The name is absent

Interviewer: “ So how does the community you’re a part of now compare to
those communities?”

Gareth: “Well, it’s better in that it’s real, you know. The trouble with a
community based on drugs is that if you take the drugs away, there’s no
community there. The community is the shared experience, rather than an
actual community, you know. You were all living in the same drug experience,
but that’s not a real community. ”

Gareth describes himself then as “suicidal without the courage to commit suicide”.
Since he gave up drugs and returned to college his confidence has gone through the
roof, and being part of a student community is part of that. This extends beyond
students and the college itself, so that the pub across from the college where they go
for a drink after class becomes itself a part of the college community in his eyes. In
addition to regaining the will to live he can learn from others, and even enable others
to learn:

“I can talk to people. I can come and do an interview like this without being
frightened. Um .. how else? My ability .. to speak openly in class, without
being worried if I look foolish, or if... you know what I mean. It doesn’t bother
me, because I know I’m not. And .. I... every class I’ve been in the teachers
have all said, you know ‘it’s really good having you in the class because it
allows other people to talk openly about things ... in general it allows people to
be open themselves’.”

His own views have changed substantially as a result of the course to a more liberal
position, specifically, as he tells it, in relation to single mothers and asylum-seekers.
More importantly, he feels he has the ability to think things through for himself, to
form his own informed opinion on social and political issues - even when this brings
him into conflict with a sociology lecturer who in his view was promoting a Marxist
agenda and who labelled him a right-wing demagogue. His education has combined
with his rehabilitation and counselling to give him both a sense of independence,
where he no longer feels the need to be perfect, and of interdependence, where he
feels associated with others, at college and at home:

“ I’ve incredibly strong relations with my neighbours .. we almost have one flat
that’s shared between us. Which is really nice - she’s married with two kids,
three kids. But having been isolated for six years, I still do find building
relationships quite difficult. Casual acquaintances I can cope with,, but strong
.. strong relationships Ifind still difficult. ”

Gareth has helped his neighbour with difficulties with her husband and also acted as a
student spokesman for others in his class, but he sees counselling rather than his
course as influencing these outcomes:

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