Mum tells of former heroin addiction and how a new form of hypnotherapy helped her overcome cravings

Speaking with remarkable candour, Zuzana revealed she tried the class A narcotic for the first time at just 19.

A former junkie – now a mum-of-two – who still hankered after heroin 10 years after leaving rehab has told how a single session of a revolutionary new hypnotherapy treatment helped her finally overcome her cravings.

Speaking with remarkable candour, Nott, 35, told how, at just 19, she tried the class A narcotic heroin for the first time – plunging her into an addiction that spiralled out of control.

Terrified by seeing friends die from drug abuse, Zuzana, of Prague, in the Czech Republic, confessed everything to her parents, and she checked herself into rehab, where she got clean – going on to have twin boys, Joshua and Benjamin, now aged seven.

Despite kicking her habit, Zuzana still experienced sporadic cravings for heroin.

But then, in June 2018, she tried a pioneering new therapy known as Bi Lateral Amygdala Stimulation Techniques (BLAST).

By blending eyes open hypnosis with eye tracking movements, it aims to help process and remove unconscious trauma.

She said: “I left rehab in 2008, but even 10 years on, I still had cravings. It wasn’t every day, but during emotionally challenging times, I would remember how it felt to take drugs.

“I thought it was part of the deal, that the saying ‘once a junkie, always a junkie’ was true, so I tried my best to live with them. But after just one BLAST session, I felt a huge shift.

“Now, while I remember the feeling of taking the drug, the yearning and emotion isn’t there.”

A counsellor, Zuzana was so impressed by her treatment that she learned the technique herself during a seminar, and is also touring schools, sharing her story as a cautionary tale to youngsters.

She continued: “With addiction, cravings are the one thing that keep bringing you back to that place, so to finally be able to overcome them is such an immense help.”

Growing up, Zuzana was hit by mysterious panic attacks in her teens.

She explained: “I didn’t actually remember them until years later, when I started revisiting that time of my life during therapy, and I still don’t know what caused them.

“But I was a shy child and so didn’t want to tell anyone they were happening. I felt defective and scared.”

Her anxiety, combined with a teenage desire to experiment, soon led Zuzana into dabbling in smoking and drinking.

She continued: “Society sees junkies as these spoilt children who aren’t grateful for what they have, and I suppose I was that stereotype.

“I had everything – but there was still something missing. I wanted to see past the monotony of everyday life, so I began smoking and drinking at about 14. It wasn’t out of control then, though.”

But two years later, aged 16, Zuzana entered the rave scene, taking hard drugs for the first time in the form of an ecstasy pill. “It felt amazing, like everything made sense for the first time,” she said.

After that she began living a “double life,” as a quiet, high-achieving student in the week and a druggie raver at weekends  – which she kept secret from her family.

Eventually, falling in with an older crowd, she was drawn to their ability to enjoy a hedonistic lifestyle, while remaining functioning members of society.

“They were, like me, normal people during the week and partying at the weekend,” she said. “We would dance, laugh and talk about the universe together. It was a really beautiful time. They seemed like they knew how to live, and it amazed me that it was possible to be an adult and not lead that robotic life I thought everyone else had.”

But, soon Zuzana discovered cocaine, methamphetamine and, eventually, aged 19, heroin, and her life swiftly became unmanageable.

She added: “I saw heroin as the holy grail of drugs and was intrigued to see why everybody was trying it. I was doing well in my day-to-day life. I’d finished school with good grades, got a place at university and a full-time job.

“I thought that meant I was handling my drug-taking well, and so had this false sense of confidence.”

At first, Zuzana’s heroin habit was not regular and she did not suffer withdrawal symptoms.

But things soon got out of hand and, as she bounced from job to job, drugs took over her life.

After leaving home in her late teens, she barely saw her family, making it easy to keep her all-consuming drug habit from them.

“I lived in a bubble,” she said. “I reached a point where I couldn’t face myself alone. I always had to be under some sort of influence. It wasn’t long before what I once saw as this amazing time made me feel like a loser.

“It wasn’t fun anymore. I got to the point where I was drinking a bottle of vodka a night. I’d try to quit heroin, but the withdrawal symptoms were horrendous, and it just pushed me onto other drugs.”

Eventually, when she was 24, Zuzana hit rock bottom after losing a number of friends to overdoses.

She recalled: “I was lying on my floor one day, when my mum called. There was something in my voice and she could tell I wasn’t okay. Something in me just cracked and everything came flooding out. I told her I was an addict, and she said she was coming to help me.

“Finally saying it was such a relief. It had been a heavy thing to carry around. I was amazed how much support I had. People did care – they’d just been waiting for me to be honest.”

Checking into rehab, Zuzana stayed for six months, leaving aged 25. But she was terrified by the thought of living the rest of her life sober, as she had forgotten who she was without drugs.

Keen for a fresh start, she moved to Gibraltar in 2008, then living in Spain for three years, where she met her twins’ dad.

Becoming a mum meant all her own young traumas and her battle with addiction resurfaced, leading to her being diagnosed with severe postnatal depression when they were around four months old.

She said: “It should have been a happy time in my life. I was healthy, I thought my addiction was healed and I had children I wanted. Yet, I honestly felt as if I should die, to stop being a burden on the people I loved. In a way, it was harder than the drug-taking days, as this time, I didn’t understand why I was sick.”

From there, Zuzana tried several different approaches to tackling her trauma, before eventually going for a session of eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy in 2011.

A form of interactive psychotherapy, it is often used to treat post-traumatic stress disorder and works by helping the brain to process distressing memories and reduce their influence.

During sessions, patients will be asked to recall difficult memories. At the same time they receive bilateral – or left to right – stimulation, either moving their eyes, tapping different sides of their body, or hearing tones through one ear then the other via headphones.

Reliving such events when the attention is somewhat diverted, is believed, over time, to make them less upsetting, so they can be revisited without as strong an emotional response.

“In that session, I recovered all sorts of repressed memories – like the panic attacks I’d had as a teenager,” said Zuzana. “It helped me realise that I wasn’t broken, I was just unhappy.

“After healing myself, I found a passion for helping other people like me and decided to use what I have learned and become a therapist myself.”

Next, at seminar in Prague in 2017, Zuzana met Nick Davies, one of the UK’s top hypnotherapists and psychotherapists, who masterminded the BLAST technique.

And in June 2018, she flew to Coventry, in the West Midlands, to try it herself. Its effects were so dramatic, that she has overcome her heroin cravings and also quit her 20-year smoking habit.

Reflecting on her remarkable progress she said: “I still have days when I doubt myself, but I need to remember how far I have come. Nick is such an inspiring person. I am still in touch with him now.”

She added: “I have the power of knowing nothing in the human psyche is unhealable. It may take time, it may take work, but you can get better.”

Explaining how BLAST works, Nick Davies added: “PTSD and trauma overactivate the right, emotional hemisphere of the brain, and lack sufficient stimulation in the left, logical side. To be able to process the experience/s properly, the bilateral movements help reprocess the memory in real time to store it correctly.

“I met Zuzana when, at a workshop in Prague, she told me of her addiction and how other treatments hadn’t worked for her. We began to work together shortly after to remove her heroin addiction and the traumas surrounding it, and managed to resolve this and remove her cravings after one session.”

For information, visit www.ndhypnotherapy.com