Tech-006: Losing Myself and Finding the Strength to Come Back

Not every chapter in my journey is about building, innovating, or succeeding. Some are about falling apart — and pulling myself back together. This is the hardest part of my story to tell, but it’s also the most important.

Here’s where things take a bit of a downward spiral but it’s important to include…

Unfortunately, as I progressed into my teens I got in with the wrong crowd in my local village and turned to drugs, I developed an addiction to the drug mephedrone (MKAT).

It was legal at the time and none of us realised how dangerous this was and how much it would impact some of our lives.

This was a real dark period in my life and it’s hard for me to speak about but it’s also important to reflect on.

This addiction caused me to lose my job, friends, family and myself , It span the course of around 2 years in which I missed key events like my Sisters Wedding and the birth of my nephew Harrison.

This lives with my daily....

The last 3 months of my addiction I spent living on a caravan site on nothing but 10p noodles, I was wasting away in both mind and body...

I barely recognised myself anymore. I wasn’t the kid who built his first PC at 9, or the apprentice who was excited about coding. I was just surviving, and even that was getting harder.

It eventually got to a point where I was like “I need to go home”

Reflection

That dark period will always be a part of me. I can’t undo it, and I still carry the weight of the things I missed.

But I can also say this: it taught me resilience. It showed me the cost of losing myself — and the value of finding myself again. That lesson has shaped everything I’ve done since.