“Hugging my mum again. I’d love that. That would be special.”

Tears are streaming down Paul Earnshaw’s face as he talks to us.

He has struggled for years with alcohol, however is now attempting to interrupt free from his dependancy.

It goes to be a troublesome journey.

The enormity of what lies forward is sinking in.

Paul is about to start out a detox course, adopted by what could possibly be as much as six months of rehab.

“I need to do it. I won’t let nobody down. I won’t let myself down.”

Sitting on a settee within the Blackpool workplaces of the charity Empowerment, Paul is reflecting on the place he has ended up.

“I don’t want to be picking a can up every single day, walking around the streets, people thinking, ‘oh, look at him, he’s drinking again, still doing this, still doing that’.

“Nah, I do not wish to try this. I’m 40 years outdated, I’m not getting any youthful. It’s time to maneuver on, it is time to dwell my life a distinct approach. It’s a possibility – if I do not take it, I’ll by no means get it once more, however I’m taking it, I’m doing it.”

At one point Dave, Paul’s support worker, gives him a huge hug, and for a moment you feel Paul may never let go.

Blackpool is a town plagued by too many preventable fatalities linked to alcohol, drug abuse and suicide – collectively described by the bleakly poetic phrase “deaths of despair” by well being researchers.

And research suggests Paul’s hometown of Blackpool has the highest rate of these deaths.

In Blackpool the rate is 83.8 for every 100,000 deaths.

Compare that to the area with the lowest rate, Barnet in Greater London, where the figure stands at 14.5 deaths per 100,000.

Steven Brown, a senior member of the Empowerment team, has lived a similar life to Paul, and against the odds, has somehow come out the other side.

“I’m from a council property in Layton in Blackpool, and I began hanging round with older folks, my brother, and most of us began taking medication, after which lots of us could not cease taking medication,” he mentioned.

“I used to be caught in that revolving door cycle that I could not get out [of].”

The drugs led to crime, which led to prison, but after more than 20 years spent in and out of jail, a key moment came when Steven went to a prison talk by a former addict who was running a charity for ex-offenders.

“I did not know that folks recovered. You both went to jail – you bought locked up – otherwise you died.

“Having some hope from someone like me, who hadn’t been to college and wasn’t educated – and I knew that they’d walked in the steps that I’d walked in – they was talking my language.

“And it is that hope of, ‘how have you ever achieved it? I would like what you may have. How do I observe you?’ and I assume that little little bit of hope modified my life.”

While he was in recovery, someone told Steven he only needed to change one thing in his life: “Everything – folks, locations and issues.” Steven understood what his friend meant.

Everyone in the Empowerment team has what is known as “lived expertise”, meaning they have all lived the chaotic and dangerous lives of the addicts, homeless people and alcoholics they are now helping.

Clean for more than seven years, Steven’s life now could not be more different from the one he left behind – a steady job that he loves, a partner, a child, a home.

So being from the north, being white, male and working class, working in a manual job, having a lower level of education – all these are risk factors.

But as report author Christine Camacho explains, these factors combine to become more than the sum of their parts.

“It’s a bit like a few of the results that we noticed in Covid the place the pandemic exacerbated a few of these underlying inequalities,” she mentioned.

And the bad news for Blackpool, a northern seaside town, is that it has a higher rate of these deaths than anywhere else in England.

“The UK is a rich nation, however it’s additionally fairly an unfair nation – our sources are usually not equally distributed. And deaths of despair are one avoidable consequence of that unequal distribution,” she added.

There are 25 members of the Empowerment charity working in and around Blackpool, trying to offer that tiny bit of hope that transformed Steven’s life.

They operate alongside social workers, the town council and the local NHS, trying to find housing, healthcare and support, and offering practical help for the homeless, including supplying clothing and essential toiletries.

Helping prevent overdoses is also a crucial part of the work, with workers distributing the anti-overdose drug Naloxone, a treatment that Steven says saved his own life more than once.

Support workers also build relationships of trust with people whose lives have descended into chaos.

Kate – not her real name – is now in her 30s, and said: “I began drink and medicines at a really younger age, to the purpose of oblivion typically.”

For a while she was in rehab but dropped out and last autumn, she found herself pregnant, homeless and still in the grip of her addiction.

However, Kate’s support worker from Empowerment stuck with her and never gave up.

Kate has been clean for more than 100 days and said: “It was extraordinarily tough, however I’d simply had sufficient of residing on the streets, being round needles in deserted resorts, it was horrible.

“It was the change and the support from these guys that got me to where I am today, as well as myself. For someone to be there, and to have that support from when I was really bad in addiction, to now being clean, and having someone there regardless of whether I’m there or not, and still trying to support me, is an amazing feeling.

“If it hadn’t been for her, I would not be the place I’m right this moment.”

Kate and Paul had been each susceptible to changing into statistics, however with the assistance of the Empowerment crew they’re starting the lengthy and tough street to restoration.