A group of people in recovery from substance abuse are exchanging stories of stigma they've faced. One woman says she was made to enter her pharmacy through a back entrance when picking up methadone prescriptions and treated "like a criminal" once inside.

A man describes doctors crushing his hope by saying he had "zero chance of recovery". Another talks about the daily experience of walking past newspapers with headlines about "junkies", deepening his shame about illness and making him even more reluctant to seek help.



The group is part of the first mass meeting of the dozens of recovery organisations in Scotland, the country with the highest drug-related death rate in Europe. BuzzFeed News was the first publication given access to what they call "the recovery community" – including people in recovery, their families, and their supporters.

One quiet member of the group starts talking, barely above a whisper, about the night her son died before he managed to get into recovery: "My son was a heroin addict, and you always thought bad news would come late at night – I would go to bed with my clothes on because I needed to be able to jump. The only time I slept in my PJs and my nightie was when he was in prison and I knew where he was."

She felt her son's addiction affected how police treated her and her husband when they knocked on her door with the news she'd dreaded.



"This particular night it was quarter to eight and the buzzer went. It was the CID [crime investigation department] and I just thought to myself, What has he done now? It was a lady and a younger man. The CID officer said to me, after looking me up and down: 'And you are?' I asked her who she was – she was in my home. She then told me and my husband that they had found a body."

