Sarah's Story

An Interview with an Evening Service participant:

“I tell my mates straight first off about the massage and how there is an Acustim and acupuncture treatment which is great, and I tell them about the counselling as well. And, like, when they hear about the massage and acupuncture you can tell it spikes an interest in them so even though I don’t think they would come right now, no, I don’t think they feel they need to come right now, but should they reach a stage where they want to get help, well, then they know what it is, where it is, and they know it’s really helped me.”

It is continuing to help me, to work well. Well, I can’t say that I haven’t done drugs but I know that I don’t have any bad spells, bad drug binges, now that I am here. I will have isolated incidents, but I am not on the really downward slide which I was before I came here, and which I was on during the break when I wasn’t able to come here. That break, it had an impact on my drug use. Initially, I think I had two months where I didn’t do anything drug wise, and then I went very quickly back to where I was before, I can remember the rapid slide, I was as bad if not worse than I was before.

The truth is when I came back, because I had had to leave counselling half way through, I was carrying a lot of bad stuff, and I had been carrying it for a long time, and I think it was apparent that when I came here I was carrying a lot of emotion, and that was because I was dipping into my childhood and issues with my family, and I had just starting to talk about them, or think about them, and then I just had to stop coming here. I was just starting to realise I was feeling things, I didn’t realise it at the time, I now realise that I was, and it had quite an impact actually.

First and foremost, it has given me the tools to stop using drugs and to stop damaging myself with drugs. Then, beyond that, I think the big assistance is in terms of personal development. It has offered me big assistance, and that’s a slow process and it is on-going. In terms of personal development I mean my career, relationships, girlfriend, friends, family, and my relationship with myself, and I think that I am – one thing that it has given me is a real sense of community, because my community is helping me, and I am aware of this help, and I do things now to help my community and to be a productive member of society.

There is one person here because I gave them the number of DROP, I put it in their phone and I said go and ring them. That was when they were having a bad time, and I think they made an appointment within a week, so I think that it is really effective way of getting people in. Word of Mouth is the best way because when I told my friend that I came here I said I feel great when I do this and I could tell him that he would definitely feel very comfortable coming down here.

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