Natalie TharraleosBy Miranda Arieh
This is Ross. Ross has been living with me since April, coming off heroin and crack, which he ended up funding via a vicious cycle of shoplifting, in a desperate bid to avoid withdrawal.
Today’s BBC will lead on a breaking shoplifting story which will go nationwide. Ross was generous enough to share the inner workings of the “grafting” life he was living and has been extremely brave in sharing his story with them over the past few months, to hopefully inform future change.
He is aware that there may be backlash and judgement but he tells his story to raise awareness of the impact that undiagnosed neurodivergence and childhood trauma can have on people when there are no interventions.
This process has been healing for Ross and your kind messages of support for him will all be passed on.
I have learned so much in the past 5 months through suddenly feeling called to turn my home into an “alternative rehab”. I have not shared any of this personal stuff online before as I felt it would have cheapened the “grief portal” we were in together- as I removed Ross from his home following the death of our beloved friend, my angel; Robin Elias, who was my first ever secure attachment when we were all teenagers together.
I will find a way to one day share about that, but not yet.
Ross is a life long friend, ex partner and I know we will spend our entire lives together, as we have done for 24 years. Even though our paths took different routes, as I drove to heal my pain and he sadly went further into his, we stayed connected and those routes all led us exactly to where we are now and Ross remarkably turning his life around.
I will not go into the inner workings of what is going wrong with the drug addiction and criminal justice system rn, I will save that for another time, but I have a lot to say about how many of the societal and pharmaceutical systems supposedly set up to rehabilitate are currently failing the most vulnerable people in our society.
Ross hadn’t been sober his entire adult life as he had found the need to numb since we were young, due to childhood trauma. He has now been clean off crack, smack and class A drugs for 4 months.
I am so proud of Ross.
Tune into BBC Breakfast and mainstream news radio, TV and online through today Thursday 29th August 2024 to catch parts of Ross’s story
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