FOR the last nine years Jack Hewett has been in the grips of addiction, chasing his next fix or battling the devastating impacts of withdrawal.

At his lowest, he was vomiting hourly as the spiralling impact of a morphine addiction left him unrecognisable and looking like a ghost.

Now, after a year fighting his addiction head-on, the 23-year-old is clean and preparing to start a new life as he goes back to college to study counselling with the aim of helping others fighting the same demons he has battled for nearly a decade.

Speaking candidly about his addiction, Jack, from Shoebury, revealed he started using cannabis casually as a 14-year-old before quickly moving onto cocaine and other “party drugs”.

Last year he hit rock bottom - and knew something must change - as he began switching from social using to secretly taking drugs alone.

After becoming hooked on morphine, which he admits made him “deceitful, angry and emotionless”, he was left vomiting hourly, losing weight and in a cycle of depression, desperation, and shame.

Since January 2024, Jack has been working with a new key worker, James, at the Open Road charity in Colchester, something he credits with helping him drop his addiction to cannabis as well as morphine.

Now, Jake is a sponsor at Narcotics Anonymous meetings and will be starting a counselling course next week at South Essex College with aspirations to start his own rebab clinic.

Jake said: “The last couple of years, I really wanted to get clean but it was a big struggle and not until the last six or seven months have I managed to break away.

“At my lowest, I was in a relationship, that I am still in, and I was lying to my girlfriend as she didn’t know about the morphine.

“I would wake up, make excuses to get her out of the way to take the drugs and continue with my day, I was throwing up every hour, I was losing weight, I felt really alone.

“I didn’t feel I was able to tell my girlfriend or her family, it took my personality away, I became a ghost.

“Every part of my body wanted to stop but I couldn’t, it is weird to say, but I think that made the situation worse.”

Jake added that after September 2023, his “mindset changed.”

He said: “I realised I had an issue and I tried to cut off the weed, I was smoking one joint a day and I couldn’t seem to keep it away.

“I have an app and since quitting, I have saved £1,500 in the last five months. I met more people, those were clean or getting off, and started feeling like a member of society again.

“That has been a big change.”

The support of Open Road, a charity supporting addicts across Essex, changed Jake’s life drastically and without them, he admits he would still be in the same negative cycle.

He said: “Luckily the last two years of my addiction I began attending 1:1 sessions with Open Road young persons service in Southend. This was huge for me as I had never received help for my disease before and I didn’t know there was help.

“Attending these sessions planted a seed in me to eventually want to get clean. For a while I didn’t want to, but something in the back of my mind must have for me to keep coming back to sessions.

“I am so grateful for Open Road as they got me socialising with other addicts and made me feel like I wasn’t on my own which was something I had felt for years.

“Early 2024 I met James, he was my new key worker at Open Road, and my life changed from that first session. I identified so much with him and it just came at the perfect moment. I was finally ready to stop.

“I’m no longer isolated and I’m no longer imprisoned by substances. I strongly urge anyone struggling to come to Open Road’s Young Persons Service and just try it out. If it can work for me it can work for anyone.”