Drug campaigner Charlie Rigby tells us his story and aspirations

Addiction is something I know all too well. It cost me my marriage and almost my family. I’d always been an addictive person, spending every waking moment running my business, but when I eventually sold it in a multi-million-pound deal I had time on my hands, time I filled with drink and cocaine.

I was 40 years old, had built my business, sold it and was now waiting for the next thing to get stuck into, but unfortunately this became drugs.

And this wasn’t a brief phase, for more than half a decade I snorted everything I could, I was a mess.

I used to take off from my Oxfordshire home and spent time alone in my London flat for weeks on end.

I’d been given cocaine at a party, enjoyed it and the next thing I know I was spending £500 a week on it. During my whole addiction period I spent tens of thousands on drugs, a staggering figure.

I tried my best to hide my behaviour and for many years was successful, yet when friends started to worry about me and shared their concerns with my wife everything exploded.

The woman I’d been married to for 20 years kicked me out.

I’d hit rock bottom.

My four children, who at the time were aged 12 to 17, all knew something was wrong with their father, they just didn’t know what to do about it.

I became the focus of the family with my destructive behaviour resulting in my wife filing for a protection order.

They were scared of the man I’d turned into and wanted things back to how they had been before.

It was during the 48 hours after being kicked out that I realised things had gone far too far and that I needed help. I set off for South Africa and spent a solid month in rehabilitation, before another four years going clean in the UK.

I’m proud to say I’ve never touched drugs since, I’ve reconciled with my children, am on speaking terms with my former wife, am back living in Oxfordshire — the most beautiful county in the world — and plan to remarry next March. Safe to say I was lucky. Things could have been worse.

I’ve since gone on to launch the Icarus Trust, an organisation which I hope will provide families dealing with addiction with the support and guidance they need to come together, discuss the issues openly and ultimately find a solution.

Through my actions I nearly destroyed my whole family.

I was lucky to go through it and come out the other side, but for many families this isn’t the case and the long-term impact is massive. If someone is ill they see a doctor, if they are injured you call an ambulance, yet not all problems can be dealt with by the emergency services, and nobody knows what to do with an addicted family member.

People fail to realise that addiction is a coping mechanism used to deal with a mental health issue and my long-term aim is to raise awareness of this in the hope that many other individuals and families can be saved from going through the same torment that mine did.

www.icarustrust.co.uk