For better and for verse

Poetry and some gritty real-life experiences are honing the support a Loughborough-based charity is offering as it reaches out to people suffering from drug and alcohol dependency, writes Tony Yorke.
 

STUART HARDY-TAYLOR was a prisoner to addiction for as long as he cares to remember.

As a child, he loved playing football. But the buzz he enjoyed when kicking a ball with his mates in the parklands of Loughborough was soon forgotten – once dependency started to derail his life.

Stuart was just 12-years-old when he became hooked. He was to remain so for more than 30 years, “swapping glue sniffing” for the tried and tested drink and drugs concoction that makes so many people prisoners within their own bodies.

Throughout his marriage and the early days of fatherhood, and while he earned his living as a long-distance lorry driver, Stuart was often “off his head”, as he puts it. Yet, as a ‘high functioning’ addict, he was able to disguise his addiction.

“Nobody really k...