How Rangers hero Alex Rae provides a second chance in substance fight

Rae departed his home city in 1990 after clinching a move to Millwall. He made his name in England, for both the right and wrong reasons, before becoming a hero of Helicopter Sunday at Ibrox.

His issues with alcohol were well documented and have been well versed. Rae did not have his problems to seek, but those experiences now allow him to influence others who are confronting their own demons.

At 21, Rae thought he knew it all and knew better when he lost his driving licence. Three decades on, Rae is older and wiser and his own battle with the bottle allows him to help those who find themselves in a dark place.

It was during Rae's two-year stint at boyhood heroes Rangers that he realised he could be a force for good, that he could aid those from the same streets where he grew up. In 2007, the Second Chance Project was formed.

"I had been down in England for the best part of 14 years," Rae said. "And when I came back up to Glasgow, I was a bit taken aback when I looked at what I left and the landscape that I came back to.

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"I had been away and I was perplexed about the way things were going. That is why we set this up. I had seen this model working in Bournemouth and Liverpool.

"It wasn’t revolutionary, I was just trying to copy a model that had been successful in both of those places. I had real faith in what we were trying to do and it was different because we were talking about being abstinence based."

The success of the Provident Project on the south coast and the Sharp Project, which had the backing of Liverpool and Everton, convinced Rae that there was a different way to treat addiction. His own story of abstinence is proof of his plan in action.

There is pride and satisfaction in the hundreds that have been helped along their own paths. Yet Rae knows as well as anyone that there are still thousands across Scotland that need a support network and a safe space if they are to embark on their own recoveries.

In 2020, there were a record 1,339 drug-related deaths in Scotland and figures released earlier this month showed a five per cent increase on the number for the same period last year. Some £250million was committed to tackling the shameful record by Nicola Sturgeon two years ago but the nation still has the highest drug-related death rate of any country in Europe

"People are losing their lives out there," Rae, who founded Second Chance alongside Keira MacDougall, said. "We have a horrific drug death record in Scotland. It is horrific. That is the only way I can describe it.

"I think it is three per day. So every eight hours, someone is dying from an overdose in Scotland. We are losing people at an alarming rate through drugs. And alcohol is through the roof as well.

"It is difficult for people. The only solace they have is from drink and drugs because of the situation they find themselves in.

"We have a lot of poverty at the moment, people are struggling financially, and they are trying to escape from reality. It is a difficult time."

The Second Chance programme is split into three phases. To date, more than 400 users of the service have benefitted from the highly-trained and compassionate team that work through each stage of the recovery process.

Rae has been open and honest about his issues previously. Once a problem is identified, it can be solved. Those that seek a second chance in life are given all the support required to lead them to abstinence.

"These people are daily users of either alcohol, drugs or a combination of them both," Rae said. "They are chronic users. It is end of the road type stuff and they need to alter their way of life.

"We have 14 people in phase three, so we have daily users that are between six months and a year clean. In the next couple of weeks, we hope to have three people who graduate from that 14.

"That will be those individuals clean for a year. We monitor their recovery, we provide education and we provide peer support.

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"For a chronic drug user or an alcoholic, to go six months to a year clean, it is like a lifetime. These people, previously, have not been able to go a couple of hours without going to get drugs or get a bottle.

"When I say these people are getting to that year marker, it is an incredible achievement. It is massive."

Those that are battling addiction will each have their own milestone moments and each is significant in its own right. For Rae, one arrived a quarter of a century ago.

The friendship of Paul Gascoigne became a source of inspiration and encouragement to Rae and he remains indebted to the Ibrox legend for the part he played in his own recovery.

"He helped me remarkably to get my life back on track when we were going difficult times together in '98," Rae said. "We were in rehab together and I was really struggling. I was going to do a runner after five days.

"The chap who was running it says 'hang about a little bit, there's a geezer coming back in, he's already been in for a month and he's doing an extra couple of days a week for the time that you're in'.

"I was literally going to run out of the door on the Friday and he came in and got me under his wing and from there on in, I've managed to be on the straight and narrow. So I'm indebted to him for getting myself back on track."

Rae became a trustee of the Rangers Charity Foundation in August 2021. He is chairman of Second Chance and strives to ensure those that are heading down the wrong road don't reach a dead end.

The game where he made his name is still cherished. A popular pundit on screen and on the airwaves, Rae left his position at Reading towards the end of last season.

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Second Chance remains closest to his heart, though. There are few who understand the power of recovery better than the 53-year-old.

"Not only do we try and get them clear of all substances, we try and get them into education, we help them with their housing," Rae said. "It is a package of measures to get people back on track, as well as the support that they get from Second Chance.

"Education and employability are big boxes that we want to tick, while stressing the importance of the recovery model. Without the recovery, our experience is that people go back to substance abuse.

"It is an ongoing maintenance. It is aftercare. We won’t just cut you loose.

"People will be peer supporters, they provide their experiences to newcomers and it is like a cycle. The people who are further down the road have the opportunity to come back and help and peer support.

"Some people go straight into employment, others go into education. There are many directions people can go in after their year and we have the aftercare service so we are not just cutting them loose."

While there are addicts in need of assistance, Rae and the Second Chance team will be there. Every pound of funding is fought for, every penny spent used wisely and productively.

The targets that were set were continually exceeded before the pandemic. Those years shifted the discussion for some, but Rae's focus has never deviated from taking the first steps on the journey as Glaswegians continue to follow the process that has been put in place.

"The problem we have is that we are probably running at half the capacity that we should be, partly due to the landscape after Covid," Rae said. "I knew that if we could get the right people, which we do, then it would be a success.

"I knew we could provide a very good facility, an option and a choice to someone who was struggling with alcohol or drug addiction. We would provide another option. One of our slogans was ‘the road to recovery’ and we provide that."