I was a heroin addict and alcoholic of the ‘hopeless’ variety, frequently stealing bottles of wine for breakfast in an attempt to stave off the anxiety of withdrawals until my dealers switched on their phones. Like many heroin addicts, I was incapable of functioning before my morning fix – unable to move from the sweat-stained sofa and unwilling to engage with life, barring the aforementioned shuffle to the off licence and payphone (obviously, I never had credit).
Paradoxically, as soon as that text came through – the one signifying chemical salvation, that simply said ‘on’ – I would leap into action, capable of crossing mountains (I was previously an addict in Snowdonia and did, literally, this).
This was me during my Exchange Supplies years (DDN, September, page 14), my whole ten years of working for the company – broken, desperate and, even worse, egotistical to boot. Senior management had a background of working directly with drug addicts and worse still (for them) a social conscience. This led to a conflict of purpose – mine the endless, selfish demands of addiction, theirs a commitment to do the right thing. At times this led to farcical situations which would have been comical if we weren’t dealing with ‘life-saving’ consequences.
Myself and a couple of other employees were active addicts who, by the nature of our condition, had a very clear agenda – primarily, to stop the withdrawals. This took priority over everything. For me, it came before food, hygiene, bills, childcare, the truth, the law, self-respect – everything. They say withdrawals are objectively like the ’flu, and there’s some truth in this. But imagine a ’flu you KNOW you’re going to catch every single morning. Recollect the poorliest you’ve ever felt, and now I’m going to tell you that I could relieve that for just £10. This is the compulsion that drove me as an addict.
Different priorities
Once I was well, a different priority emerged – getting more drugs and maintaining that high. Not so desperate but still a priority, albeit one that could now be overcome with a rationale and tempered by commitments. Ever-present but not so all consuming.
I’m referring primarily to heroin addiction. Many parallels can be drawn with other addictions like alcohol or benzos, but I recognise that crack cocaine presents a different experience. For me, crack was an extra, a payday treat (alright, mostly a daily treat), but one I would forgo in favour of the necessity of heroin.
This was the emotional soundtrack of my using. The objectives of Exchange Supplies as a social enterprise included offering employment to active addicts, providing self-respect, structure and stability, and promoting both personal and societal worth. Did this help me? Yes, no and maybe – it depends what you mean by help and how it’s measured.
Working for Exchange Supplies coincided with the worst period of my using career, although the next decade was also pretty bad. I’ve always categorically stated that this job kept me out of gaol and free from blood-borne viruses. Obviously, I can’t know this for sure. What I do know is the income kept me from making more desperate decisions, and having my time filled countered the lack of purpose that only ever exacerbated my addiction. Having a constant supply of injecting paraphernalia without the ball-ache of visiting my local drug agency was also a bonus.
A new normal
While I’d injected a handful of times before working at Exchange Supplies, regular injecting became the norm soon after joining the team. Was it the normalisation and desensitisation of injecting practices and paraphernalia? This was definitely a factor, but we will never know if or when I would have began injecting if I hadn’t taken the job. I’m most definitely not suggesting any culpability. The truth is, I was strong willed and pig-headed, well aware of the facts (if not the consequences) when I made my drug taking choices. However, my brief for this article was honesty around working at Exchange Supplies and the impact of their accommodating employment policies – and this is my truth.
Perhaps the most significant employment issue which needs to be considered when knowingly employing addicts and attempting to flexibly cater for their needs is the risk of ‘enabling’. Did Exchange Supplies’ employment policies prolong or even facilitate my addiction and alcoholism? Among other things, they allowed for flexibility in my punctuality. Time off to score and inject. A more tolerant attitude – although not carte blanche – for me to work whilst intoxicated.
Continuing to employ me during periods of sub-standard work also gave me the finances to use more, and even working with other addicts could have been seen as helping me build up a drug using/scoring network. It’s also significant that this was mirrored in my home life – the importance given to holding down a job led to loved ones lending me money to score and looking after drugs for me – simply to ensure I got to work.
Better or worse?
There are some massive issues here – I asked Andrew, the managing director at Exchange Supplies, if they ever questioned whether they thought they were enabling me. ‘It was pretty much a daily question’, he joked in all seriousness. He then proceeded to say he tends to avoid using the word ‘enable’, and I know what he means. There’s very little that would have stopped me from using barring a drug drought, and although ‘powerless’ over my addiction I had enough agency to beg, borrow and steal (and a few other options in my arsenal – including bottles of cough syrup and dried poppies, both of which would stupefy a non-user, but barely touched the sides for me).
Poignantly, he proceeded to tell me he’d rather pose the question ‘to what extent and in what ways are we making things better or worse?’
I’d definitely say it was psychologically beneficial to be in work, and I was proud of both my job and my employment status. It added a semblance of structure and order to my life – no mean feat. The wage took the desperation out of my using – I’ve already mentioned avoiding gaol and disease. A good analogy I think is one of those extendable dog leads – at times they probably drew it in too short, at others they definitely allowed me to run too free. Andrew continued, ‘Sometimes there was a fine line to tread between keeping you engaged, and giving you enough time and money to make things worse… we could have “enabled” you less, the reason we didn’t was that, in my judgement, we could have lost contact with you… and without our enabling (which came linked to income, structure, support), things could’ve been even worse, and therefore more dangerous.’
These dangers were highlighted by an Observer article earlier this year which stated: ‘UK drug users are 13 times more likely to die than their European counterparts…the urge to punish drug addicts doesn’t make them go away. It just entrenches them in their misery, dependent on state provision, unable even to begin to help themselves.’
What is success?
In many ways I was part of an employment experiment – run on good intentions and that definitely made mistakes, during which I happily took the piss. Was it a success? If the intended result was to get me clean and sober as quickly as possible, it failed miserably. However, if the aim was to improve my quality of life as a using addict, or, the unquantifiable aim of being a bridge to normal living, providing some of the tools and learning which contribute to where I am today, it was an unqualified success.
I didn’t achieve sobriety during my period working for Exchange Supplies, but there were some who did. But should lifelong abstinence be our only yardstick? We know rehabs have a woefully low ‘success’ rate when measured by long-term sobriety. Should we instead be looking towards intangibles, such as seeds sown, quality of life, compassion and personal connection? Aren’t these elements of the human condition, so difficult to measure, the real markers of success? Especially if, like me, a key factor of recovery was the journey of addiction itself.
In retrospect, would I have advised Exchange Supplies to deal with me exactly as they did? No, and I doubt Andrew would either. I would, however, fully support the overarching policy of their employment model. This is essentially the same as when I was employed, just tweaked – with many of the spanners I threw removed, polished and ready to be used more appropriately. Am I glad I was treated exactly like I was, with some of its beautifully flawed judgement calls? 100 per cent.
Stuart Lloyd is several years into recovery and has become a writer
Working for ten years in West Dorset as a community drug worker during the ‘90s as heroin arrived in our community, and setting up needle exchange and methadone prescribing with local GPs, was a fascinating place to be.
Building long-term relationships with people, and helping them with their struggles with drugs, employment, and employers deepened my conviction that there’s a huge amount of wasted talent amongst the community of people who use drugs, and that the feudal levels of power given to companies and managers under capitalism are wrong and widely abused.
It was so clear to me that the simple facets of employment – such as conduct and time-keeping – could be herculean struggles for people who use drugs, and which could be made so much easier with a bit of compassion, understanding and flexibility.
At the time, I never thought I would ever be able to do anything about it or prove that these beliefs were right, but in the early 2000s, as a harm reduction activist, I had taken on the task of sourcing citric acid sachets for people who inject and soon found myself needing help with the warehousing, packing, and distribution. I had no hesitation in knocking on the doors of former clients to ask if they wanted to come and work with me, and so began a 20 years of developing a practice of employment policies that enable us to benefit from the experience, skills, knowledge and networks of people who use drugs, and retain them in our workforce.
I hadn’t been Stuart’s caseworker, so I didn’t know him when he replied to the ad we’d put on the notice board at the drug service – but it soon became clear he had in spades all of the issues that I’d seen make it so hard for other people who were opiate dependent to stay in employment.
I totally respected his determination not to be exploited by capitalist bosses, although we all sometimes wished he’d pull his finger out and do a bit more actual work as, over time, we began to learn to balance the need for support with the ability to provide support. We also learned how to be well enough staffed for the work to be meaningful, but not so ‘efficient’ that people being off heaped guilt on them for letting people down, and built stress and resentment amongst their colleagues.
Stuart’s degree was in linguistics, and if there was a PhD in pedantry, he’d have one. This was (kind of) great for me – if I set a boundary, he’d test it. If I was inconsistent, he’d point it out. If something wasn’t fair, he’d make sure everyone knew.
I didn’t always appreciate it at the time, but it’s no bad thing for everything to be tested to the limit. It accelerated the learning, and the after-the-fact analysis of successes and failures helped us form our compassionate collective responses to all the tricky issues that can arise – lateness, leave, absence, intoxication, and drug use on the premises – into a coherent, personalised, but consistent harm-reduction informed framework that really works.
We may not have always got it exactly right – there’s always what if’s – but we are clear that without the structure, meaning, support and something/someone to fight against over those ten years the path for Stu would likely have been much darker with, as he says, hepatitis C, overdose and prison all likely outcomes.
The value of having people who are part of the community we serve as part of the workforce can’t be overstated. The access, knowledge, commitment and connections they bring are invaluable, and the lessons we learnt with Stuart have made things a lot smoother in the years since for us. And, I’m sure, for him too.
Andrew Preston is the founder/managing director of Exchange Supplies