REAL LIFE: Simon’s long and winding road

Simon is a 35-year-old Norwich-born man living at YMCA's Norwich hostel for homeless young men. When he arrived, 14 months ago, he was, in his own words, "a raving smack head."

Previously, he had been with his girlfriend and mother of his two children for ten years. He had a steady job, working as a pipe layer on the railways. A regular family man.

But Simon's increasing addiction to heroin was causing major problems at home. "The arguments, the more I was out of it, it was scaring the kids. I had to go, I realize that."

After a few weeks sleeping on first his mum's, then his sister's sofas, he soon had to leave them too. The heroin drove him apart from everything that had mattered to him and away from any means of support. He went downhill fast, the addiction exerting an ever harder grip on him.

Eventually he lost his job and contact with his children. He spent five months living on the streets of Norwich, getting by on shoplifting and selling heroin. Inevitably he was arrested and spent two weeks in prison on remand, receiving a two-and-a-half-year suspended sentence.

The key to starting to solve his problems was finding somewhere to live. "I tried various hostels but it was hard," he said. "Then I came to the YMCA one Friday, had an interview on the Monday and moved in a week later."

Simon didn't tell YMCA support workers about his habit. He didn't want to jeopardize his chance of a bed to sleep in and a roof over his head. But he knew they weren't stupid. "They'd soon worked it out. I was sleeping till 2pm, monged out of my head half the day." And of course they were well aware of Simon's criminal conviction.

After a while, Simon felt able to confide in his YMCA support worker about his addiction and begin the long journey to recovery. "He's just a brilliant geezer," says Simon. "He didn't push me; just let me come out with my story when I was ready. That way I felt I could trust him. He's helped me sort my rent and housing benefit arrears."

Simon's YMCA support worker put him in touch with drug support agencies, the first time he'd received any help for his addiction. He is now stable on methadone, but has never lost the desire for heroin. It will be a long time until he feels himself able to establish anything like normal life again, even though one dirty test will put him straight back into prison.

"Methadone is even harder to come off than heroin. It'll take two or three years for me to get clean. One day at a time. In the meantime I'm just waiting on the courts to decide if I can see my kids. I miss them; it's what I've done to them that kills me."

"The good thing with the YMCA is there is always someone to talk to, 24 hours a day."