Hooked on heroin, jailed for attempted robbery, and struggling to be a proper father to his children, Chris Beaver was one of Shropshire’s drug victims – until he turned his life around. Ben Bentley meets a reformed addict.

Pete Doherty-style ‘glamour’ it wasn’t. When Chris Beaver was released from prison and moved into a flat in Shrewsbury in 2005, there were no fans or personal assistants waiting for him.

Chris was alone with little else to his name other than his own personal freedom.

“I had one chair, a toaster and a sleeping bag,” he says. “But that was enough.”

Just how had he reached this impasse? It was, he admits, through the slippery slope that is drugs abuse.

Now aged 43, he began using soft drugs when he was just 14, putting the slide down to “a lot going off in my life”. By the the age of 17 he was smoking heroin.

He says: “I got into heroin because I couldn’t get dope. I went round to someone’s house – you call them friends but really they are just acquaintances – to ask if he had ‘the usual’ and he said ‘No but I’ve got a bit of this’. I said ‘Go on then’ and that’s how easy it is.”

A few years later Chris was injecting heroin, on crack and also taking psychotic drugs.

He then spent the next 22 years on methadone as he tried to get back on the straight and narrow, but in 2002 was jailed for attempted robbery – an action that was in part down to drug taking.

But ultimately Chris’s story is a positive one. Prison, it turned out, was just what he needed, particularly as he found support for his addiction. It also gave him time to contemplate his role as the father of two children.

“I thought I had wasted everything,” he says. “I thought about my kids and the fact that I wasn’t there for them.”

Part of his probation deal was that he seek treatment for drug misuse, and was referred to the Shropshire Drug and Alcohol Action Team and the drugs intervention programme, which helped him deal with his problem and rebuild his life.

Today it is good to report that the flat where he still lives is admirably furnished and the days of one chair, a toaster and a sleeping bag are gone. And he is a better role model than Pete Doherty, the Babyshambles singer who is as well known for his substance abuse as he is for his music.

Chris now sits on the other side of the fence, and his experience is invaluable in working with the Shropshire Drug and Alcohol Team to help other people tackle their drug problems.

He is proud to be part of promoting the first ever National Tackling Drugs Week this week, which aims to raise awareness of the problem of substance abuse and what can be done in dealing with it.

The drug team is set up to implement the national drug and alcohol strategies within Shropshire, delivering services designed to tackle the misuse of both drugs and alcohol.

Chris’s work involves sitting in on strategy meetings and preventing today’s young people from becoming tomorrow’s problematic drug users.

The team itself works in partnership with other groups in reducing drug use and drug-related offending through treatment and support and cutting drug-related death through harm minimisation.

There is also work to stem the supply of illegal drugs coming into the county.

Latest figures from the drugs team make interesting reading. They reveal there are 958 “problematic users” in Shropshire, which is less than one per cent of the total population. Of these, 63 per cent are currently engaged in local treatment services which is a slightly higher proportion than the national average which stands at 58 per cent.

The gender breakdown of those accessing treatment in Shropshire during 2006 to 2007 was 74 per cent male compared to 26 per cent female, reflecting the national trend of approximately three men to every one woman who seek treatment for drug misuse.

In Shropshire, 80 per cent of people accessing treatment services cite heroin as there main drug of use.

Gerald Dakin, cabinet member for safer stronger communities at Shropshire County Council and chair of the Drug and Alcohol Action Team, says: “National Tackling Drugs Week is about highlighting the vital everyday work that goes on across the country to cut drug use.

“Through education, drug awareness campaigns and effective treatment to get users off drugs, not only do the individuals benefit but also their families and whole communities.”

There is ongoing support available out there, because like an alcoholic and his bottle, a recovered drug addict is still a drug addict. He just doesn’t take drugs anymore. That’s the legacy of substance abuse.

And it means temptation lingers long after the last hit leaves the body. And that’s why the Drug and Alcohol Team is so important in providing long-term support to guide service users gently away from the precipice in their hour of need.

Chris has been off drugs for 14 years, since his mum died. Yes, he is enjoying a new lease of life helping other people struggling the the demon drugs, but there’s no escaping the permanent scars of substance abuse.

A consequence of his drug taking is that he is now suffering from the onset of Parkinson’s.

“With drugs you pay a price,” he says. “You cannot get out of life without something, but I am lucky – I’ve got friends who are dead. Without getting help from people like the Drugs Action Team I would be back in prison or dead myself.”

* The Drug and Alcohol Action Team, based at Shirehall in Shrewsbury, can be contacted on 01743 252275. Community Substance Misuse Team can be contacted 01743 255741.