Finding freedom

Discover how journalist and presenter Lauren Windle broke free from a £200 a week cocaine addiction
At the age of 22, Lauren Windle tried cocaine for the first time – and it wasn’t long before she was hooked.

But she recognises she had always had an addictive personality: ‘I remember not enjoying the taste of cigarettes when I first tried one at 13 but for some reason I kept on smoking. I was the same age when I started drinking. Lots of my friends drank in their early teens but, even then, I could see that I was doing it differently. They liked the buzz, but I felt I needed it.’

Lauren grew up in London where her mother had taken her and her sister along to church as children. While Lauren had been drawn to the idea of God and interested in the Bible stories, she found people judgemental and often hypocritical: ‘It felt like all church leaders were interested in was if you were smoking, drinking and having sex. If you were, you weren’t good enough.’

Given the choice of whether to keep going to church or not at 13, Lauren immediately stopped. She continued drinking, saying: ‘I was desperate to be liked which made socialising pressured and uncomfortable. But if I drank, I could forget about all of that. To me, drinking wasn’t a problem, it was a solution.’

Feeling lost and alone

Lauren’s heavy drinking habit continued when she went to university: ‘I would happily drink a £2.50 bottle of wine to myself on a night in and was always the last to come home on a night out.’

Around the same time as she finished her degree, her long-term boyfriend broke up with her. While her friends embarked on a round-the-world-trip, Lauren had chosen to stay behind to be closer to her boyfriend. But without the relationship, or those friends, she struggled: ‘I felt completely untethered and lost. I got a job in events for a group of pubs and restaurants and stayed out all night drinking with colleagues. Eventually I was offered cocaine and I took it.’

Lauren continued to spiral, drinking daily and taking drugs to a point where even those who had introduced her to drugs told her to calm down.

The catalyst

There had been many things that should have told Lauren she needed help, such as numbness in her fingers and toes, nosebleeds and memory loss. But she remained focused on having fun. This of course impacted her work: ‘When your main focus is partying, your work will inevitably suffer, but there’s a high tolerance for drinking and drug taking in the hospitality industry because it’s so commonplace.’

Things came to a head when a friend who had been living in Paris came back for a visit and a group of Lauren’s friends went out for dinner. Lauren popped out to source 2g of cocaine, with a plan to get everyone to go on to a pub and then a club. But as she returned, everyone was leaving as they had work the next day. She went home and sat up taking the cocaine, drinking and smoking.

Lauren was still awake and high when her alarm went off the next morning. She called her boss and said: ‘I’m not coming into work, I’m still high.’ Her boss said, ‘I’m going to mark you down as ill and we’ll talk about it later.’ Afterwards she called her sister and asked her to go over after work. When her sister arrived she told her: ‘I’m taking cocaine and I don’t think I can stop.’

Family and friend’s interventions

Lauren’s sister moved Lauren in with her and her husband over a weekend and on the Monday sent her into work with a pre-typed resignation letter as ‘she was desperate for me to make a positive change and knew that while I was working in the hospitality industry, that would be impossible.’

For a fresh start, Lauren decided to move to Paris. ‘For the first nine months, I was drinking really heavily but managed to avoid cocaine.’ Lauren then started dating a man who worked in a restaurant and would clock off work at midnight and bring drugs for them to do together. Her friends confronted her: ‘You’ve moved countries to get away from coke and now you are going back down that road. We want you to do something about it.’

They found a cocaine addict support group meeting that was bilingual and asked her to attend. ‘I honestly thought what an interesting story it would be at the pub. I could tell people that I’d been to one of those alcoholic meetings that you see in the American films.’

The room was full of women around Lauren’s age, who mainly agreed to speak in English and took her for lunch afterwards. ‘As these women spoke of their pain in using and the freedom they had found, I just broke down. I sat starring at the lines embroidered onto the tablecloth, only lifting my hand to wipe away the tears that were silently streaming down my face. I made eye contact with one woman who just mouthed “It’s going to be OK”.’

Experiencing the love of God

Lauren had agreed to attend 90 meetings, one a day for three months. During her third meeting she was told she needed to find a higher power. ‘I had always thought I believed in God, not really understood about Jesus and actively disliked church. But I decided I should walk back into one and try once more if I was going to work out what ‘God’ was to me.’

Lauren went to the first English-speaking church she found. She asked the vicar for prayer and told him she was five days sober from a cocaine addiction. She was surprised by his response: ‘It was clear that he genuinely wanted to support me.’

Lauren was invited to a women’s Bible study group where each person voiced positive qualities they have seen in Christians – some said generosity, others kindness. ‘I felt myself getting increasingly angry. I hadn’t seen these qualities in most Christians I knew. When finally asked, I told the truth; that I didn’t like Christians and I was here despite them not because of them.’

Lauren mentioned some of the hypocrisy she’d seen and looked up. The vicar’s wife had tears streaming down her face. She said: ‘On behalf of the Church I’m so sorry that that’s how you’ve been treated and what you’ve been shown. Please give us the chance to show you something better.’

Something lifted off of Lauren in that moment – the weight of anger was gone. She kept going to the group and found a real family in those women.

‘In getting clean and sober, I gave up one thing and gained everything. I was 25 and thought my world would get smaller without the parties and the drugs, but, day by day, it opened up. I felt a freedom I hadn’t experienced before and started to feel proud of my decisions. My relationships went from strength to strength. I started to regain my health and my memory.’

While it was an ongoing journey for her to begin to love herself, Lauren realised she now had a solid foundation she could build her life on.

Hope for all

Today Lauren is an author, journalist, presenter and public speaker, and is passionate for others to find the freedom she has: ‘I hope everyone knows that they have never gone too far or done too much to turn their life around, both by getting into sobriety and by stepping into faith. Getting clean and finding faith have opened up a life for me which is beyond anything I could have hoped for myself before. I want that for everyone who feels stuck, desperate and alone. The truth is, you are none of those things; there are people in support groups, charities and churches who care deeply about you and want to walk with you while you find freedom. We’re not built to do this stuff alone and you don’t have to try.’