Helen Wagstafffound out how police and their partners are trying to get addicts clean and stop the dealers coming back.

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Mikila Geer is pretty, funny and pleasant to be around. She comes from a solid family, who love her and is the sort of person who instantly makes an impression.

Mikila, 30, is also a heroin addict and has spent the last eight years of her life stumbling from one hit to the next. Now, under the police’s Operation Morse, she has signed up to a treatment programme that she hopes will change her life forever.

She said: “I take drugs just to get through the day. I wake up feeling sick and achy and needing some gear. From then you lurch through the day. You go out of the house simply to get money, and then to get the gear.

"Then you take it and for a few hours you can function, but then it starts all over again. It’s a constant race to try and not be sick.”

When Mikila was 11 years old her dad died. Unable to cope with the loss, Mikila’s family fell apart and she started to rebel. It led to heavy drinking and taking recreational drugs.

She said: “I ask my family if they knew the extent I was using but they say no. I think they did not want to see it.

“Sometimes I would go through a period at school where I was interested in something and would knuckle down but there was no consistency.”

At 22, while living in Manchester, she found out that her boyfriend was a heroin addict. One day asked her if she wanted to go for a “bagel”. She said: “I enthusiastically said yes, thinking he meant a some breakfast or something.”

It was a term for a bag of heroin.

“My life has never been the same since that minute,” said Mikila, “I didn’t want to touch it but he kept saying do you want some. I was embarrassed I had no idea what to do with it. Then he went out and left it on the side in the foil. I kept going over to look and then I tried some.”

Initially she smoked the drug.

She said: “I’ve always been anxious person but as soon as I took it took all the worry and fear and I just relaxed. It was brilliant.”

This continued every day for six months until one morning she woke up with flu like symptoms, which disappeared as soon as she had another hit. She said: "I suddenly realised what was happening so I rang my friends and said I need help. They took me away to France for a few weeks but I came back for the heroin.”

Before long, smoking did not fulfill her need for the drug and she began injecting. As an addict she would move from place to place, always trying but failing to restart her life.

She slipped away from family and old friends and started to associate solely with other users. She said: “I had lost my self esteem and all my self confidence. I didn’t think I fitted in with anyone who wasn’t a user. The shame and guilt of what I was doing kept me away from other people.”

Unlike most addicts Mikila kept her belief that crime was wrong and never stole or did anything more illegal than begging to feed her habit. She said: “I think maybe that comes from my upbringing. I remembered my dad and what he had said. It is also because I am scared of the law and of prison. And I always knew that one day I wanted a proper life but wouldn’t be able to have that if I had a record.”

Two years ago Mikila, who is originally from Medway, ended up in Maidstone. And in the depth of her addiction something pushed her towards getting help.

“I had a realisation of how low my life had got and that gave me the fight to want to change it,” she said, “I know I can make something of my life. I don’t think I am just meant to be a drug user.”

She signed up for a programme of help and first spent two weeks in Detox before transferring to a six month rehabilitation course in Bognor Regis. She said: "I came back and visited the people in Maidstone. I looked at them from the outside and saw how poorly everyone looked. I remember thinking I am never going back to this."

But she did. Three months into the course Mikila ran away and returned to her old haunts and her old habits. She said: “I was doing really well, but then I started to get scared. Started thinking what if I am not clever enough to ever get a job. So I ran away.”

Despite being back on the drugs, the glimmer of life Mikila had witnessed when clean stayed with her. It took over a year to get back to a place where she could try again.

She had started making tentative steps towards getting help, and then, last week, the police launched Operation Morse: a 250-officer sweep aimed at ridding Maidstone of class A drug dealers. She said: “At first there was panic. But then people started to realise the benefits of what was happening.”

As part of the operation, police were working with Turning Point and KCA - agencies that help drug users get clean. Mikila spoke to town centre officer PC Mark Sanna, who told her to get straight to Turning Point where help was available immediately. In the past it has taken anything up to a month to get an addict through the system and a prescription for a heroin substitute. But under Operation Morse the process has been speeded up, so Mikila had a prescription in her hand two hours after her conversation with PC Sanna.

When she spoke to the Kent Messenger, she had been clean for five days and this time she is determined not to fail.

Next on Mikila’s list is getting a job. She is so anxious to get off the treadmill that she is offering her time for free just to prove her dedication. She said: “It feels different this time. I am seeing a counsellor each week to discuss my prescription and see how I am getting on. I want a life back. I want to work. I want to do the mundane things like spend time with my family and see friends.

“I feel like a fog has lifted. I have woken up.”