I wanted to feel sexy - and ended up a crack addict

The mum-of-three knows only too well how the city's addicts will be feeling today if they are unable to satisfy their desperate yearning.

Three and a half years ago the 39-year-old and her husband decided to experiment by smoking a highly addictive mix of heroin and crack cocaine to boost their sex life.

Her husband, a former addict, knew exactly where to go and who to see to score the drugs and the couple started smoking at weekends to make them "feel sexy".

But within no time at all their liking for the drug began taking over their life and it got to the point where they stopped working, spent their benefits on drugs and lied to family and friends to get cash for more fixes.

Their weekend fun became a 400-a-day habit, funded by selling anything of value in the house and squandering the family savings until there was nothing left in the bank.

Louise, who volunteered to patrol the city centre this week looking for addicts to help, was a hardcore user for two years until she developed a blood clot through injecting and fell seriously ill.

"I woke up and realised that enough was enough and that my addiction was out of control. I have been clean now for 18 months," she said.

"I am an experimental person and I tried smoking the drugs at first out of intrigue, we found it made us sexy and we both got off on it, but what started off as sexy became an addiction and took over our lives.

"Looking back I can't believe how many people take drugs and how easy it is to get them - they are on your doorstep and until you cross on to that side you are naive and have no idea how rife drugs are."

What do you think? Add your comment below.

She said addicts, whose suppliers have been arrested this week or disappeared to avoid being tracked down by police, will be feeling desperate for a hit.

"We started wanting a little bit more and then a little more to make us feel as good.

"Before we knew it we needed the drugs every day and smoking wasn't enough of a high so we started to inject - that's as bad as things can get," she said.

"We had a nice house, jobs and money in the bank, but we went from having everything to nothing because of drugs.

"Regardless of how bad it got we always made sure our children were well fed and dressed, but apart from the kids drugs came first.

"We pushed family and friends away because all we could focus on was the drugs and the next time we could score, we would only go to them when we needed to borrow money and would say that it was to pay the bills.

"We would sleep all day and be up all night, our lives were completely turned around. We didn't turn to crime and I didn't have to sell my body but that's how bad it gets for some people."