Daniel watched the last person walk out of his student flat. The door closed behind them and that was it. The party was over.
But Daniel wasn’t ready for the party to end. Though his head was pounding and birds were chirping loudly outside his window, he didn’t want to be left alone with his thoughts.
“When the night had ended and everyone would leave my room, they would go to lectures,” the 24-year-old told the Manchester Evening News. “So I’d find someone else to carry on the ride with.
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“They were all getting on with their lives. They couldn’t go out the next day or the day after that, that was the difference.
“But I couldn’t say no – I was so afraid of my sober thoughts because that’s where the truth was. I couldn’t have those days where I couldn’t go out because I would feel so low. I needed it to carry on.”
Daniel – not his real name – had struggled with substance abuse for years. It all started when he was just 15-years-old and growing up in Whalley Range.
Though the popular teenager was drinking and taking drugs every weekend, the structure and routine of school helped keep him in check.
However, all that changed when he left sixth form and decided to take a year out to travel. Instead of seeing the world, his constant partying took his mental health on a downward spiral – leading him to a very dark place.
“When school ended, that was the turning point,” Daniel continued. “We had a summer where I went to a lot of festivals and it would always come to and end naturally in September because I would go back to school.
“But this time, there was no September that would bring me back to a working life. There was intense drug taking involved during the festival season and I’d been doing it for four years before that.
“It continued throughout the summer and in my gap year it didn’t stop. I also wasn’t using my brain in any sort of productive way; I wasn’t learning anything new. I wasn’t doing anything good for myself and my brain started to deteriorate.”
As Daniel continued to abuse drugs and alcohol, mental health problems began to appear. He began experiencing feelings of depression and social anxiety, often struggling to hold conversations with others.
“The social anxiety really shocked me,” he added. “I was always the centre of attention and a popular guy at school.
“Once those thoughts appeared, it was game over and the drugs made them worse and worse. I was drinking more alcohol so I had the thoughts less. It was a crazy loop that I got caught in.”
Daniel’s world came crashing down in November 2018 when he was arrested for driving under the influence. Due to his ongoing court case, he could not join his friends on the travels he had planned.
“This was the most difficult time of my life,” Daniel added. “I had all of that on my plate while I was in such a fragile place – I don’t even know how I managed to get through it.”
Daniel can recall the lowest moment of his life - Christmas Day just a month after his arrest. “My relationships with everyone crumbled instantly,” he said.
“Everyone was in high spirits for Christmas and all my friends were meeting up and things like that. I had just had the biggest shock of my life and I didn't have anyone.
”Christmas Day itself, I was in my bedroom on my own. It's difficult when everyone is in the festive spirit but for whatever reason, you might not be.”
The following September, in an attempt to rebuild his life, Daniel enrolled at university. Although he hoped the move would have a positive impact, it only made things worse.
Partying most nights a week, he would often go to sleep at 11am and wake up at nighttime to go out. He had a zero per cent attendance rate for his first year and did not submit a single piece of work.
“I didn’t even make an online account for myself,” he added. “I would go to bed at 11am and wake up when it was dark. For a long time, I never really saw daylight. I only left my halls to go out. That messed with my head more.
“I was at such a low point and I couldn’t bring myself to do anything. I didn’t hand in any work and I failed the year. I knew I was going to fail, I was just hoping the university would give me another chance.”
Desperate to turn his life around, Daniel sought help through the university’s mental health services. The university decided to give him a second chance and he managed to get back on track with his studies and graduated with a first-class honour's degree.
“The wellbeing centre is one of the reasons I’m still here,” Daniel told the M.E.N. “As I got to the end of the year, I started to lose hope. I couldn’t see a future because I had thrown everything away.”
But there’s one pivotal moment that really changed everything for Daniel. While at university, a former girlfriend suggested he may have undiagnosed ADHD, a condition that affects people's behaviour.
Recognising himself in the symptoms, Daniel booked a consultation with a psychiatrist and received an official diagnosis. Now knowing what was going on inside his head, his mental state finally began to improve.
“Most of my time in halls was spent getting f***** up,” he continued. “It often centered around my room. I was the ‘main guy’ in halls and all of it was feeding my ego a lot.
“I was still very popular and everyone wanted to be friends with me. All this activity was going on inside my room – they were my plans and everyone wanted to be around what I was doing. I felt like things were good.
“When I was on substances, I felt like this was the dream. The rockstar life. Everyone around me thought I was loving life and didn’t know I was struggling.”
At the beginning of the first lockdown in 2020, Daniel stumbled upon Becoming Supernatural: How Common People Are Doing the Uncommon, a self-help book by author Joe Dispenza.
From then on, his self-care journey really began. He even took up meditation – sometimes meditating for an hour and a half at a time – and began visualising a different future featuring a very different Daniel.
“It was a year or two before I felt healed and it’s still a process now,” he continued. “You’ve got to keep on top of things.
“We never learnt this stuff in school but everyone should – and I want to help do that. In the same way that Marcus Rashford is for school dinners, I want to be for mental health.
“Getting that first from Bristol was the moment that topped everything. I knew how important it was to my mum after all I’d put her through. I had to work really hard; I just kept visualising getting my results and hugging my mum again and again. Our relationship is the best thing ever now. We are super close.”
Daniel has a cold shower each day, meditates morning and evening, takes regular ice baths and works out frequently. He no longer relies on substances as a coping mechanism and is instead “obsessed” with natural highs.
“I had a realisation that my purpose was to share what I had learnt and to share that with as many young people as I could,” he said.
“I felt that I’d finally realised in that moment that the reason I’d fallen off for that long and the reason I’d gone through everything I’d gone through was because I had to use that to change the world. I had to help as many other people as I can.”
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