Andy — Breaking Britain

Andrew

I first met Andy at Claire’s house in 2015. We struck up a conversation and he said: “You should come around and interview me. I’ve got plenty to tell”. two months later I went to Blackpool and spent some time with him at his home.

He was born in 1971 with a deformity in his left ankle. At 18 he had an operation to try to correct this and by chance he got to see his surgeon’s notes. His parents had told him his medical issues were because he’d had a stroke when he was born, but he read from the notes that he had Cerebral Palsy. This news made him ‘lose the plot’. He went into freefall and started taking drugs. He soon started trying harder and harder drugs. By 21 he’d tried just about every type of drug in the country. At 24 things had got really bad and he decided to kill himself by overdosing. Fortunately, he was found and rushed to hospital.

He has two daughters from a long-term relationship who come to stay with him several nights a week, but he has no other family because his mother and siblings have moved away. As much as Andy tries to give up drugs, he lives surrounded by his old drug mates and dealers which makes it very difficult. He’d relapsed two weeks before my visit and it took him days to recover from it. His daughter was furious. He feels the only way to stop is to leave the area and go and live close to his family.

“My name is Andrew Bowler, I was in 1971 born in Oldham, I have a disability here which is cerebral palsy, affects the left side of me body…”

“And how it started - my descent into drugs - was when I was 18 I went for an operation which is a wedge tarsectomy revision, as soon as I got out of hospital I went off the rails, got into the wrong crowd, started smoking weed, tried drinking but I didn’t like the after effects so I went from weed to E’s, acid, you name it. By the time I was 21 I’d basically done every drug in England you can think of…”

“When I was 21 I started to clean my act up a bit. I started working, I was working for a taxi-firm, got myself straightened out, got myself a nice little flat, but then one day I was driving down a road in St Anne’s and I pulled up at the lights when 3 lads, who I’d known when I was on drugs, jumped up out at the lights and waved at me and I tried to drive off. “One thing led to another, got into the flat with them, ‘have a couple of lines mate’ as a little treat, it was there in front of me and I just couldn’t say no…”

Portraits of Andy’s Daughter and Father (Deceased)

“And it was just, bam, straight in from just smoking it then to injecting it and next thing I know I ended up with a mad abscess and clots, DVT’s, it was just, it was horrible. Basically, I just couldn’t take it anymore…”

“I ended up at one point, I think I was about 24, I ended up buying some drugs and taking it all in the flat on me own and the intention was ‘that’s it, I’m done’, but from some weird twist of fate I was found in the nick of time, taken to the hospital…”

Andy’s video.

“Many a times, I‘ve got up not had a wash, not brushed me teeth, got clothes on that I’ve had on for 3 or 4 days, gone out smelling really bad n’all, body odour ‘n’ that, gone and not given a toss and gone out ‘n’ got me stuff, come back sorted myself out, then, gone and got myself cleaned up,”

Cavities in Andy’s skin caused by over injecting in the same area.

“After 8 or 9 o’clock at night, you’re having a last fix, and then you either crash out because of where you are on a settee or upstairs, and you’ve not got changed, sometimes you sleep in the clothes you’ve just gone out in. And then you’re back up again in the morning, straight through the routine all over again…”

And you’ve no social life whatsoever, you can’t go out and meet people, because straight away they know there is something not quite right with you, you can’t go ‘right, let’s go for a drink’ because you are perpetually skint and for my future I’ve got to stay away from everything that I want, because my health is deteriorating rapidly at the moment…”

“I’m 44 in 6 days and I feel like I’m 70. I might be having my left leg lower knee amputated this year or maybe beginning of next year but that’s just a health problem due to me cerebral palsy. Whereas when I say it to people, straightaway the stigmas there, ‘Is it through drugs?’, it’s not through drugs why that’s having to be taken off, but it’s still there and its always going to be there and that’s what I am hoping for in the future, to get away from that stigma…”

“Yeah, that’s what I want for my future basically, I want my children to be proud of me as well, and my parents, and my family, I want them to be proud of me, that I’ve actually managed to sort things out for myself, eventually…”