You're not the first person to feel this way.

“I'd noticed changes in my son for a while — couldn't put my finger on what. Then I found a wee bag in his jacket pocket when I was hanging it up. I didn't know what it was. My sister was the one who told me. I felt sick. I didn't sleep for two nights. I kept thinking — where did I go wrong? And I realised I knew nothing about it. Not what cocaine actually was, not the signs, not how to even start a conversation. I went to the RCA Trust as an affected other — to get the picture before I sat down with my son. They walked me through it all: the signs, the tells, the complications, what addiction actually looks like up close. When I finally talked to him, I came at it informed instead of scared. He's been clean 14 months now. But I had to walk into a building to find this out. Something like this site should be available to every parent in the country — and who knows how many of us are out there right now with no idea where to turn.”

“I collapsed in a mate's bathroom on a Saturday night. Heart was going that fast I thought it was going to come out my chest. I couldn't breathe. Couldn't speak. My mate thought I was just whitey-ing but something was different. He called 999. The paramedics said if he'd waited another twenty minutes it could've been a different outcome. I was 26. Fit. Played five-a-sides twice a week. I didn't think it could happen to me. Nobody does — and I never saw how fast it had all spiralled. If the check-in tools on this site had been around when I was at the height of it, I'm sure I'd have done things differently. A year on, I haven't touched it since.”

“In HR you spot patterns that don't always have an obvious explanation — absences, performance shifts, conflicts that feel out of character. Managers come to us worried about someone and we haven't had a single trusted place to send them, or for staff to read for themselves. This site fills that gap. It's honest, practical, and doesn't moralise — which is what makes it usable. I'll be referencing it for our managers and signposting staff who get in touch. Honestly, I wish something like this had been around years ago.”

“I was selling, using, and tangled up in things a lot bigger than me. The whole way down, the services I came across told me different things — wrong advice, wrong assumptions, or just no answer when I needed one. By the time I overdosed and woke up in hospital, I'd convinced myself there was genuinely no way out. The RCA Trust were the first people who didn't moralise. They just dealt with what was in front of me. Three years on I'm clean — daughter, full-time job, none of it was on the cards. If this site had existed back then — one place with the right information, that every service trusts — I'm sure I wouldn't have gone that far.”