One of the most powerful sessions we offer is when one of the volunteers gives the audience the privilege of hearing their life story, offering a memorable insight into a world very few people know about. The Choose Life Project founder Steve Duffy has heard over six hundred life stories over the last quarter century, and he is still routinely shocked by some of the ones he hears.

Very few people have insights into the world of a drug addict. Understandably, it is hard to comprehend the hour by hour pattern that develops when a drug habit gets out of control and takes over someone’s life. Imagine your existence being completely governed by drugs - imagine all of your thinking, motivation and behaviour being governed by drugs, where to get them, and how to acquire the money to buy them. You can then begin to gain an appreciation of what it is like, but there is much more to it than that. Every account is different from each volunteer, a unique and highly personal telling of their descent into a nightmarish world of drugs and how they finally manged to escape.

When the Choose Life volunteers sit in front of people and talk openly about this day in day out cycle, and discuss things that they feel ashamed, embarrassed, or even guilty about, it leaves the listener with an understanding that cannot be acquired in any other way.

In this insightful session one of our volunteers talks about her own experience of being a working girl on the streets, identifying the triggers that caused her to start doing it, and how she eventually got out. Authentic experiential knowledge like this is one of the great assets of the Choose Life Project, and helps to open the eyes of professionals and others who had once pre-judged women working on the street without the understanding of why they did it.

This presentation explores some of the links between imprisonment and drug use, and looks at the human statistics behind the criminal justice system. The Choose Life Project founder Steve Duffy also recalls anecdotal evidence from his many years as a Prison Officer and Counsellor working in the Prison System.

This presentation originated from an incident in a Liverpool school where, as the Project Manager was preparing to set up, a young girl said to him “I know what you are going to do, you’re going to put recovered drug users in front of us and then expect us to be sorry for them. It’s not going to happen - it’s their choice, they wanted to take it, let them get on with it!”

We believe many people have this attitude simply because they do not understand addiction. In this presentation our volunteers explain why people take drugs, they explain graphically how hard a life on drugs can be, and why it is so difficult to stop their habits. They dispel many of the myths around drugs and allow people who have suffered addiction the opportunity to explain to others why and how it all happened.

There are many issues around drug dealing, and society’s attitude to it. Our volunteers go through a PowerPoint presentation put together by various drug dealers who are serving between ten and fifteen years for drug dealing. We will talk about the devastating consequences that these activities have on communities, the manipulation of young and vulnerable people, and we’ll explore the life testimony of one of the dealers.

When a woman drinks alcohol during pregnancy, she risks giving birth to a child who will be born with full-blown Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS). The Choose Life Project founder came across many inmates in his years as a Prison Officer that he believes showed a lot of the characteristics of FAS. Our volunteers talk about their experiences of alcohol and its damaging effects, and try to dissuade other young women from following in their footsteps.