I was eight, and older boys from my estate used to send me on jobs to collect stuff, giving me sweets, money and praise in return. I didn't know it at the time but I was delivering drugs. Later, I started living on the streets. I'd stay at people's houses, sleeping on sofas and on scuffed brown kitchen floors. People would always be coming in and out, bringing drugs and taking them. I'd get woken up with a kick in the head and the older boys would give me drugs and tell me to take them.

I was scared, angry and rejected, but I had to put on a front and not show any fear.

I was once forced to take 17 ecstasy tablets at a time. I had seen a guy overdose before - turning yellow and gray; I thought I wanted to do the same thing he had - end my life. Instead, I just became addicted to the drugs. For the whole of that time there was a lot of violence happening. One time, I was dragged out of the house to where a man was mercilessly beating the mother of his child. Everything was red. I became desensitised to violence - for me, it was just the way life goes. I still didn't become violent myself, though. I had a lot of anger and fear, a lot of lip, an attitude. But I didn't act on it.

That changed when I was 12 or 13. I was eating cold tins of beans, cornflakes with water. The older boys would see I was pathetically poor and they called me names. I was feeling worthless. They said I could sell drugs. It was the thing I'd promised I wouldn't do. But I thought I had to. And, once I started, I had £700 in one pocket and £800 in the other.

I was young. I was green. I was getting respect and money. I was feeling like I was something bigger. People were praising me. I knew what I was doing was wrong and I wanted to stop. But when I stopped - that's when the violence started. When I was robbing people, if someone said something wrong to me, I would just react and they would get hit. 

There was always fighting and blood. 

All I can remember from that time was blood. 

I would black out. Come to. Blood.