I was a middle-class police detective... and a cocaine addict £50,000 in debt. My double life fooled everyone: CERYS ASHCOMB

Closing the front door of my detached, four-bedroom home, I slipped off my heels and jacket and walked to the kitchen. Pouring a glass of wine, I took a long sip, exhaling with relief. So far, so normal you may think. After all, busy professional women turning to a glass or two in the evening to unwind is hardly unusual. The reality was far darker than that though. Not only would that glass mark the beginning of my nightly binge – which could see me sink up to three bottles of wine – but it was also the gateway to my other addiction, cocaine. Glass in hand, I headed up to the bedroom, where I kept my supply of the drug in my bedside table. Expertly chopping a line with a credit card, I used a banknote to snort my first of at least ten lines of the night. As the white powder joined the alcohol coursing through my bloodstream, I began to feel a sense of blissful escapism from the secret hell my life had become. For middle-class police detective Cerys Ashcomb, it was an abusive relationship which saw her hooked on cocaine and alcohol to cope (Photo posed by model) There are many pathways to addiction, and people spiral into it for a multitude of reasons. For me, it was an abusive relationship which saw me become hooked on cocaine and alcohol to cope. My husband’s emotional, financial and physical abuse led me to plummet into a dependence that almost destroyed my life. And the enormous strain of trying to maintain the facade of a ‘normal’ life – while behind closed doors it was anything but – only tightened the grip alcohol and drugs had on me. I first met Greg, a landscape gardener, in 2018 when he was doing some work in my neighbour’s garden. Handsome and with a cheeky sense of humour, there was an instant spark. At that time, I was 33 and serving in the police as a detective, dealing with serious crime every day. My first marriage had ended traumatically when I discovered my husband had been having an affair. Looking back, it’s clear I was still intensely vulnerable when I met Greg. I hadn’t been looking for a relationship but he seemed wonderful and at first things were great, so much so that I asked him to move in after nine months of dating. When he admitted one evening, not long after, that he was a ‘social’ cocaine user, I was shocked. Ironically, given what would unfold, I was very anti-drugs back then, particularly after over a decade in the police seeing the very worst of what drugs could do to people. But Greg insisted he didn’t have a problem, he just used the drug to unwind and party sometimes. I wasn’t happy about it, and told him to keep it away from our home especially because of my job. In 2019, I left the police to study for a postgraduate degree in social work, a new professional challenge I felt passionate about. The same year, Greg and I married in a small ceremony and bought a bigger house together. Finally, I felt truly happy. After some difficult years, things were falling into place, and I had a lot of hope for our future. However, the moving boxes were barely unpacked before it was like a switch had flipped inside Greg. The kind, fun, loving man I’d fallen in love with began to become snappy, critical and cruel. His after-work drinking became heavier and he started using cocaine openly in front of me. If I tried to remonstrate with him, he’d remind me it was his home too and become verbally abusive. I felt totally bewildered but just didn’t know what to do. A few months later, the UK was plunged into lockdown when the Covid pandemic began. Greg was able to go out to work because his job was outdoors, while I was cooped up at home, trying to study online. Stressed and unhappy that Greg increasingly felt like a stranger to me, I began to drink more, the time I opened a bottle of wine getting earlier and earlier. Greg would encourage me, but then once I’d had a few glasses, he’d tell me I was a terrible person. He was so scathing and cruel, berating me with a sneer on his face that I drank too much, my ex had left me because I was mad, and I should be ashamed of myself. One evening in 2020, I was drunk and crying when Greg offered me a line of cocaine. ‘Try it, it’ll cheer you up,’ he said (Stock photo) Entire evenings would pass with him ranting abuse at me, as he sniffed lines of cocaine, while I drank more and more to block out his cruel words. This, I thought, was bad enough but nothing could have prepared me for what came next. When strangers – both male and female – started calling to our home to buy cocaine, I realised Greg was dealing as well as using drugs. I was horrified. Especially when I realised this had most likely been happening since we’d moved in together, when I’d been out at work. I’ve since asked myself many times, why didn’t I pack a bag there and then, and leave? I knew Greg wasn’t the man I’d thought he was and this was a toxic situation, but I felt completely trapped. I was on the cusp of getting my degree to become a social worker, I was a ‘respectable’ person. How could I admit to anyone I was living with a drug-dealing, abusive, cocaine addict? I’d let him into my life and now I didn’t know how to escape him without destroying my own reputation. Also, I’d placed so much faith and hope in making this relationship work after the trauma of my previous marriage ending. And when he’d been particularly cruel and belligerent after a binge, he’d be tearful and apologetic promising things would change. It kept me there, desperately hoping better times would come and never knowing which version of him would walk through the door from work. Rightly or wrongly, I stayed. Meanwhile, Greg carried on chipping away at my confidence – I couldn’t do anything right and constantly walked on eggshells around him. As a police officer, I’d come across so many victims of domestic abuse and could scarcely believe I’d become one myself. I knew in my heart it’s never the victim’s fault, yet I felt a deep sense of shame and helplessness about the depths my life had plummeted to. Alcohol was my escape from those emotions and I drank to numb myself. One evening in 2020, I was drunk and crying when Greg offered me a line of cocaine. ‘Try it, it’ll cheer you up,’ he said, winking malevolently at me. Agreeing to his offer is a decision I will forever regret. I felt so broken down and weary though, alcohol clouding my judgment, that I took the rolled-up £20 note from him and inhaled a line. It felt like a revelation. Where alcohol numbed my emotions, cocaine actively lifted my mood, making me feel stronger and less ashamed of who I’d become. After months at my very lowest ebb, that temporary sense of mental respite was addictive. That was how it began, with that one line. Every evening, after I’d had a few drinks, I’d join him in using, but it wasn’t long before I also started to sniff a line during the day to help me concentrate on my studies, my dependence on the drug increasing. That was when the financial abuse began. He said that because he was paying for our cocaine, and the alcohol we both drank, I needed to pay all the bills, covering the car expenses and food shops too. Still a full-time mature student, I was living off savings and a student loan at that time, so I had to resort to using credit cards as his demands that I pay for more and more increased. My habits were like horrific reminders of Greg, too – every time I poured a drink or inhaled a line, it was like he was still there with me (Stock photo) I felt even more trapped now I was a cocaine user – after all, he could destroy me with this information. The horrendous cycle of abuse, alcohol and cocaine continued through 2021. Even after I qualified as a social worker, and was meant to be someone who helped people like me, I couldn’t extricate myself from the nightmare my relationship had become. The moment I finished work I’d swiftly head to the fridge then to my stash, desperate for the sense of release the combination of my addictions gave me. After a huge argument, one terrible evening, I took an overdose of pills and was found unconscious by a family member, something I feel so much guilt about to this day. I felt so hopeless and trapped, living this double life as a normal, responsible woman by day and a drug dependent, abused, mess by night. I believed by now I was so worthless, there was no point in living. I was bluelighted to hospital where I spent a night receiving treatment. But I refused any psychological support – I didn’t want to admit what had driven me to do this. When I was discharged, I went to stay with my sister. Greg simply punished me by setting fire to my clothes in the garden and sending me a video. After a few days of abuse by phone and message, I agreed to return home. I felt so pathetic, returning to my abuser, this man who had reduced me to a shadow of my former self. I look back with horror but, at the time, I was so broken. After that, the financial abuse worsened with Greg refusing to pay his half of the mortgage, forcing me to take out loans so we didn’t lose the house because although I was working, my income wasn’t enough. I could have been in this toxic spiral for ever. But our relationship finally ended at the end of 2021 when Greg’s abuse turned physical, and he assaulted me at our home, leaving me black and blue. Shaking and in pain, I called the police and there was a relief that came with verbalising that I needed protection from Greg, after the years of secrecy and covering up his behaviour. He was arrested and bailed but not allowed to return to the house, and that shocking event was the push I needed to realise, enough was enough. I remained in our home until it was sold in 2022 and we divorced, and then used my share of the proceeds to pay off the £50,000 debts I’d built up through his financial abuse and my cocaine habit. I walked away with almost nothing left. But I was granted a five-year restraining order against Greg and was determined to rebuild my life. Of course, just because we were no longer together didn’t mean my addictions just vanished. I carried on drinking and using at home secretly, in self-destructive mode. I felt so ashamed, but couldn’t stop. My habits were like horrific reminders of Greg, too – every time I poured a drink or inhaled a line, it was like he was still there with me. It took time but eventually I realised I didn’t want to carry on living in this shadow of the addictions he’d forced on me. I tried a number of methods to get clean. AA and NA meetings didn’t work for me – I found the constant talking about alcohol and drugs just made me crave them and I’d stay clean for a few weeks, then relapse. Group and individual counselling sessions helped me to work through how I’d ended up an addict, but not how to silence the voice of addiction that still controlled me. I felt desperate, as if there was no escape for me from the legacy of my abusive relationship. Then, last year, I came across some research online about hypnotherapy and addiction, and decided to try it, finding a specialist called Ailsa Frank. I had three sessions with her, costing £175 each – in which she guided me into a deep state of relaxation and targeted my subconscious mind to help reduce my cravings, reprogramme my thoughts around addiction and create healthier choices. Between the first and second sessions, which were a month apart, I relapsed twice but compared to using and drinking daily, that was huge progress. I had a single relapse between the second and third session. But by the time I completed the third session, along with listening to recordings of her speaking in bed at night, I found I was able to walk past a wine bar and feel no urge for a drink, or the line of cocaine that would typically follow. It was surreal but amazing, silencing those urges and feeling my mind and body begin to recover from the abuse and trauma they’d endured. Today, I am clean and sober and have changed careers, now working for a children’s charity. I work out at the gym, eat and sleep well, and feel grateful I’ve been able to rebuild my life. I’m happily single, and have been since I left Greg. I’ve had a few dates but I simply can’t imagine being able to share my life with someone again, that’s how much he has destroyed my trust in men. I heard recently via a friend that he has turned another woman’s life upside down since our split, introducing her to drugs and abusing her in a multitude of ways. It breaks my heart to think of her turmoil, but this is obviously a pattern of behaviour for him. I never imagined I would become an addict or that the man I loved would drag me into such a toxic spiral of abuse but I feel proud to have escaped my addictions just as I escaped him. Cerys Ashcomb is a pseudonym. Names and identifying details have been changed. As told to Eimear O’Hagan. Additional reporting: Matthew Barbour