On a mission to clean up messy lives

The door to Lesley MacNiven's Corstorphine home clicked shut behind her and the thought of a soothing drink flitted across her mind.

Shooing it away as quickly as it had appeared, she instead tried hard to focus on what she'd been told at the rehab clinic where she had battled for months to wean herself off her alcohol addiction. "That's the trouble with rehab," she says with a deep sigh looking back on those early days on the road to recovery. "It fixes you up but it's just like a sticking plaster, it doesn't get to the root of the problem. It doesn't fix the reason why you feel you have to drink..."

Lesley's friend and colleague Veronica Leigh nods in agreement. Like Lesley she is a recovering alcoholic, with booze-fuelled escapades behind her which once resulted in her smashing up her ex's van with a crowbar. Drink-free for eight years, she has transformed her life to become a successful businesswoman who can now boast of living in a converted castle and popping off to Paris for a weekend jaunt.

Both are 44, blonde, groomed and oozing confidence; a long way from their messy battles with the bottle, when evenings were spent in their homes in separate parts of the city rolling drunk on the road to self-destruction.

And both now firmly believe they have what it takes to help solve the nation's depressing and destructive addictions, from today's binge drinkers who morph into tomorrow's alcoholics, to drug addicts and self-harmers.

They have already approached the Scottish Executive and addiction clinics with their plans to offer a unique form of post-rehab clinic counselling which they believe can help keep recovering addicts on the wagon. And they have unveiled an innovative plan to tour the country's schools delivering their brand of self-improvement techniques combined with stark tales of how drink almost drove them into the gutter.

But perhaps the most remarkable story in their journey towards transforming their own lives comes tomorrow, when Veronica and Lesley are due to travel to London to embark on the first steps towards what could make them household names as the next generation of reality TV life coaches. Rather than sweeping into your untidy house and clearing away your mess, their proposed programme will offer to clear up your inner demons instead.

Could Veronica and Lesley be coming to a small screen soon?

A London-based television company has expressed interest in the idea and invited the pair for a film test. In the show, the reformed alcoholics would use their personal experiences of addiction and recovery to encourage addicts to examine just why they have fallen into addiction. And having identified the reasons, there is at least a chance of avoiding them.

It's failing to address those key issues, the pair believe, that sends many recovering addicts from the rehab clinic straight back to the bottle or the needle.

"Some people do call us the Kim and Aggie of the mind," smiles Veronica. "Thing is, you see them going into people's messy houses and cleaning them up, but I think you need to look at why the person got into that mess in the first place. Go back in a few years and the house will be just as bad. It's the same with addiction."

"You have to go 'below the surface' to get the root causes before people enter the outside world and find they need somewhere to come back to," adds Veronica, who has helped clients ranging from business leaders seeking to improve their prospects, injured sportsmen and young people with addictions through her company, Ultimate Personal Development.

And she has watched closely the recurring drug problems surrounding model Kate Moss's boyfriend Pete Doherty, as he bounces from rehab clinic back to drugs, back into rehab.

"It's a familiar pattern," she explains, "they leave, go back into the same circumstances that they were in before and they just go and get drunk or do drugs again. I believe it takes a year to transform your personality - no doubt about that. Yet people come out of rehab and go straight back to where they came from - no wonder so many end up back where they started.

"You never know, we might well get Pete Doherty at the door one day. It's not impossible."

Lesley, who spent two years recovering from her alcohol problem at Castle Craig, the Borders clinic for addictions before becoming a therapist there, is acutely aware of the gaps in the system. She recalls her own countless trips to Edinburgh's treatment centre, the Andrew Duncan Clinic within the Royal Edinburgh Hospital, to be handed a lithium tablet and then often sent on her way.

"I was usually drunk when I was dragged there by my mum. But they wouldn't treat people who were drunk - can you believe that? - so I was sent home to sober up. Then I'd arrive kicking and screaming because I was sober and didn't think I needed to be in a place like that. I actually ended up being barred.

"The trouble is that people come out of rehab but there's no support for them. Helping someone through an addiction isn't a five-minute fix-it job. It takes a lot of time. But I left Castle Craig where I had been both a patient and a therapist, and went straight back to the place I was when I was drinking.

"I went to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and saw the same people I'd seen before I went to rehab. And I could feel myself going backwards, not forwards.

"The trouble is some people are in rehab clinics for months and months but why? It's because they are frightened to leave, they know they'll go straight back into the same environment they came from. The rehab clinic becomes their addiction because it's saving them from the reality.

"You also have to ask who is actually benefiting when clients keep going back to private clinics - after all, they receive thousands of pounds of public money every week for patients."

Lesley was trying desperately to stay on the wagon when she heard Veronica give a talk about her life-changing experiences at an AA meeting. Stunned by the similarities in their experiences, she called seeking support.

Soon Veronica had helped turn Lesley's life around again using therapy techniques aimed at encouraging individuals to take responsibility for their own actions. Now trained in the same techniques, Lesley has joined forces with Veronica's organisation to press the Executive, rehabilitation clinics and doctors to recognise them as a legitimate tier of the recovery process.

"We know better than anyone what it's like to be alcoholics," says Lesley, proudly declaring that she hasn't touched an alcoholic drink for five years. "We're not talking through a hole in our heads, because we've been there and we know how it is."

The talk turns to their drunken experiences, the uncontrolled emotional swings and the desperate measures each would go to in order to secure their next drink. Perfectly in tune with each other's thoughts, they finish each other's sentences and laugh raucously at each other's jokes.

Veronica smiles broadly and turns to Lesley. "Hey, we should be on the telly," she chuckles. "Shouldn't we?"

Scotsman