Hey,
My name is Jonas Bezzubovas. Before 2021, I worked as a software developer. My life since then has taken a direction I could never have anticipated.
I went through a period of profound instability following a violent crime in which I suffered a head injury. At the same time, I was struggling with substance use, my mental health and questions about my sexuality. All of this unfolded during the isolation and disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic.
During that period, I made the worst decision of my life: I robbed a Barclays bank in Romford.
I don’t mention this to excuse what I did. There is a difference between understanding how somebody reached a crisis and absolving them of responsibility for what happened once they got there. I committed a serious offence, and I have had to live with its consequences.
But it also became a turning point.
Getting sober gave me the opportunity to think clearly again and to begin rebuilding my life. It also left me with questions that have become increasingly important to me: How do people reach the point where their lives unravel? Why do some people fall through the gaps between healthcare, addiction services, the criminal justice system and their communities? And what can we do before somebody reaches that point?
Those questions are part of the reason this website exists.
I want to use both my professional background and my lived experience to help people who find themselves isolated, addicted, in trouble with the law, questioning who they are, or simply unable to see a way forward.
I believe that help has to happen on two levels. The first is personal: sometimes one person being willing to listen, communicate and treat somebody as a human being can make an enormous difference. I speak English and Lithuanian and am currently learning Albanian, partly because I want to be able to communicate with people whom conventional services do not always reach effectively.
The second is institutional. Individual support matters, but we also need to examine the systems people encounter — and the points at which those systems fail. Through this website, writing, conversations and future projects, I hope to contribute to that discussion and reach far more people than I could individually.
My past is part of my story, including the parts I deeply regret. It doesn’t give me all the answers. But it has given me a perspective I didn’t have before.
If sharing that perspective can help someone make a different decision before reaching their own point of crisis — or help an institution understand that person a little better — then I believe it is worth sharing.
