JOHN could be any normal lad, but he has just come through a nightmare that threatened to destroy his life.

Meeting John, there are no clues that the healthy looking, smart young man was an addict with a £20 a day habit less than a year ago.

John, who now talks proudly about his community work and plans of going to college, has been to prison for theft and perverting the course of justice.

Shunned by his family and existing from day to day John, 21, believes he was "living in the gutter" and there was nowhere left for him to go.

But John's story offers hope for the hundreds of young people caught up in the trap of heroin addiction and crime in East Lancashire.

The young man was offered a lifeline by a group of committed voluntary workers at a Blackburn centre.

With their help, John battled against his addiction for six months and is now ready to make a new start for himself.

He said: "When I was about 14, I was like any normal lad and I started smoking cannabis. It was just part of the culture I was involved in. "When I got a bit older I moved on to harder drugs like LSD and speed and I started taking heroin when I was around 18.

"At first I smoked it then I started injecting it. I was stealing from my parents to pay for the heroin and when they found out they kicked me out of the house."

John moved in to a flat in Mill Hill and lost his job assembling windows at a double glazing firm.

He drifted into stealing and shoplifting to raise the cash for the drugs and was eventually sent to prison.

He said: "I had been using for about two and a half years when I came out of prison.

"I came to the drop-in centre at St Anne's about a year ago and Father Jim McCartney got to know me.

"I started helping around the centre and slowly I began to realise there was a lot more to life than taking drugs."

John agreed to go on a rehabilitation course in Bristol, but it turned out to be a failure.

A lot of the people on the course were still taking drugs and John found the temptation too much.

He returned to Blackburn and decided to work with Father Jim in an attempt to beat his addiction.

The priest, who helps run a drop-in centre for Blackburn's homeless and drug addicts, worked out a personal rehabilitation programme based on a pioneering American scheme.

John went through a week of withdrawal at St Anne's Church and then six months of hard work began. A group of 30 volunteer befrienders which included teachers and a company director spent all their spare time with John.

And Father Jim held a scripture based session with the youngster at least once a day.

"I spent a lot of time looking into myself. I had turn my back on everything I had become and look for a new beginning," he said.

"I had got so low, I was almost in the gutter and I am so glad I have come through all that now.

"I am not ashamed of what I was, but there is no way I want to go back to that time in my life. I have come so far and achieved so much."

John believes his experiences have changed him forever and in some way made him a better person.

He now advises Father Jim and is a member of Thomas, the national group set up to campaign for the rights of people living on the edges of society.

John works during the week at a community centre in Salford and is planning to go to college next year.

He said: "I can't really relate to the people I used to be involved with any longer. I still have a social life but I can't go out in Blackburn town centre any more. I am a lot more confident and more assertive than the person I used to be.

"I saw where my life was going and made a conscious choice about where I would be in the future."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.