MORE than 200 people gathered at Blackburn Town Hall to see people who have pulled themselves out of drug addiction with the help of a local charity receive special personality awards.

The group of former addicts, who have been helped to battle their addiction by Blackburn-based THOMAS - Those On the Margins of A Society - were presented with their Personality of the Year awards by Blackburn Mayor Coun John Williams.

The award ceremony in the council chamber was a far cry from the spiral of abuse which left some of them facing addiction, homelessness, prison or even death.

Twenty-seven-year-old Ian Howarth, of Darwen, asked THOMAS for help last Christmas, after being hooked on methadone, heroin and tranquilizers for around five years.

His addiction, which he developed through friends, had left him without a job for the past four years. He said: "My life was grim really while I was on drugs. But then I got that sick of it and that bored of it that I had to do something to get myself out. If it wasn't that I decided then, I'd still be there, or maybe even dead now."

Drug-free for the past eight months, Ian said: "I find it hard at times, learning to keep my life without drugs. That is the hard bit for me."

He now lives in Oxford and is on a social administration course studying psychology, history of the welfare state and sociology at Platar College.

Paul Cullen, 31, from Blackburn, now runs the THOMAS drop-in centre, after eating there as a homeless addict for two years.

He said: "I used to go to the soup kitchen there and I never saw anyone getting clean. Everyone I knew either went to prison or died. But then one day I saw a lad I had used with who had got clean and that made me decide to do something."

Paul had started experimenting with glue and gas at around 12 years and moved onto ecstacy, amphetamines and eventually heroin.

"I was just injecting in every vein that I could find, sleeping in places you wouldn't let a dog sleep in and was just a mess really."

One of the things he most regrets from his addict days he said was stealing from his sick mother to feed his habit while she was in a nursing home.

After approaching THOMAS he was given a mentor and put on a 12 week rehabilitation programme. He still attends twice-weekly meetings and has just moved into his own home for the first time in Darwen.

"Working with THOMAS has given me a sense that it is OK to be myself. I didn't have to fit into any pigeonhole that anyone wanted. I denied myself possibly the most precious gift anyone can have, which is to be themselves."

"It is very special for me to be getting one of the awards today, as I was here last year, and I saw them all getting their awards and thought to myself 'that'll be me next year'. And it is brilliant that I am."

The charity, based in St Anne's House in France Road, Blackburn, has just received extra funding which will help it continue its work, and appoint its first ever worker for the ethnic communities in the New Year.

It received £140,000 over the next three years from the community unit of the Home Office and £50,000 from the European Social Fund.

Director Father Jim McCartney: "It is nice this year that some of them are able to come back and get their awards. We are very proud of them. The work is very rewarding."

Blackburn Mayor Coun John Williams presented the awards after choosing the charity as one of his charities for the year.