'I was told I was going to wreck my legs and didn't listen': Woman's agonising symptoms after past returned to haunt her
10.04.2023 - 17:55
/ manchestereveningnews.co.uk
Lying in a pool of her own blood, Elizabeth Forrest accepts the fact she’s going to die in her father’s spare room.
Her life could have been so different. The once bright-eyed young woman had a passion for cooking, and once wanted nothing more than to become a chef.
Instead, alone in a box bedroom, Elizabeth injects heroin into her groin. Her clothes turn crimson as a dark pool of blood forms underneath her. She reaches for the needle again.
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“Whatever I was using wasn’t working because I was using that much of it,” she said. “I thought, ‘I’m going to die’. I could feel it; it was a weird feeling. I was at rock bottom.”
Elizabeth was 21 when she started using speed recreationally. She took amphetamines whenever she went clubbing – recalling how the substance gave her confidence and numbed her mental health struggles.
Before she knew it, Elizabeth was taking the drug on weekdays. Weekdays turned into every day. Then she was using constantly just to be able to function.
A cardiac arrest and a stint in the psychiatric ward should have been enough to stop her. But upon her release from hospital, Elizabeth, from Newton Heath, went looking for her drug dealer.
It didn’t take her long to learn the dealer had been jailed while she was away. Unable to find amphetamines anywhere, Elizabeth was offered heroin. The moment would change the course of her life forever.
“I was seeing a lad and he offered me heroin,” she told the Manchester Evening News. “I tried it and everything in my life, I just forgot.
“My mental health problems went. I was on a fluffy cloud. I was addicted to that within a couple of weeks and started