‘I was a police officer and addict who took coke on duty – then ended up homeless and drug running for the Albanian mafia’

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“There was this total euphoria. All the insecurities I had just completely disappeared, replaced by this phenomenal self-confidence,” he recalls.

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At just 18 years old, Nick had recently passed his medical test for entry to the Metropolitan Police – but cocaine changed everything.

Nick, who was raised in a loving family and went to grammar school, initially deluded himself into believing coke was helping him through his police training.

“I’d never been good at retaining facts but I found coke really helped sharpen my mind. The drugs were doing for me what I felt unable to do for myself - or so I thought,” he recalls.

“The moment I had it I wanted to chase that high. Within a week I had found my own dealer and was using every day," he recalls.

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While training he had cocaine delivered right outside the police building and by the time he graduated and joined police in London’s Kentish Town he was a fully-fledged addict - often arresting dealers during the day after snorting coke in the station toilets.

He would take the drug before shift and during it, and when he was promoted to be a rapid response driver he was often high at the wheel.

"One day when I was working as a response driver a call came over the radio that a colleague had been attacked," he recalls.

"That meant dropping everything – but I was doing a line of cocaine in the toilets.

"I ran and got in the car, lights on and raced off but then realised I’d left all my gear inside -  my credit card, rolled-up note and line of coke.

I had to turn the car round. I  grabbed all my stuff in the nick of time just as my sergeant was about to go in to that cubicle.”

At the peak of his addiction Nick took 8 grams of cocaine a day.

Have you or your family been affected by cocaine? Tell us your story by emailing [email protected]

'I thought SAS snipers were after me'

Within a few years the spiralling addiction cost Nick his job and left him tens of thousands of pounds in debt, living on the streets and on the run from Albanian gangsters.

At his lowest, Nick had a knife held to his throat by a furious dealer, robbed clients’ houses while working as an estate agent and stole a wallet from a man who had overdosed on drugs.

While in the throes of  its initial highs Nick “thought he was Tom Cruise”, but he was soon crippled by paranoia and crushing depression.

“I’d imagine SAS snipers on the roof aiming for me while I was out on the job,” Nick, now 37, recalls. “Another time I remember being in a hotel room convinced someone was coming for me. I was sweating, staring through the spyhole for the good part of six hours."

He is now telling his story in support of The Sun’s End Of The Line campaign to highlight the devastating impact the drug can have on mental health.

Cocaine use in the UK has doubled in the last five years, and doctors have warned a flood of cheap and potent cocaine into the UK is fuelling suicide rates.

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“The euphoria of that initial high quickly dissipates and so you are left chasing it again, needing ever more to get it – although you tell yourself that’s not what you’re doing. Instead you make excuses - it’s rainy, you’re tired, you need a boost. Anything to stop confronting that you’re an addict,” he says.

'Coke paranoia ruined me'

“I’d wake in the morning feeling overwhelmed, unable to face the day. What I know now – but I didn’t then – is that taking cocaine messes with your neurotransmitters. It makes you produce prodigious amounts of the feelgood chemical dopamine, so your brain stops doing it naturally.

“So once the cocaine high wears off you’re left feeling empty and anxious. Of course the obvious solution is to take another line.”

“Coke plays havoc with your mind,” he says. “Every cocaine addict will tell you that paranoia is one of the toughest things to deal with – that and the crushing depression that follows it. It left me anxious, depressed and panicky.”

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As Nick's addiction spiralled his weight plummeted to just eight stone, while his debts to dealers grew to £20,000.

“Amazingly I was still pulling the wool over the eyes of everyone I knew about what was really going on,” he says.

As bad as things got he never stooped to stealing drugs from the dealers he arrested - his cocaine-induced paranoia meant that seemed a risk too far.

Finally, aged 23, Nick was advised to resign after getting into a fight on duty with a man who was subsequently hospitalised.

'Money was coke coupons'

With massive debts and an ongoing coke habit, he joined an estate agency in a bid to make some easy cash and admits to robbing the houses of clients to fuel his addiction.

“Money stopped being money – it was coke coupons. Addiction makes you do things you’d once never dreamed of,” he says.

He began using prostitutes and became a prolific liar.

“I told people I met that I owned a boat in Puerto Banus, that I ran a record company. It means you can’t hold down relationships because of course you’ll get found out. So instead it became about instant gratification,” he says.

At 24 he made his first attempt to try and kick the habit.

“I’d had a knife held to my throat in a subway by a dealer to whom I owned money,” he says. “I still have a scar where he held it against my neck. At that point I had what is known as a geographical: you think that if you go somewhere else you can solve the problem.

“What I didn’t realise was the problem was in my head - and that meant that wherever I go the problem goes with me.”

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He ended up in East Berlin, initially working in property, only to fall in with a bunch of Albanian gangsters he met in a nightclub.

“I was doing favours for them in return for coke – running ‘errands’ -  like taking hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of drugs across the border to Austria,” he admits.

In fact those ‘favours’ came at a price. “What I didn’t realise was that all the coke I had been given was on a tab. Then the gang leader told me I owed £30,000 – and they didn’t take direct debit.

“This guy had the emotionless eyes of a shark. I was in no doubt he’d kill me if I didn’t pay up.”

'I hated what I'd become'

Terrified, Nick fled to the opposite end of the city, ending up homeless and begging on the streets until, after three weeks, he finally asked for help.

“I remember calling mum from a payphone, breaking down and telling her I had Albanians after me, I was an addict and I was homeless.

“She paid for me to come home and sent me straight to rehab for three months.”

Nick relapsed shortly after he came out.

“My lowest point was stealing a wallet from a guy in a club who was fitting after taking drugs himself,” he recalls. “I called an ambulance – then took his wallet.

I remember going into the bathroom of the club. It was 11.57pm on New Year’s Eve 2008. I looked into the mirror and hated myself. I thought, ‘I’m done’.”

He joined a Cocaine Anonymous programme and hasn’t touched drugs since.

Things have improved for Nick - six years ago he married Gemma, 29, former cabin crew, and the couple have a one-year-old-son Avery.

But he's desperate to make amends for the mistakes he made as an addict by helping others going through something similar.

He's founded organisation to help advise other addicts on the best courses of action available, talking to everyone from businessmen to dads and young girls.

"I know first-hand the high price you pay when you become addicted to cocaine," he says.

"I lost a job I loved, it affected my relationships and it turned me into a stranger."

Follow Nick on Instagram on @dadinrecovery where I he will be doing a 10 day ‘how to stop cocaine’ programme with tips and tricks to achieve sobriety.

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