FIRST PERSON: Araminta Jonsson on drug addiction and recovery

Until the age of 10, my life was just the life of a normal child. I don’t remember anything particular happening until I became aware of myself in the world. I then started to feel not good enough and overweight.

When I got into secondary school, my problems with food started; I wanted to be the thinnest, the most beautiful one. I remember drinking pints of vinegar so I couldn’t eat anything.

I was really confused about how to fit in and lost my virginity at the age of 13. I got in a relationship with a boy a year older than me and we had a very turbulent relationship. It would be so intense.

I thrived off that drama; I loved those extreme highs and lows that relationship could give me. That is a real signifier of my love of drugs; that is what they do, they send you really high and then really low.

When I was 15, I went to London for the day and, while I was waiting for the bus back, this Portuguese guy came up to me and asked for money. I said no, but he started talking to me – I had an hour and a half to kill.

He was about 18 and said to me his mother had started injecting him heroine from the age of four to beg. He told me this awful story about how he managed to escape his mum and come to the UK. He was still an addict.

I ended up giving him money and I remember wanting to help him so desperately. When I got home I told my dad that, when I grew up, I would set up a house for the homeless in London to help drug-addicted people. This was before I had taken any drugs. It has taken my all these years, and go through everything I have gone through, to do that.

Before I did my GCSEs I developed this obsession with this movie star called Josh Hartnett. I stalked him online and found out he lived in Minnesota. So, after I did my GCSEs, at the age of 16, I said to my parents I would move to the USA to marry this guy.

I moved to Miami on my own and met a 26-year-old Argentinian guy, with whom I fell in love. However, I only had a 90 day visa so I came back home.

I knew I wanted to go university and found a school who would let me do my A-levels in one year. I got really good grades and went to University College London (UCL) to study French and Spanish.

When I was in University, I couldn’t fit in. I wasn’t taking drugs, but my eating problems got really bad. I was throwing up a lot and so often that the sink got blocked.

At the end of that year, cocaine came into my head because I wanted to get thin. We had finished our first year exams and we had gone out in this bar in Soho. I was offered coke and that was it – I was off and running.

On my second year, I started using daily. I would buy a bottle of wine and a gram of coke and then sit on my laptop.

After I finished my degree with a 2:1, I went to Barcelona. I was working as an English teacher and got on a relationship with a Mexican guy.

He was the most normal guy I have been with. I fell head over heels in love with him. Those years were probably my happiest because he wouldn’t let me be as crazy as I had been before. My drug-taking had decreased as well, I was only using at the weekends.

The day he broke up with me, I started taking so many drugs. I was having three-day parties.

I would fly back to the UK with up to 20 grams of cocaine – not huge amounts but enough to get me in trouble. I never cared, I didn’t value my life enough. And also, I felt invincible.

I then started going out with a Colombian guy, so I went to Bogota with him. I remember we had this massive party before we went and we were taking drugs and drinking in the airport.

In the plane, my seat was right at the back and I was sat next to a young girl. I thought she would be fine so I ordered a beer at 6am. She looked at me and said ‘I will have one too’.

At this point, I put the tray table down and started preparing lines of cocaine. The girl joined in. I don’t know if staff saw us, but they didn’t say anything.

The cocaine was really strong in Colombia – I didn’t like it because it made me paranoid. But I couldn’t stop. During this time, I did every single crossword in The Guardian dating back to 1999. I was using drugs and doing crosswords, that is all I would do.

I was getting sick so I booked a flight home. I was 26 and moved to London, where I met another guy.

I didn’t have a single day not using drugs while I was with him until I fell pregnant. The day I found out I was pregnant, I stopped using drugs and drinking.

I had the baby and everything was fine – I was still not using. I honestly thought that Rory had fixed me, that he had filled that hole inside me. But he hadn’t and I started drinking a lot.

I ended going to a rehab centre in Bristol, where I fell in love with another man. When I left rehab, I moved in with him.

We were fine for about six months - then we booked a holiday in the Lake District. When we got to the hotel, in this beautiful setting, we were going to have afternoon tea and, in the menu, there was the option of champagne afternoon tea. I think it was me who suggested getting it, saying no one would know. It was such a lovely day.

We got back to Leeds and went to a pub for a meal. We started drinking and, when I was drunk, I said I wanted to get some cocaine. He said he knew one place, but it was crack cocaine that we would find there, not cocaine.

We ended up in this crack house but can’t remember what the first pipe was like. I thought ‘what is the deal with this? It is certainly not better or worse than other drugs.’ I thought I hadn’t relapsed because it wasn’t my drug of choice.

We then started using every weekend, when we didn’t have Rory. Every time we had Rory, all we would do is plan the next use. We then started using at night when Rory was asleep.

At one point, on a Sunday, I smoked crack in front of Rory. That day, I was no parent to Rory whatsoever. I was so high. We didn’t have heroin to come down so my ex-boyfriend drank a lot of alcohol.

When my ex-boyfriend came to bed, it was half an hour before Rory had to wake up. Rory came into our room, playing with his train, but I felt awful.

Because my ex-partner wouldn’t wake up, I jabbed with my elbow and he flipped. He was throwing me around the room. With all of us screaming, something clicked in the two of us and we realised we had to stop.

He called his sisters and told them we had relapsed. I knew the game was up.

When I came back to Wales, I didn’t go into rehab but threw myself into volunteering at The Voice Hub, in Newport. I started Pipe Down, a magazine based in Gwent about addiction and recovery – it aims to be an insight into the stigmatised subject of addiction.

The magazine gave me the focus and determination to believe I could succeed and live a life free of drugs.

Last November, I had to have a plug put in my nose because the cocaine had eroded the flesh and created a hole.

I have been clean for more than a year now and work for the International Conferences on Addiction and Associated Disorders (ICAAD).

I feel like I am in recovery now. Life is really great at the moment.

To find out more about Pipe Down, visit pipedownmagazine.co.uk

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If you would like to help fund Pipe Down, please contact araminta@pipedownmagazine.co.uk