It started when I began to spend more time with the guys on the Level. One afternoon, I got chatting to the bloke that always wears a trilby – Spike – and he introduced me to his mates, red-bearded Ham and a pixie-faced girl called Zoë. And even though it was November, we stayed there till long after dark, even after the cider and the weed had run out. Despite my beta blockers, that night I didn’t even feel the cold.

As I wandered home, drunk and stoned and loose and light, I tried to work out why I felt so good. The spliffs helped but it wasn’t that. It was the way those guys accepted me. I didn’t have to explain myself or make excuses. They’d never known Joel Greenaway, superstar footballer. They simply saw me as I am, now.

The next morning I went straight back there, and they greeted me like an old friend. And suddenly it didn’t feel like any big deal to move on from weed to the other stuff they shared, which depended on what they could get their hands on. The old Joel would have been horrified by the damage drugs could do.

The new Joel doesn’t give a shit, so long as it feels good now.

What keeps me going back, day after day, isn’t the drugs. It’s the sense of belonging. I’ve only felt that twice before: in the team, and with Kerry. I’ve missed it. Of course, when we do ecstasy, I love my new friends even more. Speed always makes me nervous, because of my heart, but it’s hard to resist, when they’re all off their heads and I want to be too.

I’ll never be as bad as them. Ham does crack and heroin, and I think Zoë does, too. She once told us this ‘funny’ story about giving her dealer a blow job in return for drugs.

‘All women turn tricks, one way or another,’ she said, and I wondered what had happened in her life to make her believe something so shocking. But everyone else was laughing and I ended up joining in. We laugh a lot.

Sure, when Ant’s dad sacked me for missing three Christmas party shifts at the Arsehole, I knew I’d let him down. But after the crap I’ve had to deal with, I deserve some fun, right?

I don’t even remember New Year’s Eve, which is fine by me. 2003 feels no different to 2002.