Victoria Seed walked into the girls’ changing rooms, grabbed her gym bag and started getting dressed into her school uniform.
Looking up, a group of girls had huddled around her, one clutching a small bag in their hand.
“Do you want to try some of this?” she asked Victoria, opening her palm to reveal a tab of LSD.
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Victoria had never tried drugs before. A top pupil, the 15-year-old was a quiet child and struggled with confidence.
But surrounded by her classmates, Victoria felt an overwhelming pressure to buy the illegal substance.
She handed her dinner money over – a £1 coin – and the decision was made.
Victoria didn’t know it at the time, but that one choice back in 1993 would cause a ripple effect throughout her future – changing the course of her life in an instant.
“It was literally peer pressure,” mum-of-two Victoria, who lives in Whitefield, told the Manchester Evening News.
“Peer pressure doesn’t mean you’re getting it forced down your neck or forced to buy it. It just means as a young person you’re getting that external pressure where you don’t want to say no.
“I wasn’t assertive so I went along with it.”
A few days later, Victoria, now aged 45, got pulled into her deputy head teacher’s office.
Word had got out that she had bought the drugs, and despite flushing them down the toilet, she now found herself expelled along with the girls who sold them to her.
Victoria was devastated. One mistake had turned her quiet life into one of chaos – propelling her into a world filled with stigma and shame.
“All hell broke loose,” she added. “The expulsion was really hard to manage. When you’re 15, you think you’re a grown up but you’re not. It was a case of wrong place wrong time.”
Victoria and her parents were forced to apply to other schools, before she eventually got accepted into one that was miles away.
The process of having to start at another school in year 10 took its toll on the then teenager. “Friendships and peer groups were already developed,” she said. “I remember I could hardly eat anything. It was so stressful.
“Then there was the impact on my family and people’s attitudes towards me as a young person.
“Going back thirty years, people’s opinions of drugs weren’t and still aren't great. It’s very shameful, even though people are happy to go out and drink cocktails every week.”
Victoria said the incident impacted her friendships with others. “I was so scared,” she added.
“It was awful. I couldn’t eat or sleep and I was worrying what everyone else thought of me. I had all these messages coming in from parents saying, ‘You don’t want to hang around with Victoria because she’s a druggy.
“Other people’s opinions affected how I thought about myself.”
After spending a term at a different school, Victoria was allowed to return to her old school at the start of year 11.
“I had to appeal to get back in,” Victoria added. “The reason we got back into school was because we weren’t dealing drugs.
“Having to go back with my tail between my legs wasn’t easy either. I wasn’t saying I didn’t deserve that, because the school have to show they’re doing something about negative behaviour.
“But that process and progressing with my A-levels meant my exam results were mediocre because there was so much trauma to deal with. I was dealing with that rather than focusing on my education.”
Despite the ordeal, Victoria managed to get into university where she studied social ethics.
Motivated by her own experience, she began working in a prison after graduating as a substance misuse worker, helping young people aged 15 to 18. She then went on to become an addiction and family recovery specialist working with families affected by addiction.
In 2016, the mum set up her own service, The Vesta Approach, helping women living with a loved one's addiction live happy and peaceful lives.
Victoria doesn’t believe she would have chosen her career path if it hadn’t been for her own experience. “Would I change that experience?” she asks herself. “I don’t know, because what happened shaped my career.
“I’ve got 20+ years of supporting young people and young families around problems associated with drugs and alcohol.
“That’s what I do now and I love the work. As a result of all that pain, I’ve turned it into a powerful experience.
“When you experience something like that, you can absolutely learn from it and channel your positive energy into something that’s good.
“You can step out of that stigma and shame and reach out to a charity or service. And if young people are exposed to it, there’s a way to learn and educate yourself and make an informed decision instead of jumping in and potentially having a negative impact on your whole life. Fortunate for me, it didn’t.”
There is help available for young people, individuals and families affected by alcohol and drug use. For more information on Victoria, visit vestaapproach.co.uk.
