Walking free from darkness into the light

"THAT'S where we used to score," says John Edwards, gazing at the hulking grey statue of Wolfe Tone that guards the western flank of St Stephen's Green in Dublin.

"Then we used to go inside to score some more when no one was looking.

"We took all sorts of things in those days whatever we could get our hands on."

John, now 50, was barely a teenager at the time. His chosen poison was heroin but he wasn't too fussy. Whatever gave him and his mates a high would do.

"We tried everything, we would mix cider with Valium and we took all sorts of barbiturates: You name it, we tried it."

John is posing for the photographer who has chosen the curved stone wall behind the Tone edifice as a backdrop. It is just the kind of place where drunks, junkies and the down-at-heel find a warm spot to spend the night.

That sort of life was once second nature to John and, as he traces the outline of the wall with his fingertips, it brings back many painful memories.

He looks towards Baggot Street and then whips around to take in the Green itself, recalling darker days when he and his fellow addicts lived on the streets. "We had to keep a watch out for the warden, in case we got caught."

He got caught a lot and, in those days the only photographer to take an interest in him was usually in a garda station.

Now he's well-known: A writer, healer, helper and founder of a number of clinics that help addicts live clean and productive lives.

That was something that escaped John for many of his early years. Born into a middle-class family in Dublin, his childhood was marred by his father's descent into alcoholism.

John's constant unsuccessful attempts to gain his father's attention and approval, coupled with being forced to write with his right hand, are the reasons he gives for his developing a stammer and his subsequent lack of self-esteem.

"I began going round with a local gang and acting the hard man but deep down I was totally insecure and depressed.

"My dad's drinking had increased to the point where he was making his own home-brewed wine and beer. He would drink it as soon as or even before it was mature. The atmosphere in the house was absolutely miserable and I didn't know how to handle it."

John's path to self-destruction started in 1967, at the age of 13. It was the day he stole a Valium tablet from his mother's purse.

"I went to my mother's handbag when she was out of the room. I knew that she kept her Valium in a bottle in the bag. I slipped a tablet into my pocket and put the bottle back."

WITHIN a short time one Valium became two, then ten until he was swallowing them by the fistful.

"I discovered that I could get a better buzz if I drank cider on top of the Valium. I also began to smoke hash, which was quite cheap in those days."

His life quickly spiralled out of control and, despite attempts at rehabilitation, his addiction grew worse. When a friend and fellow addict was found drowned, John went to London, hoping for a new life. Instead, he simply found a bigger world of addicts and alcoholics.

These were the years of living rough, lying to his family and to those who tried to help him, reduced to eating scraps out of bins and retrieving cigarette butts from the streets.

At one stage, he was drinking surgical spirits and injecting cooking sherry into his veins while begging on the streets.

He can still recall his first attempt at begging for a living.

"I was on Piccadilly Circus. There were lots of people around and the thought struck me, why not give it a try? The drugs gave me a bit of Dutch courage.

"Excuse me sir, could you spare a few pence for something to eat," I stuttered to a passing workman.

'Piss off and get yourself a job, you waster,' was his reply."

But soon he got the hang of begging, pretending how to limp, earning just enough to feed his addiction.

"I was a drug addict, alcoholic, beggar, down and out. Most of all, though, I was lost, living but dead."

Desperately seeking a way out of the gutter, John began a series of attempts at reform. Over a number of years, he tried rehabilitation centres, psychiatrists, the probation service, as well as drug and alcohol recovery units.

He even went to the point of signing himself into various mental institutions on a number of occasions all to no avail.

A year after his father's death, John returned to Ireland and began to attend Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous.

In spite of the help offered by both these organisations, he remained addicted, fuelled, in part he believes, by the policy of giving addicts heroin substitutes. He also disagrees with needle exchange programmes and providing sterilising equipment for heroin addicts.

"We think we will keep addicts under control through prescribing methadone to them. Now doctors are not wanting to prescribe methadone any longer because it is causing them too many problems.

"Our Government gives addicts syringes and they provide a service that gives them valium, sleepers, naltrexone, methadone and antidepressants. It's crazy.

"You will probably either blow up or lose weight on these, you may go hyper on methadone. You may go psychotic from cannabis. You may go paranoid from speed and crack. Your teeth may rot, and your liver won't improve very much."

After several years of failed attempts, John finally managed to get clean. The breakthrough came when he attended a gathering of born-again Christians. It was there he experienced a powerful encounter that was to change the whole course of his life.

"New life came into me and I knew Jesus Christ as my Lord and Saviour."

In 1989, he began 'walking free', the first of his many treks through Ireland carrying a 12-foot cross, reaching out to addicts along the way.

He began to attend St Mark's family worship centre in Pearse Street, Dublin and it was there that he found out about the Teen Challenge Christian Rehabilitation Centre in South Wales. In early 1991, he left Ireland and began a 12-month programme under this ministry.

Such was the transformation in John's life that he travelled the length and breadth of Britain preaching the Gospel and visiting schools and prisons.

He returned to the same streets of London where he had lived in squalor as an addict, and in January 1996 Teen Challenge UK invited him to set up and manage a rehabilitation centre in Western Scotland.

There, John met Tricia, and in 1997 they were married and then began a joint ministry. "Tricia and I ended up with many addicts living in our home with us. There were so many, in fact, that at one stage we were renting 11 houses and flats where we had re-housed these former addicts."

Since then, he has set up three rehabilitation centres in Scotland, helping hundreds of people find hope while working through their addiction. He does not believe there is such a thing as a hopeless case. "The old saying 'once an addict always an addict' is a lie and there is freedom for those who genuinely want it."

He still undertakes long-distance walks to raise awareness of addiction and his next trek is from Los Angeles to New York, which begins on April 5.

"This will be a combined walk and cycle and we plan to do 120 miles a day. There are 12 of us going all together, including some former addicts like myself.

It isn't all hard work, though. With Tricia, John has a ready-made family of four stepchildren and three grandchildren and he also finds the time to run successful businesses in Scotland, dealing in second-hand furniture.

"I never thought that I would have responsibility for 24 staff, a wife and family with grandchildren," says John. "Yet, that is the truth of it. I am a happy man."

That happiness has been hard-won. "I suppose what kept me going even in my worst days was that somewhere within myself I held onto the conviction that my life wasn't destined to end in a dark alleyway with a needle in my arm."

Walking Free by John Edwards costs stg£7.99. More details on this and John and Tricia's ministry is available online at www.walkingfree.org. They can also be contacted by phone at 0044-1387249275.