I was born in Fraserburgh and brought up in the nearby village of Sandhaven for the first nine years of my life. I enjoyed a happy childhood with good parents, who both worked extremely hard to raise my two sisters and I.

When an opportunity came up for my Dad to secure a better-paid job, we all moved south to a place called Irvine, which was exciting but also scary at the same time.

When I was around 14 I started to smoke cigarettes, before – at the age of 16 – I moved onto smoking cannabis.

Things in my life began to spiral out of control and when I was 26, and my daughter Shannon was just 3-years-old, I ended up in prison after getting caught with a significant amount of cannabis, which I was selling to fund a cocaine and temazepam addiction.

It was whilst I was in jail, that I was first introduced to heroin.

One day, when I was going through a really tough time, I saw someone take the drug and decided to try it myself.

To be honest, I thought it was great because all my worries seemed to instantly disappear.

Then, when I got out of prison in October 1999 I quickly became a full-blown heroin addict. My life was a complete shambles. At one point I nearly lost a leg and had to get an operation to cut an infected lump out of my chest after I was kicked in a fight.

Thankfully though, while I was in hospital my sister Denise got talking to a Christian who pointed her in the direction of Teen Challenge Sunnybrae.

My Mum and Denise wasted no time in getting me to contact Sunnybrae and I was quickly interviewed by the centre manager, Gordon Cruden, who painted a grim picture of life there (which I later learned was to test me and see how much I wanted the programme).

I was so sick and tired of being sick and tired I knew I needed to do something – or I would be dead soon.

On the November 17, 2003, I entered the Teen Challenge programme a broken man, physically, mentally, and emotionally.

Although I found it very difficult to change at first, as I couldn’t get my head around Christianity, I found myself being drawn towards Jesus.

I could see Him at work in the people around me and I wanted what they had so, in February 2004, I gave my life to the Lord.

Since then, I have been completely transformed from a lying, stealing, cheating heroin addict into a loving father, devoted husband and dedicated disciple of Christ.

I now have a full time job in Teen Challenge and have been blessed with wonderful relationships with my daughter Shannon, and my beautiful wife Lindsay, who I got married to in August 2008.