I Just Wanted to Be Loved: A boy eager to please. The man who destroyed his childhood. The love that overcame it.. Stuart Howarth

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СКАЧАТЬ (the ‘happy hormone’) to be released in the brain. A few hours after taking a standard ecstasy tab, you'll have no serotonin left in storage because it will all have been released into the bloodstream, so it's obvious that it's going to mess up your moods. It takes a while for your body to produce more serotonin so that you can feel cheerful again without chemical help and in the meantime you can get very low.

      MDMA makes you feel speedy and energetic when you're still up, and much more sociable than usual. It's all very intense, so sometimes you need to drink a couple of pints to bring you down a bit, and if you go down too far you might need a couple of lines of coke to bring you up again. Finding the right mood can be a delicate chemical balancing act.

      And this wasn't all I was taking. Some bodybuilder friends introduced me to GHB (gammahydroxybutyric acid) because it promotes REM sleep, during which your body secretes growth hormone so it helps you to build muscle. I soon found it had plenty of other effects as well. GHB was used as an anaesthetic during World War II, when they had to perform amputations on the battlefield. It's also been used medically to treat depression and insomnia, and to help recovering alcoholics. At the levels you take in clubs, it produces a sense of euphoria and increased libido, and it can make the effects of ecstasy even more intense. It was first used as a recreational drug in the gay community in the 1970s and 1980s, and River Phoenix (star of My Own Private Idaho) had some in his bloodstream when he collapsed and died outside Hollywood club The Viper Room in 1993.

      GHB is a colourless liquid with a slightly salty taste, a bit like pee. If you have more than two capfuls of it, it will knock you out for four to five hours, so it can be a good way to come down at the end of the night when you want some sleep. I have also heard of several cases where it has been used as an alternative to the date-rape drug rohipnol because it's easy to slip into a drink yet it can't be detected in the body more than four hours later. It's a very dangerous drug, especially combined with alcohol, and it's also addictive after a while, causing withdrawal side effects of insomnia, anxiety, sweating, chest pain, aching muscles, and even convulsions and hallucinations.

      Of course, it was all a ridiculously bad idea to be tampering with my mental state in this way, feeding myself a cocktail of uppers and downers to try and achieve oblivion. I didn't think I had a problem, though, because I only did drugs at weekends and I always got myself back to work first thing on Monday morning.

      In a typical weekend Tracey and I would go out together on Friday night but she'd want to come home around midnight while I stayed out all night with my mates, going from club to club drinking and drugging. I'd stagger home at some stage on Saturday morning, sleep all afternoon, then go out on Saturday night to get off my face again, and sometimes I'd do the same on Sunday as well. Monday to Wednesday were my days for recovery and I felt like shit, but I went to work, came home and had a protein shake, changed into my gym gear, went to the gym for a workout, then came back for dinner and bed. By Thursday I'd be feeling better again and raring up for another ‘lost weekend’.

      As you can imagine, Tracey was very unimpressed by this behaviour. In the months before I went to prison she'd known I took drugs occasionally, but nothing like this. She says that my chemical-induced moods were so unpredictable that when the front door opened she had no idea which Stuart was going to walk in. I could be aggressive and argumentative or, occasionally, loving and affectionate (but this was becoming quite rare).

      Looking back, I've got no idea why she stuck around because there was nothing in it for her. She was getting nothing back from me except grief. One minute I'd completely ignore her and the next I'd be all upset and needing comfort and love. She'd try to talk to me and I'd either respond with a grunt or by bursting into tears.

      Tracey's never been a nag but she began to try to get me to calm down and think about what I was doing to myself.

      ‘You can go out and have a few pints, Stuart, but just come home with me at a normal time and we can enjoy the rest of our weekend together.’

      She was never a big drinker and she didn't touch drugs so I thought she was just trying to spoil my fun. She'd try to pin me down, asking what time I was coming home, calling me on my mobile when I was out drinking and drugging with the lads – all perfectly reasonable behaviour when you think about it, but the more she tried to change me, the more I resisted it.

      ‘What are you doing later?’ she'd ask, and I'd ignore her.

      ‘Stuart, what's going on? Why are you not talking to me?’

      ‘It's your own fault,’ I'd say. ‘You never stop bloody nagging.’

      I'd often start an argument deliberately on a Friday night because I wanted the freedom to drink and drug as much as I chose over the weekend. If I managed to manipulate the situation so that we had a row and I stormed out, it left the coast clear to party.

      ‘Anyway, it's your fault I go out and get drunk,’ I'd say. ‘If things were right between us, I wouldn't need to.’

      Everything was Tracey's fault, to my mind: the reason I went out, got drunk, took drugs – the reason why my life was so horrible. The bottom line was that no matter how hard she tried, it seemed as though she couldn't save me. I'd thought that if she loved me enough, really loved me to the core, then I would get better, but instead I was getting worse. I was having more and more flashbacks of the abuse, and my sleep was disturbed by horrible nightmares that left me dizzy and hyperventilating when I woke.

      I was stark naked and my stepfather was tying me up with ropes at the back door. He twisted me so that my feet were trussed up to my neck, secured my arms behind my back so I couldn't move a muscle, then just laughed and laughed at the sight of me trapped there. ‘Try and get out of that!’ he sneered, proud of his handiwork.

      Shirley and Christina were watching but I knew there was nothing they could do to help without bringing his wrath on themselves. Dad's terriers were running around, yapping with excitement, and I was scared they would nip at my exposed flesh. The ropes cut into me but I tried not to wriggle, which would only make it hurt more. I knew I couldn't get free until he decided to untie me again.

      I was doing well at work but I didn't believe in myself so I'd come home and cry to Tracey, ‘Geoff hates me, they all hate me; they only asked me to work there because they felt sorry for me.’

      Sometimes she'd pick up the phone and call Geoff when I wasn't around, saying, ‘Will you please talk to Stuart and tell him you don't hate him and that he is doing OK?’

      They'd both try to calm me down, but at times I was inconsolable. It didn't occur to me for one moment that the chemical cocktails I was putting in my body might be making the problem worse. They were what helped me to cope with my problems, I thought, and Tracey was trying to stop me taking them and therefore she was in the wrong. She wasn't helping me after all; in fact, she was hindering my recovery by trying to stop my drug-taking.

      In a furious row one night at the end of February 2002, not quite five months after I was released from jail, I yelled at her to get out.

      ‘Why don't you fuck off back to your mum's and leave me alone? I've had enough of you going on at me all the time,’ I screamed.

      ‘Stuart, calm down. You don't mean that. I love you and I'm just trying to help you.’ She tried to put her arms round me but I dodged out of reach.

      ‘I love you too but it's obviously not enough,’ I told her. ‘We can't be right together or I wouldn't feel this way.’

      Tracey continued to reason with me but I was adamant, so at last she packed an overnight bag and off she went. It was Friday evening, so that left me free to go out drinking СКАЧАТЬ