I was a high-flyer with a £1million business and a family I adored. But no one suspected I was snorting 7g of cocaine a day. Here’s how to tell if YOUR loved one is hiding addiction from you, and how I finally got sober

Zachary Oliver still has flashbacks to the look of devastation on his six-year-old son Noah’s face, seven years after the worst day of his life.

It was the Saturday morning that Noah had looked forward to for months – the gymnastics competition that would showcase his exceptional talent for the sport he’d grown to adore.

But Zachary – who is separated from Noah’s mother – didn’t wake up until 11am. The competition started at ten. He’d missed it. 

It was the inevitable all-time low that bookended a decade of a gradual decline in his ability to function.

The night previously, like so many others, the then 29-year-old had been out on an almighty cocaine bender, involving punch-ups and romantic liaisons with strangers.

The recruitment executive had ended the night collapsed on his bed, fully clothed, in the small hours of the morning.

How the mighty had fallen, he thought. Just eight years previously, Zachary had built up a successful medical recruitment business at the astonishingly young age of 21, which was worth £1.4million within its first year of trading. 

At an age when most people are just settling into their first job, he had his own London office, employed 50 staff and owned two expensive cars. 

But little did his colleagues know, Bedfordshire-based Zachary was secretly nursing a spiralling cocaine habit that was costing him somewhere in the region of £250,000 a year.

It was a ‘shameful’ addiction that, eventually, lost him both his firm, the £1million worth of shares he owned in it – and very nearly severed his relationship with his son.

Physically, the drug resulted in the shrinkage of his muscular frame – at 5ft 7in he weighed just eight and a half stone at the height of his addiction – as well as significant hair loss.

Zachary is far from the only middle-class high-flyer to be hiding a white powder problem. 

Tales of middle-class mums relying on the class A drug to cope with their deluge of life stressors have become increasingly common. 

Meanwhile addiction experts have long warned of the silent army of ‘functioning’ addicts, who are hooked on drugs but still manage to appear capable at high-powered jobs – and even care for young children. 

Data suggests that Britain is taking more cocaine than ever before. 

The UK is now the largest consumer of cocaine in Europe, and the second-largest in the world, according to a 2023 report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

The drug, which forces the heart to work much harder, can increase the risk of heart attack, stroke, seizures and irregular heart rhythms. Other complications include damage to the nasal cavity, difficulty swallowing, sexual dysfunction and psychosis.

Cocaine works by blocking the proteins in the brain that clear out excess dopamine – the hormone responsible for feelings of reward and pleasure. 

This creates an artificial surge in the feel-good chemical that can lead to addiction, as users need more and more of the drug to achieve the same ‘high’.

Zachary first experimented with cocaine aged 17. He was introduced by a friend and ‘preferred how it made me feel over alcohol’.

‘Drugs never seemed like a dangerous thing and everyone I knew was doing it,’ he said. ‘It was about being accepted more than anything else – I wanted to be liked.

‘I came to the conclusion that I was a better person with it [cocaine] than I was without it.’

Within a year, while working as a sales representative at a major medical firm, he was using most weekends. Within two years his habit had seeped into his working week.

‘I started off just taking the drugs on Friday night, rolling into Saturday morning. But the habit got progressively worse,’ he said. ‘Soon it became an activity that would take over every Friday to Monday.’

Within a year, he started to miss the odd Monday at work, faking a mystery illness. 

‘Really, I was going to sleep at 5am and attempting to wake up for work at 7am, which was total madness.

‘I loved being out. I loved attention, I wanted to be validated by people all the time. That was how I connected with people.’

The chaos caught up with him eventually, with bosses sacking him from his role in 2011.

But rather than taking it as motivation to clean up his act, Zachary said he ‘doubled down’ and set up his own company. 

By 2014, the businessman had reached the pinnacle of professional success, pocketing £33,000 every month and owning a third of the shares in his company at the age of just 24.

‘I became very, very successful and very wealthy,’ he said. ‘But the addiction followed that same traction – the more I earned, the more I used.’ 

It only took a year before his colleagues started to investigate Zachary’s countless no-shows.  

He recalls one afternoon when, after he’d failed to arrive at work, his business partner turned up at his flat to check on him. 

‘I was asleep on the sofa, fully clothed,’ said Zachary, who added that, from that point, the ‘secret’ about his drug use was out. Within a few weeks of the incident, he was asked to leave the company, with his business partner urging him to get medical help.

‘My whole world fell apart,’ he said. ‘I’d based my worth on my success, and the respect of the people that worked for me.

‘To have all of that taken from me – it was awful. It made me suicidal.’

Soon afterwards he sold his shares in the firm for £150,000. But within a year, it was all gone and, with no income, he was forced to leave his rented apartment and move into his brother’s spare room. 

‘I spent pretty much everything on drugs,’ he said.

‘I started using cocaine pretty much every day, probably about three grams a day, sometimes up to seven.

‘Whatever day I was awake and conscious, I would be using. I was awake for up to seven days at a time and completely disconnected from everything and everyone.’

Then, in April 2019, came the turning point he never could have predicted. 

While disappointing his son had been a regular occurrence during his addiction, this time, he could see the complete devastation it had brought to his ‘only reason to live’.

‘By that point I didn’t care about myself,’ he said. ‘But seeing how much pain I’d put my son through broke me. It was like something snapped.

‘I thought, I’m either going to have to end my life, or I have to find a new way to live.’ 

The following day, Zachary researched private rehab services that would be covered by his health insurance policy. 

Within a week he’d booked himself into a private rehabilitation facility in London for a month-long stint. 

It proved successful – with therapy, group workshops and medical detox support helping him go cold turkey, and stick to it. 

Zachary then embarked on a 12-step recovery programme – a well-recognised addiction treatment based on peer support – as well as weekly private therapy.   

A combination of support group programmes and talking therapy is the recommended treatment for cocaine addiction, according to The Royal College of Psychiatrists. 

This treatment protocol was a ‘solid foundation for recovery’.

This April marked Zachary’s seven-year sober anniversary. Now 36, he works as a recovery coach for his own addiction support firm, helping others to seek medical help.

Feeling ashamed is the most common reason for being ‘stuck’ in addiction, he said.

‘The belief that there’s something wrong with you is often the only thing holding you back.’

Today, Zachary says his son Noah, now 14, is his ‘best friend’. The teenager knows the truth about his father’s difficulties with addiction.

‘He’s at that age where he is exploring alcohol,’ says Zachary. ‘All I ask is that he doesn’t feel afraid about telling me what he wants to try, or what he wants to do.

‘I let him follow his own path and make sure he’s aware about the consequences.’

• For support with drug and alcohol addiction, call the charity Frank on 0300 123 6600 or visit the website to find local services.