A GLIMPSE OF THE DISMAL REALITY OF SCOTLAND'S SO CALLED 'TRAINSPOTTING GENERATION'.

About ten years ago, First Base launched a new project. It looked good on paper. It looked really good on paper. We called it the 'Walk the Walk' project.

Well, lots of things look good on paper. I guess invading Iraq might have seemed like a good idea at the time. Sadly, when good ideas which look good on paper are plunged into the freezing waters of reality they tend to fall apart.

Yup. Been there. Got the T shirt. Bitten and many times shy.

So what was it? This 'Walk the walk' thing of ours?

Here are the bare bones. We have always had regulars who appear at our front desk month after month and year after year and yes, decade after decade. The majority of these regulars are fully paid up members of what has come to be known as the 'Trainspotting Generation'. These are a cohort of lads and lasses who blundered their way into mass heroin addiction from the mid nineties to the mid noughties. It was a pandemic which started out in Glasgow and Edinburgh and spread across the land like a modern day plague. Dumfries and Galloway became an unlikely hotspot. When the plague reached its peak, an EU funded report revealed South West Scotland as the home of Europe's second worst rural heroin crisis. At that time, 7% of males between the ages of 18 and 30 had a habit. The scale of the disaster as mind boggling.

And we saw the victims. Lots of them. Every single day. Walking skeltons in charity shop anoraks. Pinned eyes and pale skin stretched tight over razor sharp cheek bones. Rattling or gouching. Usually rattling. Loathed and reviled by the local community. Despised ghosts. Not a pretty sight.

We spotted a trend. A treadmill. A seemingly endless cycle. Once the agonising craving hit an unbearable level, the ghosts would go to idiotic lengths to come up with the tenner they needed to make the pain go away. This almost always meant frantic, bumbling attempts to lift shops. It seldom went the way they hoped. The shops knew all the faces. The security guards would grab a hold of skinny arms and the cops would be summoned. Then it would be court and six months, usually in HMP Dumfries. Over and over and over and over.

HMP Dumfries was and is a great jail. It offers no material for a Netflix eight parter. Most of the ghosts would emerge from their sentence several months drug free. One of the first jobs on their to do list would be to bring a referral slip into us to collect a food parcel to take to their apponted homeless accommodation.

Most of the time, their good intentions hadn't survived their first hour of freedom. There is only one road out from the front door of Dumfries jail. Liberation hour was eight in the morning and the town's dealers knew this only too well. They would hang out at the junction where the one road emerged into other roads. Y'alright pal? Fancy a wee taste? And a £40 liberation grant was more than enough to pay for the wee taste and a resumed place on the treadmill. A few were knocked over by their wee taste, their systems unready for the first hit in months. For them a short sentence became a death sentence.

Others would ride the wave and make it into our place like zombies. Dribbling. Barely awake. Barely able to string three words together. In the words of the street, completely monged.

Later they would come back. Hungry eyed and twitchy. To apologise. To curse their own stupidity. To hate themselves for being such easy pickings. Distraught to have made so many promises to their families and broken them all within a few hundred yards of HMP Dumfries.

And they would often say all kinds of 'if only'. Honest Mark, this time I really thought it was going to be different. I was three months clean. I was going to make it up to my mum. And my gran. I was going spend time with the bairns. I was going to get a job and a place of my own and hook up with old pals who never went for the kit. You ken? That was going to be me.

So why wasn't it?

You Ken. They fuckers were waiting. Want a wee taste? Aye right. A wee fucking taste. And that was me. All fucked up again. Even if I'd make it all the way to the hostel, I would still have fucked it. Every fucker in there is on the kit. No way I'd have stayed away from it.

So what would make it different?

And always the same answers. Someone to pick them up from the front gate of the jail. And then a place to stay where there wasn't heroin behind every door. A safe place. A sanctuary.

So we took it all on board and came up with the 'Walk the Walk' Project. And it looked good on paper. It looked really good on paper. We set up a partnership. First Base, the Prison, the criminal justice department and the homeless department. A two bedroom flat in town was allocated to the project. It was on a first floor and defended by a locked door and cameras. We designed a set of rules based on what the guys asked for. They knew they couldn't be trusted. They knew they would exploit any weaknesses. They knew their addiction would make them lie and cheat. They had no interest in any niceties.

They asked for a complete ban on visitors. Break the rule and get chucked out.

They asked for daily drug testing. Fail a test and get chucked out.

Black and white. No grey areas. Hard line. Their call, not ours. Their rules, not ours.

So we took their requests and sold them hard for a few months until all the ducks were in a row.

Anyone wanting to join the project had to let us know a few weeks before their liberation date. I would go into the jail to meet them. To do my best to assess their determination. If they were willing to sign on the bottom line, they could join the project.

I'll call the first two guys Bill and Ben. Not their real names - obviously. I saw Bill in HMP Dumfries and I saw Ben in HMP Barlinnie. Both were emerging from more than two year's worth of time. Both were in their early thirties and had been living chaotic, heroin fuelled lives since their late teens. Both were past the point of no return with their families. Both had multiple stretches in jail under their belts. Both said they were sick of it and ready for a new life. A better life. A job. A flat. The whole nine yards.

They were both wider than wide. Seasoned in artful dodging. But smart. More than capable of finding a decent life if they stuck at it.

So I collected them from the gates of the two prisons and got them into the flat. Stage one. Tick. No relapse in the first two hours of freedom. And for a month or so, the daily visits to do the drug tests went like clockwork. Then things slipped. Not in at the appointed hour. Half baked excuses. And when they failed the drug test, they said the tester was wrong. Shite. A pure joke. And they left the flat in a flurry of swearing and complaints at the unfairness of life.

We still saw them of course. At the front counter. As the weight fell away and the time served clocked up.

Bill died long before he turned forty. And Ben faded. Two years ago I met him in Dalbeattie and he was a human skeleton. I didn't think he had more than a couple of months left. But a stay in hospital brought him back from the brink. Just not very far. By now he was a pathetic shadow of his former self. His family had disowned him. He had ripped off every one of his mates. He was banned from every shop on the high street. His life ran on a heavy daily dose of methadone and a couple of bags of smack when his benefits dropped into his account. In his words, he was the classic 'Giro Junky'. Pure fucked, ken?

Ken.

Yesterday morning I had an appointment at the hospital. I was running late and there was not enough time to trawl the car park for a space. So I parked up on the road and opted for the five minute walk option. Not a great choice. The forecasted 70 mph gale lashed rain at me. The cold lanced into the bones. The world was wall to wall grey.

The pavement leading to the front door of the hospital was gleaming wet and the newly planted trees were limbo dancing in the wind. Not many people about. Bent and hunched under flapping brollies.

And to the side of the sliding door was a figure in a wheelchair. Light blue pyjamas. Staring out into the raging grey. No doubt taking a break from the stifling warmth of the ward. And as I drew nearer I clocked the fact that the figure in the blue pyjamas had no legs. Everything below the top of his thighs was open space. Poor sod.

And them the figure in the blue pyjamas raised a hand and waved at me. A familiar voice from way back when.

“Alright Mark.”

Christ. 

Ben.

Ben minus both legs. Ben minus friends or family. Ben minus everything. Sat out there in the soaking cold of a January morning. Just staring. Staring into a future as bleak as a future can get.

Christ.

I returned his wave. I returned his greeting. I tapped at an imaginary watch. No time. Sorry. Need to get inside.

Which is what I did. And I made my appointment on time. And when I stepped back out into the rain he was gone.

So what next? I have no clue. It is hard to see anything good. It is hard to imagine a life more empty. Will he keep on using? What else is there? And for how long?

Over the last year or so, the news has had a lot to say about Scotland's rising number of drug deaths.

We have witnessed our fair share. Like Bill. Each and every one has been of the Trainspotting Generation. Each and every one has been years and years in the making. Slow deaths. Bodies reaching the end of the line. Old fighters unable to take one punch too many.

Ten years ago we came up with an idea which looked good on paper. An idea which slammed into a reality called Bill and Ben.

And now Bill is no more.

And Ben is sitting out in the cold staring into a million miles of nothing. With no legs. With nothing much at all.

And not much race to run.