I have done a. I didn’t have a trouble-filled relationship with my child, just the mother of him, very. It was a hard relationship. I don’t know and occasionally because things would get so bad that I was, I was probably suffering with depression at times during the relationship because we had a very bad relationship. I was very unhappy. We argued a lot and occasionally she’d convince me that all of our problems were down to the fact that I used cannabis. So occasionally I have stopped and I’ve stopped for three, four months but then what I realised is during those three, four months actually the problem was our relationship. Like the only thing that cannabis did is make me a bit more numb or zoned out from some of the issues. It would make me not face some of the issues actually that in reality were there, the problems existing in our relationship. It was almost as if I was using it to dull some of the, the pain or ill feeling that I had because of this relationship.

But according to her, she put it down to…?

Yeah she blamed it on that but obviously I, it. The times when I’d stopped smoking cannabis I’d see clearly that these problems were still there. The problems didn’t go away because I’d stopped smoking cannabis.

I’d been involved in a relationship that went wrong. And that went wrong due to me taking drugs, I think or it was a part of it. Because I’d sneak out of the house at night and run off and go and do drugs with other people and obviously she was thinking that I was going off doing something. I was probably 17/18 then.

And she was not doing drugs?

She didn’t do drugs. She knew I was a drug taker and that but I was getting right off my brain like, I’d eat 3 or 4 tablets like in one go and be like eyes rolling in the back of my head and falling around and that. And I thought it was hilarious, what after I thought it was hilarious. I didn’t think it was hilarious like a day later when I’m lying in bed sweating and trying to be sick and basically feeling that I don’t exist anymore like. Do you know what I mean?

And it was having, I was being pressured into trying stuff by my partner who was fairly abusive and quite forceful on me, so I, just do stuff for the sake of it, never quite enjoyed any of it, but obviously you get the rush of certain things or you get chilled out from certain things and it’s quite a scary time because watching people inject heroin and watching them pass out, slumped in a corner it’s not nice for someone to see at that young age when I was thirteen myself. Going on to like thirteen, fourteen, fifteen then, when my relationship with that partner ended, as did much of the drug use, but I still had the after effects, I had Cannabis Psychosis for lots of smoking of green, oh I had mental scars from all my experiences

So you, you felt sort of pressurised to do drugs?

Yes, yes.

While you were with him?

Yes I, yeah very pressurised to do drugs, [sighs] he was six foot four, he was a big, big built bloke, rugby player, and he had such a hold over me, and I was terrified of him but at the time I was thirteen, naïve, I thought I was in love with him, because despite all the bad things and how bad he was towards me he did show me love and affection, so I was with him, I was, I was scared to leave but at the same time I didn’t want to leave because I didn’t have many friends, he, he was there for me in a way, lots of people who are abused do love the person who is abusing them, so, [sighs].