As Edinburgh bustles with tourists dodging flyers for shows and clicking their cameras at Edinburgh Castle, just a few turns off of Princes Street, you’ll find Richie at St Cuthbert’s on Lothian Road.

Every Sunday and Monday night, Richie and the Steps To Hope Team provide warm food to those who need it most in Edinburgh, where drug related deaths have tripled since the early 2000s. Every Sunday and Monday night, they’re at St Cuthbert’s church on Lothian Road, hosting a soup kitchen to provide food and support to anyone who needs it, feeding around 200 people.

Food is cooked and served entirely by volunteers, and on top of this, these events provide a sense of community and support for those experiencing homelessness or addiction, with volunteers being made up of locals who have experience with addiction, or none at all. A blether can form a community. These meetings do however have a strict rule: if anyone asks you, a volunteer with no personal experience with addiction, for advice, you need to go get someone who works at Steps To Hope to help, and remove yourself from the situation.

This might sound harsh to some people, but it’s a fantastic way for former addicts to look out for each other, and guarantee that those needing help are given the correct advice from those who know first-hand what its like to be in recovery. This action, led by those who have overcome it themselves, is the frontline of the battle that Scotland is losing.

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Meet Richard Roncero. He’s effectively doing what the Scottish Government isn’t: he’s integrated with the community of addicts, of real people, he’s working on the issue of drug deaths by interacting with those at risk. That’s because Richie is the community. A former addict himself, Richie struggled with cocaine and alcohol addiction, and following two stays in rehab and time spent in prison, he knows the system for rehab inside out. Who better, to open up a residential recovery programme, than someone whose lived it himself?  

He founded Steps To Hope back in 2018, with the mission to help provide those struggling with drugs to see “life beyond addiction”. Creating a loving community for those battling addictions, Steps To Hope regularly posts celebrations for those who have graduated their twelve-step recovery programme, whether that’s passing their drivers test, or celebrating two years clean and sober. Steps To Hope has clearly fostered a much loved and valued community amongst those in recovery.  

On top of incredible community work, after fourteen tireless months of fundraising, Steps To Hope have celebrated the opening their own residential recovery programme, Hope House, in West Lothian, formally starting on the 12th of August.

The ten bedroom, HMO approved property, hosts those undertaking the twelve step programme, with the aim for guests to recover and get clean, between ninety days to a year. With a daily schedule running between 8am to 9:30pm, including group work, one-to-one sessions, yoga, meditation, fitness, cooking classes, outings, and relaxation for those in their programme, guests stays are free of charge. Painfully aware of the postcode lottery of drug addiction, and the disproportionate amount of drug deaths that occur in deprived communities, Richie aims to fight the scenario where anyone dies because they were born in the wrong area.  

With drug deaths in Scotland on the rise for yet another year, the Scottish Government clearly isn’t stepping up to the mark. With 1172 people tragically lost to drug deaths in the past year, a 12% increase, deprived communities are being hit the hardest. When it comes to the cynical but firmly held belief that the government doesn’t care about Scotland’s struggling communities, Holyrood isn’t helping themselves, they’re digging themselves a never-ending hole.

The SNP announced that they wanted to take a more compassionate approach to drug addiction back in 2023, only five years after drug deaths were called a public health emergency in Scotland. Despite Scotland’s drug problem being older than the Scottish Parliament itself, it wasn’t until 2023 that the SNP came to the decision that they wanted to decriminalise drugs for personal use, and open drug treatment rooms to the public. With safe consumption rooms debated, and finally approved to open at Hunter Street Health Centre in October this year, communities are taking action into their own hands, as they have had to do for decades.  

Even those facing the heartbreaking nightmare of losing a loved one to drugs, are putting their faith in Steps To Hope. As the number of drug related deaths rise year on year, grieving families have donated any collections from their loved ones funeral to Steps To Hope in the past, leaving the charity “truly humbled”. In the very worst circumstances, no doubt the hardest time in a family’s life, community action is a hugely appreciated thing. But the reality is, families shouldn’t be in these tragic circumstances at all.  

The Scottish Government claims it “will also continue to improve access to residential rehab”, but according to Public Health Scotland, only 24% of those who can refer people to rehab in Scotland believe that rehab is easily accessible, and in 2023 found that only 19% of those with experience using drugs feel well informed about rehab. So communities are picking up the slack.  

Of the report published on Tuesday, several government failures have been found. Whilst Health Secretary Neil Grey said that the Scottish Government is on track to “drive the rollout of medication-assisted treatment (MAT) standards”, the poor service of MAT is a major problem. Tuesday’s report found that those experiencing addiction in Scotland are unhappy with the help available. From the stigma experienced accessing MAT, such as having to consume their methadone in public, to the majority of people wanting more contact with MAT services than they were receiving, on top of the limited choice of initial medication, and only half of those surveyed feeling in control of their treatment drug dose, the Scottish Government is clearly not listening to recovering addicts.  

A safe consumption room is all well and good. By not criminalising addicts, and providing a safe, clean space for those suffering from addiction to consume drugs, a huge stigma may be lifted. But to properly treat drug addiction, to prevent needless deaths, to truly take this compassionate approach to drug mortality rates and addiction that they claim they want to take, the Scottish Government need to give former addicts a seat at the table. They need to take note of community action, from grassroots organisations that have been saving lives whilst the government has let people slip through the cracks, and the cracks in question, get bigger and bigger.  

But safe spaces for addicts can exist, they do exist, just see St Cuthbert’s on Lothian Road. Communities are coming together to support those who the government won’t, and despite the £250 million spent on Scotland’s National Mission on Drugs, communities that are actually in touch with addicts, who interact with the real people behind the statistics, are doing more effective work than the Scottish Government.

Hope House is funded by both local donations of furniture, and the charity itself. Individuals have raised money specifically for the project, whether that’s shaving your head, or Richie’s viral fundraiser to sleep rough for two months. He spent eight weeks across eight different cities, with nothing but a sleeping bag, spending both his 40th birthday and his nine year anniversary of being sober, on a concrete slab. He raised £229,467, skyrocketing over his £200,000 target. If every member of the Scottish Government did the same, the First Minister, Deputy, nine cabinet secretaries and eighteen government ministers, they would raise £5,800,000. That could fund the pilot of the safe consumption room due to open this year in Glasgow, for two and a half years. If, of course, people rooted for MSPs as much as they did Richie.