I tried cocaine at 17 and lost my job, home and almost died. It's everywhere.
WITH the drink flowing and the party in full swing, Georgina Gorin took a sniff of the white powder being passed around.
She was just 17, and it was her first experience of an illegal Class A drug — cocaine — which would come to dominate and devastate her adult life.
She lost her job, her home and her happiness, and it was only when she came close to death 15 months ago that she vowed to get clean.
Georgina, now 35, says: “I am so lucky to be alive.”
Many British cocaine users were not so fortunate, with record numbers dying last year.
Scotland had the highest number of drug deaths in Europe, at 1,339, with more than three people a day dying from drug abuse.
While most were deaths from heroin, 459 were caused by cocaine, accounting for 34 per cent of deaths and up from 93 in 2015.
In England and Wales the death toll was the highest since records began in 1993, at 4,561 deaths — with 777 of them involving cocaine, five times as many as a decade ago.
One of the major causes for this shocking rise is that extra-strong cocaine is now flooding into Britain.
Less than a decade ago it was mainly ten to 20 per cent purity, but now the drug, grown in Latin America, can be bought 80 per cent pure.
Its potency has risen in response to the demands of British users acting like coke connoisseurs, with attitudes to the drug and its strength akin to wine snobbery.
DARK WEB
But for its victims, the reality is far more stark.
Yesterday we told how Kerry Katona’s ex-husband George Osaghae-Kay died after taking large amounts of the drug in 2019.
The former pro rugby league player had struggled with the effects of drug abuse for some years before his death.
His inquest found that 39-year-old George died of cocaine toxicity after eating a “white ball” of the drug in a hotel.
Another reason for cocaine’s climbing death toll is that risk-taking users are increasingly trying a cocktail of substances, pushing their bodies beyond their limits.
Turning Point, a national health and social care charity, warns that mixing alcohol and cocaine causes the liver to produce cocaethylene, a poisonous chemical which can be 30 times more toxic than cocaine itself.
The US government’s National Institute on Drug Abuse warns that taking cocaine with booze is the most common cause of death when mixing two substances.
While coke was once seen as a rich person’s drug, it is now taken by all classes, with social media and the dark web making it easy to obtain.
Football fans from across the country were openly snorting it on London’s streets during this summer’s Euros — and cocaine is used in every city, town and village in the land.
Eytan Alexander, founder of UK Addiction Treatment, or UKAT, a chain of rehab centres, tells The Sun: “You can order it like you would something on Amazon.”
Georgina, a former saleswoman, from Rochdale, Greater Manchester, is trying to help others by volunteering for Turning Point.
She says: “I started going out with friends from college, going to parties at friends’ houses, and that’s when I got introduced to cocaine.
“Once the partying stopped, life became hard and mundane. I started to use alcohol and cocaine just to get through the evenings.
"People think it is a party drug, but it’s not. It makes you paranoid, it makes you depressed. It made me want to die.”
Working in jobs such as telephone sales and administration meant Georgina was not able to afford the £200 she sometimes spent on cocaine at the weekend.
Gradually she started to rack up thousands of pounds of debt on her credit card and could no longer afford to pay her rent.
The brutal comedowns led her to stop turning up for work and she became unemployable.
She ended up homeless, bedding down on others’ sofas or staying in hostels.
Then, 15 months ago, “close to the point of death”, she finally realised she had to kick the drug for good.
With the help of rehab and Turning Point, she says: “I now have no problems, which is amazing.”
But it is not just long-term addicts such as Georgina who are risking their lives. Dabbling with the drug only briefly can prove to be fatal.
Former soldier James Vaughan, from Hove, East Sussex, turned to cocaine while suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.
His dad Alan, from Horsham, West Sussex, says: “James certainly wasn’t an addict. He had steered away from drugs.
“He turned to cocaine in desperation right at the end.
“He was a keen bodybuilder and threw himself into the gym.
“He got offered steroids, and that led to the cocaine and his body couldn’t withstand it.”
At an inquest into his death in December 2019, police said that the strength of the cocaine sold to 39-year-old James was “higher and more deadly” than had previously been in circulation.
In 2020 Brighton and Hove recorded 43 deaths from drug misuse, compared to the previous year’s total of 24.
The authorities believe purer cocaine is a factor, with users not realising how deadly it can be.
HEALTH EMERGENCY
Alan, 70, says: “He didn’t know how much he was getting and what was going to happen.”
James, who had suffered two accidents while in the Army Air Corps, was trying to get his life back together.
In July 2019 he was working as a transport manager and had just moved into a flat of his own when he died from the overdose on his new sofa.
Alan says the NHS didn’t take James’s problems seriously when he went for a psychiatric assessment.
He says: “He waited for various referrals and when he got one, the doctor asked a student to assess him. James needed proper help.”
Turning Point wants to see more treatment services and describes the rise in deaths as a “public health emergency”.
In January the Government promised £148 million to tackle drug crime and to support treatment services.
Part of the money will go towards a pilot project titled ADDER — Addiction, Diversion, Disruption, Enforcement and Recovery.
ADDER to tackle UK’s drugs problem
THE Government dedicated £43.1million to tackle drugs across the UK in project ADDER this year.
The pilot programme – which stands for Addiction, Diversion, Disruption, Enforcement and Recovery – promises to tackle hotspots for coke and other drugs nationwide until 2024.
The scheme covered Blackpool, Hastings, Middlesbrough, Norwich and Swansea Bay when it launched in January.
Now a further eight towns, boroughs and cities – Bristol, Hackney in North London, Tower Hamlets in East London, Wakefield, Liverpool, Newcastle, Knowsley and the Wirral – will see tougher policing and better recovery services.
While police will crack down on drug gang leaders, local authorities have been given money to provide better drugs treatment and family support.
The funding was part of a wider £148million Government spend to cut drugs crime.
Home Secretary Priti Patel said: “The Government’s work to tackle county lines drugs gangs has already resulted in thousands more people being arrested and hundreds more vulnerable people being safeguarded, but we must do more to tackle the underlying drivers behind serious violence.”
It will focus on five of the country’s worst-hit areas — Blackpool, Hastings, Middlesbrough, Norwich and Swansea Bay.
Blackpool, one of England’s poorest towns, has the highest figures for drug-related deaths, at 22 people in every 100,000.
Natalie Travis, National Head of Service at Turning Point, says: “Drug-related deaths are more common in impoverished communities.”
But it is a major problem among the rich as well. UKAT founder Eytan Alexander had a high-powered job in London for almost 20 years before setting up his addiction treatment centres.
He fell prey to the lure of cocaine while socialising with colleagues and says: “I used to work in the City and it came with that lifestyle.
“But ultimately I wasn’t happy and I lost who I was.”
Even though he quit drugs 12 years ago he still considers himself to be in recovery.
He says: “Today I choose living. It is a chronic illness, there is no cure, but it can be stopped.”
There is such a demand for help that UKAT’s eight treatment centres are all full.
Eytan, 49, says: “These numbers are damning. There isn’t enough space.”
Tony Saggers, former Head of Drugs Threat and Intelligence with the National Crime Agency, agrees that more treatment centres are needed.
But while he is sympathetic to addicts, he has less time for the casual drug users who are driving much of the demand.
He says: “Casual cocaine users need to feel accountable for what they are contributing to — donating funds to organised crime groups who also traffic firearms for criminal use and women for sex slavery into the UK.
“They are also corrupting our port security and smuggling vast sums of cash out of the UK.
“Cocaine users are not only putting their personal health at risk, they are damaging the wellbeing of others and the fabric of our society.”
Georgina wants people to know that it is possible to break free of the grip of this all-pervasive substance.
Speaking to her, the joy of escaping cocaine is all too clear.
She says: “I want people to know that recovery is possible. There is a life beyond that obsession with this drug.”
Turning Point urges anyone who is concerned about their own or a loved one’s drug and alcohol use to contact their local service at turning-point.co.uk.
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