Daniel (43)

From use to dealing

When Daniel went to secondary school, things initially went well. He was in havo and got good grades. But pretty soon he got into trouble. He got in touch with 'wrong' friends, got involved in many fights and tried to act tougher than he was.

Around the age of 14, he started blowing. Unlike his friends, Daniel did enter the coffee shop. He then not only bought soft drugs for himself, but also immediately fetched for his friends. Thus, he already started doing some small-scale trading and selling among friends. At 16, he got his first cocaine from a Hell's Angel. This was the beginning of an addiction to cocaine. With this move, Daniel ended up even further into a world of drug use and of dealers and crime.

A rotten and empty world

And this soon proved to be a very harsh world. Daniel was taken hostage, had a loaded gun to his head and was almost stabbed once. On the one hand, he was shitty about this. But it was also frightening. And it was always unsafe.

Most of the boys he hung out with during that time went down the criminal path. Some of the boys became involved in cocaine trafficking. Some are now in witness protection programmes run by the judiciary. And one boy was even murdered. Something that might also have happened to him.

The boys he hung out with during that period Daniel called his friends. But in retrospect, he realises they were not friends at all. It was an empty existence. It was all about use, money, status and being tough.

Fighter's mentality is also the saving grace

From a young age, Daniel has been in a survival mode. Daniel did not have it easy at home. At school, he was often literally fighting. It is that fighter's mentality that also became his salvation to eventually get out of the shit. Daniel now works for the municipality and runs a community centre. He lives together and has two young children.