Start with money, because debt keeps growing while you work on everything else and the rest mostly does not. Free regulated advice exists and is the right first call: StepChange is 0800 138 1111, Monday to Friday, 8am to 8pm. Work and trust come next, and both move at the speed of your reliability rather than the speed of your apologies.
Sequencing, and why money usually goes first
Once things steady, the instinct is to fix everything at once, generally with a long conversation and a list of promises. That collapses inside a fortnight and costs you more credibility than the original damage did.
Sort the damage into two piles.
**Growing.** Debt, arrears, unopened letters, unfiled tax, missed court or appointment dates, anything with interest or a deadline. These get worse without you.
**Static.** Most relationships, your reputation, the sense that people expect less of you. Painful, and not accelerating.
Deal with the growing pile first even though the static pile hurts more, then give the static pile the only thing it accepts, which is time.
Money
Two moves make everything harder and both are common: borrowing to clear a debt, and paying a company for something charities do for free.
Ring StepChange on 0800 138 1111. They go through everything you owe and set out the options, and the conversation is practical rather than moral.
Before you ring, do the part people avoid, because the call is far more useful with it done.
- **List every debt.** Cards, overdraft, loans, buy now pay later, money owed to family and friends, anything on a payment plan. The total will be worse than your estimate. Write it anyway.
- **Get the real numbers.** Balance, minimum payment, interest rate, what is in arrears.
- **Separate the urgent.** Rent, mortgage, council tax and utilities sit in a different category from a credit card, because the consequences arrive faster and heavier.
- **Close the leak first.** A repayment plan built while money is still going out of the same door is fiction. [Cutting off the supply](/guides/drugs/cutting-off-your-dealer-and-your-supply) covers the cash, the cards and the withdrawal limits.
Money owed to a dealer
Free debt advice does not cover this and pretending otherwise would be useless to you.
Three honest things. Do not borrow from a high-cost lender or from a friend to clear it, because that turns one debt into two. Do not agree to hold or move anything to work it off. And do not try to solve it alone at three in the morning, which is when it will feel largest and least solvable.
Raise it with a keyworker. They cannot pay it, and they have sat opposite dozens of people in exactly this position and know what the local options actually are. If you are being threatened, that has stopped being a debt question and become a safety one, and where there is an immediate risk to life the answer is 999.
Work
Two separate problems, and people run them together.
**Getting back in.** A gap on a CV is a smaller obstacle than it feels like from the inside. You do not owe an employer a medical history. A gap can be described as time out for health reasons, and most interviewers move on. What helps more than any wording is having something recent and verifiable in it: a course, volunteering, a few weeks of temporary work, anything that gives a referee to ring.
**Staying in.** If you are still in a job, the question is usually whether to say anything at all. For most people the answer is no. Where it is genuinely relevant, because your work has been affected or you need time for appointments, frame it around what you need going forward rather than as a confession about the past. Check your own organisation's policy first. Many employers have occupational health or a confidential assistance line separate from your manager, and most people never find out theirs exists.
Some roles carry specific legal or regulatory duties around drug use, and that varies far too much for a general page. Ask a keyworker where to get proper advice before you say anything at work.
Trust
Nobody rebuilds it with a speech. It is rebuilt by a boring accumulation of small kept promises, which is slower than you want and the only thing that works.
- **Make promises small enough to keep.** "I'll ring on Sunday" beats "everything will be different". Then ring on Sunday, and again the Sunday after.
- **Be on time.** Unglamorous, and the most legible signal available to someone who has spent years being let down.
- **Do not ask for credit.** Announcing that you are three months clean turns your recovery into something they have to service. They have noticed. Let them raise it.
- **Expect anger to arrive late.** People often hold together while you are in crisis and come apart once you are safe. That is the bill arriving, not unfairness.
- **Do not argue about the record.** "It wasn't that bad" and "you were no angel either" are sometimes true and never useful.
An apology is words about the past. A repair is changed behaviour plus, where possible, a specific act that fixes a specific thing: the two hundred pounds paid back, the thing you said you would do done on the day you said. If it costs you nothing but a difficult ten minutes, it was an apology. Not worthless, and not a repair.
What you should not repair yet
Some amends land on the other person rather than helping them, and wanting to feel clean is not a good enough reason.
Do not turn up unannounced at somebody who has asked for distance. Do not disclose something that falls entirely on another person purely to relieve your conscience. Do not reopen an old wound with somebody who has moved on because you want closure.
The test is not "would this make me feel better". It is "does this repair something for them". Where the answer is no, the repair is to leave them alone and change anyway.
Your children, and the person you cannot fix it with
If there are children involved, the thing that helps is not a conversation about substances. It is reliability, in small visible units: turning up, on the day, in a fit state, repeatedly. Detail is for adults. Consistency is what they read.
And some of it will not be repaired. A friendship gone, a year somebody remembers, a job that closed. Sitting with that without minimising it or drowning in it is the hardest part of this whole stream, and what makes it survivable is that you are now in a position not to add to it.
If facing all of it at once is dropping you into a spiral, come back to it later. [You used again, what now](/guides/drugs/you-used-again-what-now) is written for that state of mind, and the same four steps work for a bad day.
We Are With You runs free local services across England and Scotland plus a webchat with trained recovery workers. FRANK is 0300 123 6600, 24 hours. Samaritans is 116 123 at any hour.
Common questions
**Where do I get free debt advice in the UK?** StepChange is a debt charity offering free advice on 0800 138 1111, Monday to Friday 8am to 8pm. Free advice comes first, always. Do not pay a company to do it and do not take a consolidation product from an advert.
**Should I pay back money I borrowed from family?** Where you can, in a planned way that sits inside a repayment plan rather than competing with rent. Get free advice first. Repaying one person by borrowing from another is not a repair.
**Do I have to tell an employer about my drug use?** Usually not. If your work has been affected or you need time for appointments, a forward-looking conversation may help. Check your own policy and any confidential occupational health route first, and get proper advice if your role carries specific regulatory duties.
**How do I explain a gap on my CV?** Time out for health reasons is a complete answer and most interviewers move on. Filling the recent end of the gap with a course, volunteering or temporary work does more for you than any form of words.
**How long does it take for people to trust me again?** Longer than feels fair, and on their timetable rather than yours. Consistency in small things speeds it up. Asking to be forgiven on a schedule slows it down.
Sources
- [StepChange Debt Charity](https://www.stepchange.org), for free debt advice on 0800 138 1111, Monday to Friday 8am to 8pm.
- [We Are With You](https://www.wearewithyou.org.uk/help-and-advice/), for free local services and webchat with trained recovery workers, and calling 999 where there is immediate risk to life.
- [NHS, Drug addiction: getting help](https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/addiction-support/drug-addiction-getting-help/), for how UK drug treatment works and what a keyworker does.
