Emmerdale’s Aaron Dingle gives into drugs as he takes Spice to cope with prison attacks
The mechanic has been suffering from homophobic abuse in prison
AARON Dingle has turned to drugs to cope with life in prison in Emmerdale.
The mechanic - who is played by actor Danny Miller - has been suffering from homophobic abuse in prison and targeted by the man who convinced his paedophile father Gordon killed himself.
Psychotic prisoner Jason dragged Aaron into the cell where Gordon committed suicide before taunting him and leaving him alone in his misery.
"I'm not going to kill you," he told him. "You're already dead."
But as the near constant abuse continued to take its toll on Aaron, and not even the prison chaplain's attempts to help him could get through and as the episode came to an end, Aaron's cellmate offered him a synthetic drug called Spice and he took it.
Laying back in his bunk he told his cellmate Ethan to give him the drugs and he began smoking it in the darkness.
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Meanwhile out of prison, Aaron's husband Robert Sugden couldn't cope with life without Robert and couldn't even sleep in their bed without him.
His sister Liv had her own problems with two bullies turning up and bullying her over Aaron's prison sentence.
In heartbreaking scenes, Liv sat at the end of her bed as she scrolled through the text message abuse she received about her brother and evil dad.
The horrendous bullying will see him turn to drugs to cope
Aaron – who was jailed for 12 months over his brutal attack on Kasim Sabet – initially tried to hide his sexuality when he first went into the prison.
Danny said: “The story highlights how it completely ruins people's minds and their physical appearance, but Aaron turns to that because it's the last thing he can do and it's his way of relieving the pain.”
“Obviously at the time, Aaron has been severely beaten up. He's broken quite a few ribs, and he's battered and bruised all over the place.”
With his friends and family visiting but not noticing anything wrong with Aaron, his younger sister immediately spots that something's going on and confronts him.
He said: “Liv's reaction makes things worse for Aaron, but he just didn't want to show that he's in pain.
Aaron can't even walk without feeling the pain, so in his mind, this will get him through the visitation and mean no-one realises what's wrong.
“Unfortunately, Liv notices that Aaron is a bit spaced out and she also smells the smoke. He's gutted that she's found out what's happened. He thought he could hide it, but she's more streetwise than he realised."
- Emmerdale airs weeknights on ITV at 7pm
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