couldn't make sense of anything, I literally felt like an alien in my own skin. The bee keeping gave me summat healthy to do, summat to learn about, and it just grew from there. The first year or 2 of bee keeping made me more anxious and scared, but it built up my inner resilience. I feel really present, the humming buzzing noise seems to focus me.

I'd like 'Heroin to Honey' to be a project, (it might only be a small project) that offers opportunities to people that have come out of local rehab or have left prison and they need summat to do with themselves. I know how much it's helped me in my life, and there's loads of transferable skills, and we're helping the planet as well.

I'm part of a Prison Abolition group. I feel like my life experiences drew me to that place of being interested in it. Seeing my family members and the people I grew up with in and out of prison, and me going to prison myself, and then doing a criminology course and being interested in imprisonment. It's become one of my interests and passions and I just believe that if any kind of societal change is gonna take place its gunna come form ordinary people. Me and Darren had gone to Ground and we saw this poster with Angela Davis, stuck on the wall, and people talk about manifestation, synchronicity, stars aligning, and things like that… not sound to sound too esoteric and spiritual, I don't mean to but it's hard not to…It felt like summat I should be doing.

The best definition I heard was from an academic who said, "Prison Abolition is being kind and compassionate, in the moment, to people that are less fortunate than us", so that's how I try to live my life, just taking time out to listen to people. I know how important it was for me to be listened to, to be built up, and I know how long it took, it took a while, it continues to take a while. I feel like prison abolition is about building people up, through kindness and love.

The vast amount of people that go to prison are traumatised, they've got no belief and no self-worth, so we send them to a place where they're gunna feel worse about themselves, it's not very conducive to being human is it. Surely we can do things differently!? Its very rare that people's lives improve because they get sent to prison. With the system we've got now, we don't give people choice do we, so we say, right, we're taking you out of society, we're gunna lock you in this room and hopefully through reflection, you're gunna change. Taking people's choice is taken away is violent, it's a form of war.

The prisons we have now, I'm all for getting rid of them, but we need healthy alternatives. My view is that in the future, we will have some kind of…I haven't got the term for it yet…empowerment centres, summat like that, where we will send those people who have lost the belief that they've got all the power they need within them. They won't be forced to go, but if they wanna be part of society they'll have to I suppose; that's how I view stuff. These centres…. they'll be places to uncover our limiting beliefs, to explore interests and passions… like the opposite of how everything is at the minute. Once I started believing that I had self-worth, and that the universe is abundant, my life's completely transformed; I've not had to steal, I've not had to hurt anyone, do you know what I mean? Its crazy.

In the new system I imagine we give people choices; e.g. do you want to go to this that takes you out of the society that you're in now or do you wanna go to a local one? Do you wanna go to a larger one, or a smaller one? From experience I know that that bit of choice is empowering, it starts to make me believe that I can trust myself. That I can trust my own judgement. Cos I've gone from a place where I'm broken, and I feel like everything I touch has turned bad and these little interactions are slowly building me up!