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A Dundee man turned to drugs after witnessing horror, including finding the murdered body of a friend while volunteering abroad as a teenager.
Alex turned to drugs after suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and being unable to sleep.
He told STV News: “When I was a young lad I went through a lot of trauma, I didn’t realise but I had PTSD.
“I wasn’t able to sleep, every time I closed my eyes, I was seeing things. I had seen a lot of gruesome things as a young lad.
“By the time I was 16, I had found people stabbed to death in bins and dead on park benches.”
Alex has opened up to STV News about his experiences, as it was revealed Scotland has the worst rate of drug deaths in Europe.
Figures from the National Records of Scotland showed drug deaths in Scotland rose by 11% to 1,133 in 2025.
More than 11,000 people have died from drug use in Scotland over the past decade.
Alex said he went abroad as a teenager to volunteer in South America, and was left traumatised after a friend was murdered.
He said: “I went away to Belize to do voluntary work for four months. I found my group leader, my friend, had been murdered with no skin from the neck up.
“When I came back home, I was trying to get help because every time I shut my eyes, I could see maggots coming out of her eyeballs. I couldn’t sleep.
“But I didn’t receive any help. I understand because I was young at the time but I needed to know what was going on.”
Alex says he turned to tablets to help him sleep initially, before he began to take more drugs.
Now a peer worker and in recovery, he says people get “stuck in the stigma of drugs”, and it has taken him 29 years to re-label himself away from drugs.
“I want to be cured, I don’t want to be treated. It’s like I lost who I was for a while,” he added.
Highest rate in Europe of drug deaths
The latest NRS figures show the number of drug deaths in Scotland increased by 116 last year, compared with 2024.
The drug death rate, adjusted for age, was 21.4 deaths per 100,000 people in 2025 – around four times the rate recorded in 2000.
NRS records a drug use death where drug poisoning is identified as the underlying cause, a controlled substance was present in the person’s body and drug use directly contributed to their death.
The figures show that men accounted for much of the latest increase, with deaths among males rising by 19% compared with 2024.
Deaths among women fell by 5%.
In 2025, 830 men and 303 women lost their lives because of drugs, the Scottish figures showed, with the total number of deaths the sixth highest on record.
Synthetic opioids known as nitazenes were implicated in 247 deaths last year, with etonitazene the most commonly identified substance.
‘Cocaine implicated in over half of deaths’
Cocaine was implicated in over half of all drug use deaths in 2025, (52%, or 589 deaths), which is an increase of 23% compared with 2024.
Alcohol and drugs minister Maree Todd has raised concerns about an “increasingly toxic and unpredictable drugs supply” in Scotland.
She said: “My heartfelt condolences go out to everyone who has lost a loved one to drug use. Each and every death is a tragedy, and even more so because every life lost to drug harms is preventable.
“Against an increasingly toxic and unpredictable drugs supply, this rise is deeply concerning and unacceptable. The increase in deaths involving cocaine, and the continued threat from dangerous synthetic opioids like nitazenes, must drive more coordinated action across the country.
“We have taken important steps forward, including funding more than 1,100 residential rehabilitation placements last year and widening access to treatment and life-saving naloxone. However, despite these policy interventions, and the actions of our valued frontline workers, it is clear we need to do much more to reduce this tragic loss of life.
“Our new Alcohol and Drugs Strategic Plan will strengthen surveillance, deepen links between treatment, housing and other services, and target support at the communities most at risk. I have also announced today that Scotland’s first local drug-checking service will open in Glasgow this October – building on the UK’s first safer drug consumption facility.
“Whilst we are using every lever available through our devolved powers, it is clearly now vital that the UK Government work with us to transfer the greater powers over drugs policy that we require to treat drug harms fully as a public health issue.”
Paul Bowley, chief executive of Abbeycare, one of Scotland’s leading residential rehab and detox services, called the latest figures a “tragedy”.
He said: “Every single death recorded in these annual figures is a tragedy, and represents a life that mattered and a family left devastated.
“Scotland remains in the grip of a drugs death crisis, which is being made even more difficult to control by the emergence of new synthetic opioids and other substances.
“It is clear that the national mission to reduce the harms caused by drugs has much work still to do, with more investment needed in treatment and recovery services and clearer pathways for people to seek help.
“We know that residential rehab is one of the best ways to achieve a lasting recovery, and we stand ready to assist, working alongside other crucial interventions and services.”
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