WHEN Richard Watson was 18 his mother died of cancer. It was then his casual use of alcohol, cocaine and cannabis took a serious turn, plunging him into addiction for more than 20 years.
But after getting clean and sober three years ago, the employment leader and addiction specialist for the Department for Work and Pensions turned his life around and now uses his experience to help others.
READ MORE: Scotland's drug death toll rockets as rethink is demanded
“There’s a fundamental lack of understanding of addiction,” he said. “It wasn’t until I got to rehab that I linked my problems to not being comfortable in my own skin.”
Despite losing homes, jobs, relationships and his relationship with his children’s mother, Mr Watson, 42, didn’t consider himself to be an addict.
Even being hospitalised at 19 for drugs-induced psychosis because he took ecstasy “like Prozac” wasn’t a wake-up call.
READ MORE: ‘It’s not just been my own recovery but all of my family’s’
“I still didn’t understand that I had an addiction problem and unfortunately nobody I spoke to at the time understood that if the root causes aren’t dealt with I’d just keep going back to the same old problem,” he said.
In 2016, after borrowing enough money to attend a private rehab, Mr Watson got clean but relapsed after 36 days. Thanks to recovery services in Glasgow, it was the last time he has used.
“I was really lucky,” he said. “I met people who had recovered and for the first time I had hope because they led by example.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here