Martin Hopkins is sitting peacefully in the pretty, sun-dappled courtyard garden of Bristol’s Chandos House addiction treatment center. He’s come a long way in six months. “I was on the streets in Plymouth. I was using heroin, crack, spice. I was trying to kill myself,” he says.
The 41-year-old admits he was a one-man crime wave. “I was shoplifting. I was stealing off my family. I did whatever I could to get the $100 I needed every day. I did not care about anyone,” he says. Since coming to the all-male center, he has found the time and space to face up to both the pain he has caused and the pain that drove him to addiction. “The way I was brought up as kid, there was a lot of violence. I was beaten to the point that my ribs were broken. I had scars everywhere,” he says. “I started using at 11 – I was medicating because I couldn’t deal with being at home.”
Now he’s clean, Hopkins is keen to meet his children and contribute to society. “I’ve got two kids I’ve never seen and hopefully one day I can be a dad to them,” he says. “I’d like to do a bit of voluntary work – give something back to the community because I’ve taken so much.”
But he is one of the lucky ones. From next month, the residential care that has helped Hopkins begin to turn his life around will no longer be available in Bristol. Falling referrals mean Chandos House, the last remaining rehab center in the city, will have to close.
