It’s an early weekday morning in east London. The city around him is slowly waking up, but Danny* has yet to go to sleep. When he finished his shift working front of house at a popular Borough Market restaurant last night, he bought a gram of cocaine and finished it in his flat, alone.
He opens his banking app, the balance reads zero. Next, he flicks through his credit cards; the debt his lifestyle has amassed totals £10,000. “This was rock bottom,” the 31-year-old recalls of this point in December 2024. For nearly four months he used the class-A drug around five times a week, typically during and after work. “I numbed myself to the point where I didn’t feel anything.”
