On January 1, 2009 I signed a form where the first line read, Status: Homeless/Alcoholic. I remember thinking to myself how bad it looked on paper. But it wasn’t always this way.

In the early 80s I had turned down the chance to sign a youth contract with an English football club at £25 a week; I went for just one day and hated it. I thought at 16 that time was on my side and I could go back at a later stage.

Not wanting to return home, I visited an uncle who had a nightclub in Blackpool. Within weeks, I was earning £100 a week, with free food, unlimited lager and plenty of girls about. For a young lad, for the first time living away from home, this was unbelievable and for two years it was, but in moments of clarity it was too much.

I needed a change so I joined a kibbutz in Israel — a commune where young people worked and found their inner soul. My soul was touched by cold beer, sunshine, marijuana and more girls. After a year, I had to get back to normality.

Even though a pattern was beginning to emerge, I did not see it.

However, a friend persuaded me to go to college, which I entered with the very best of intentions. That was until the night that, wobbling home from the pub, I drifted into a nightclub and noticed that it was open until seven in the morning.

Inside, they didn’t serve alcohol, but eventually I acquired a little tablet. The dance scene had started. I threw myself in head first, taking so many pills that when I walked past you ? I rattled.

Two years later, I had no degree, my girlfriend had walked out and it was time to rethink my life again. I wondered “What kind of life can you have where you can party all the time, make plenty of money and everybody still gets on with you? Let’s start a rock ‘n’ roll band!”

My father is a fine musician and had taught me well. So, with a few friends, we became pretty good, writing our own songs, getting on local radio and eventually got a showcase by an international record company in Dublin.

By this time I was a heavy drinker, as were my friends who came to the gig, and trashed the venue. Thirteen people were arrested and I was fired from band.

Still, all was not lost. They told me I had great stage presence, just before I was carried out of the venue. So I thought, the stage it is, I’ll try acting!

I went to college in Wales, in a town with a hotel, two pubs, a population of just 300 and no police. We went crackers, drinking and crawling about the golf course at six in the morning looking for magic mushrooms. I dated the girl from the local hotel. I staggered through the course, did two performances, got a diploma and decided the best place to be an actor was London.

The only advice I was given was, ‘Johnny, this is another opportunity, don’t blow it.’ Three hours later I was in a strip club in Soho drinking whisky with a three-foot dwarf and a transvestite. That was the yardstick for the next three years.

I made it to campus and straight into a band.

I got several jobs as a movie extra, which involved standing about, drinking laced cola I had smuggled on to the set, and inevitably I was dragged off shouting abuse at the director.

It was back to full throttle drink and drugs, another disaster — and I ended up back in Ireland.

Figuring that it was time to broaden my horizons, I read in the paper about a three year visa programme in the USA. So I thought “Let’s do America, nobody knows me there, I can start again.”

But my visa was turned down and I was devastated. This was the first time the plan had hit a wall. I started drinking really heavily and I was out of control.

In London, I was approached by a well-known independent TV company who felt that I had a lively mind and the potential to come up with TV ideas.

They invited me to meet them in their swish offices off Oxford Street. I was not having a great day. They never called again.

I decided to return to the kibbutz to live on the commune and re-evaluate my life, but predictably I arrived and got drunk. I had nothing.

“I was bumming around a beach in Tel Aviv with a borrowed guitar singing U2 songs for drunk Americans.

Then after one mad night on the drink, I woke up in a sorry mess. I found the Irish Embassy and they got me home.

Now I was clueless. I booked into a religious retreat and turned to prayer. It didn’t work.

Then it got really scary. I was playing a dangerous game with my drinking. Hospitalised on numerous occasions, I eventually ended up in a clinic for alcoholics. In there it made me think, but at my stage of confusion nothing sinks in.

My uncle in Blackpool died from liver failure aged just 54. I went to the funeral and walked around the graves of three close friends, young lads with whom I had worked, now all dead through drink or drugs.

The party was definitely ending. Friends and family were ignoring me, I had lost the will and desire to do anything.

Then a few months ago, I heard that the BBC were looking for people with addictions and someone thought of me. I stared at the piece of paper. The TV series was called The Last Resort. Right, I thought, here’s one for the neighbours.

I did the programme — spending two weeks in a stately home surrounded by therapists and cameras.

Since leaving The Last Resort things have changed. I met people and have been offered opportunities that would not have happened otherwise.

I turned 40 this year so I went for a drink. On the night there was me, my mum and a mate who turned up because I owed him 80 quid. There had been 150 friends at my 21st birthday. But it didn’t bother me because at last I’m still here to tell the tale.

Did it work? It did in the sense that it has forced me to sit up and take note of my actions. Over the last few months, I admit to have taken part in a few serious benders.

Someone did ask me was I not embarrassed going on TV to tell the world that I’m a failure. But I wasn’t. In my eyes I will only have failed when I stop trying.

The Last Resort, BBC1 NI, 10.35pm tonight and for the next consecutive 10 week nights

Paul Hale (34) is a community worker from north Belfast. Since his early teens he has been addicted to cannabis

In July, I was one of six people taken to a remote mansion called Colebrooke Manor in Fermanagh. We all suffered from various forms of addiction, from agoraphobia to eating disorders.

My problems started when I was 14 years old. I was having trouble dealing with abuse that I suffered as a child. At school, bullies taunted me about it which made it even worse.

When the person who abused me was convicted, one of the last things they said was that I consented to it. A newspaper used this in an article and kids in school cut out the headlines and stuck them up in the corridors. I began using cannabis for the same reasons as so many other addicts — as an escape from life and reality.

Then, my best friend, who was also my cousin, committed suicide when she was 18 years old. This was a great shock to me and I took it very badly.

When I was younger, I'd never taken any counselling or sought any advice for my problems. And the more cannabis I smoked, the harder I found it to give up. I would spend up to £60 a week to feed my habit.

I decided to give The Last Resort a try and it has completely changed my life. I found out so much about myself just by taking part and I've stopped smoking completely. In the past, I was exhausting myself trying to be the Paul that everyone wanted me to be.

I'd be one person when with my friends, then another person when I was with my parents.

I'd find myself coming home at night tired and depressed. Sometimes, I'd be fine for a few weeks, then get hit with a bad bout of depression and feel low all the time.

As I got older, I inevitably started dabbling in other drugs such as ecstasy and that just made things worse.

I went to doctors and psychiatrists about my depression but different doctors gave me different medication.

The Last Resort course lasted for 10 days altogether. On the first few days we just got to know the other participants.

It helped, because everyone was in the same sort of situation — we were all there to conquer our addictions.

It was kind of like being on Big Brother. We didn't know what was happening from one moment to the next and they certainly kept us busy with tasks like boat building and sheep herding.

We also had to go on a detox programme that consisted of various fruit and vegetable juices.

I lost a bit of weight on this and collapsed on the second day of detox. I actually wanted to put weight on. I've been very skinny all my life and have had trouble trying get bigger and healthier.

When someone says to me, ‘You need to put on weight' or ‘You're so thin, you look terrible' it's like calling a large person fat to their face — I hate it.

While I was there, they used a hypnotherapy technique on me and though I can't remember what happened, when I watched the video I broke down.

I started talking about a voicemail that my cousin had left me the day before she took her own life and how I didn't get the chance to ring her back.

Whatever happened, I no longer carry that with me mentally. I'm a changed person now.

I help out with a children's community project called Creative Children North Belfast.

The Last Resort has incredibly transformed me as a person. The programme was made by TERN TV — a production company that makes programmes about helping people like me when all else fails. I’m so grateful to them.

Now, I have true, good friends and I've kicked my addiction for good.