'Addiction is messy, chaotic and takes your soul'

Andrew Dean-Williams is launching a charity to support people with addiction

A former drug addict, whose addiction had a "traumatic" effect on his family, has said he wants to help others going through the same thing.

Andrew Deane-Williams, 47, from Burnham-on-Sea in Somerset, battled with alcohol and drug addiction from his early teens, but said it was the impact on his "broken family" later in life that really struck him.

Now he is launching a new charity, called Broken Chains UK, to support children and young people whose parents are dealing with drug addiction.

"Drug addiction is messy, it's chaotic and it takes your soul. My kids suffered and it was fairly apparent that they had to recover from my addiction just as well as I did," he said.

"When you think about drug addiction, and addicts in particular, you're focusing a lot on them and not so much on the family."

After first becoming addicted to alcohol and drugs in his teens, and describing his 20s as a "wipeout", Mr Deane-Williams said he became "clean" by the age of 30, got married to his wife, Abi, and had four children.

But he said that he spiralled back into addiction following the return of an old football injury and being prescribed opiate-based painkillers.

"That just set me off again into a whole world of pain and darkness and struggle," he said.

"It led me to a really, really dark place, just moody, angry, just not present."

Mr Deane-Williams said his health had deteriorated before going into rehabilitation in 2018

He said he finally went into rehabilitation in 2018, at which point he realised that his wife and children would also need help.

"One night I phoned my wife from rehab and went off on a right rant, saying, 'this is going on, this is disgraceful', and at the end of my rant I just said, 'I'm so tired, Abs'," he said.

"The phone went really quiet and then I just heard her on the other end say, 'tired, tired, let me tell you about tired'.

"It dawned on me that while I was in there (in rehab) I was getting all this help and she was left to pick up the pieces of a broken family, with the kids crying because they don't know what's going on, and upset because Dad's not there."

Mr Deane-Williams trained as a painter and decorator when he got clean

It has taken Mr Deane-Williams six years to get his new charity off the ground - time he has spent researching parental substance misuse and working with his own children.

"I didn't want to be an upstart fresh out of rehab going 'look at me, I've got all the answers and I'm gonna change the world'," he said.

"I think now I'm in a place where my message can carry a bit of substance because I've got a bit of experience of healing with the kids and the family."