Turning point

How I stopped breaking the law and started to break the cycle
Recovering addict, Shaun Svilte
Recovering addict Shaun Svilts with the tree mural he painted for the Peterborough Crime Reduction Initiative centre. Photograph: Si Barber

Shaun Svilts first took heroin in 1998 when a dealer told him it cured toothache. Within two weeks, he was hooked, leading to years of addiction.

But after a near fatal relapse this year, Svilts, 39, from Peterborough, is on a treatment programme that stops his heroin use, allowing him to rebuild his life with a career as an artist.

When he first took heroin, he had already been injecting amphetamines for a decade. "It wasn't hard to move over. After two weeks you're hooked. Heroin is almost like your partner, you'd do anything for it. So I sold my items. I was in the beginnings of a relationship with a girl. I had two children with her and the first five years of their life was while I was on gear. It destroys your emotions, you don't care what other people think and feel."

While serving a five-year prison sentence for burglary he occasionally took heroin. After release in March, he took it again. ''I overdosed straight away. My heart stopped. I had to be brought back to life. I was supposed to have my kids to stay that weekend. I realised how close it had come to them going to my funeral."

He went to the Peterborough offices of the Crime Reduction Initiative (CRI), a charity that supports and rehabilitates drugs users. As a heroin substitute, he was given Subutex, a semi-synthetic opiate, which he still takes.

He believes addiction can never be truly cured. "The disease is with you permanently; you simply transfer it. I started gambling at 12, then used amphetamines, then heroin. Now I drink a little bit more, and manage my addiction this way because it's less destructive to myself – and others."

Jeffrey Archer, who he met in prison, used his illustrations in his Prison Diaries: Volume Two. "I spent three months doing an art course with him. He really likes art and told me I could become a great artist."

Over the past four months, his addiction has stabilised and encouraged by his drugs worker, Corranne Whichello, he has worked on large mural of a tree at the CRI offices in Peterborough, each branch representing a different stage of his treatment. "Corranne has helped me so much. We did the design together and had six or seven weeks of meeting up at weekends, working on it."

He hopes to use his experiences to help others. "I'd like to take a counselling course, so I can use the the negative years for some good," he says.

Shaun Svilts accepts commissions for his artwork through the CRI in Peterborough, cri.org.uk

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