My name is Steven and I am 40 years old. My drug use stretches back over the past 20 years, starting at the age of 20 using cannabis and ecstasy as ‘recreational’ drugs. This quickly escalated to cocaine use and although I used other substances, my drug of choice became heroin. I have been in various treatment programmes, mostly methadone programmes with the Community Drug Team. Methadone was dispensed on either a weekly or fortnightly basis and in between this I was left to my own devices.

I have also lived in a residential therapeutic community for twelve months in 2000/2001. For a lot of the time during my drug use I held down a job and managed to stay out of trouble with the police. However, over the past couple of years my heroin use escalated and, being out of work, I resorted to shoplifting to fund my addiction. This lifestyle could not be sustained and brought me in front of the courts several times where the outcome would often be a fine.

I appeared before the courts once more and asked my solicitor and the magistrates for a Drug Rehabilitation Requirement.

Having successfully completed a Drug Treatment Testing Order four years previously, I hoped a D.R.R would allow me to re-focus and give me the motivation to seize control of my life. I engaged with the DRR through the Criminal Justice Drug Team and the Probation Service, and I found that treatment with these agencies meant rehabilitation and not just the dispensing of methadone.

BEING A PEER MENTOR

I have not used any illicit substances since April 2009 and have recently stopped taking my prescribed methadone with the support of my Drug Treatment Worker, staff at the CJDT and the Probation Service.

In June I was invited to attend a new group that was being set up. This was the Peer Mentor Group. The objective of this group was to identify service users who had either completed treatment or who were engaging well and already had stable lifestyles through this group. CJDT Staff found people who were willing to give their time to help service users make changes in their treatment by sharing their own experiences.

The role of the Peer Mentor is initially to be seen as a positive role model for current service users and provide a link between service users and treatment agencies. We help staff facilitate group work by sitting in on groups and offering positive input.

We also support new service users, who may be apprehensive about attending. We do this by meeting with them before a group starts, sitting with them in the group and encouraging them to take part. This small step can often be enough to encourage people to engage with their treatment, continue to attend and start them on the path to their own recovery.

PERSONAL TRAINING

Peer Mentors as a group meet for fortnightly training sessions with the CJDT Staff. These training sessions are fairly informal but do have a definite structure and topics that need to be covered. These topics cover a wide spectrum and include things such as:

• Communication Skills
• The difference between empathy and sympathy
• Diffusing difficult situations
• Confidentiality issues
 
• Motivating people to change.

We also cover personal development and engage in exercises that will allow us to continue to support service users. The Peer Mentor Group also meets monthly to serve as a consultation group. Through these monthly groups we meet with staff and offer feedback on any issues regarding the service.

This allows the mentors to be involved in shaping current services and allows staff to identify what may or may not be working. Who better to guide the service than those people who have been through the treatment programme?

All the mentors have a solid bond with each other and support each other in what we are doing. We also receive one to one support from a designated member of staff on a monthly basis. This allows us to raise any issues we may have outside of the group setting.

Finally, the personal benefits of being involved in the Peer Mentor Scheme are that I feel that the past twenty years of drug use wasn’t time completely wasted if I can use those experiences to help motivate people to change. It also helps keep myself motivated and wanting to continue on my own personal development and recovery. It offers structure and support and makes it a little easier to believe in myself when I can see other service users look at me and see that change is not impossible.

Anybody can be where I am if they are motivated enough to want it.