YouTube. Down the tube, more like. Can you believe I missed it? My five minutes of madness, immortalised and digitised, downloaded and replayed around the nation.

Of course, there were signs. People I’d never met kept smiling at me. Kids started clocking me on their mobiles. But so what, I thought. It goes with the job. Then a working girl stops me in Sussex Street. That can go with the job too… a shared cigarette, a bit of innuendo and light-hearted banter. But this girl was different.  Love the video, Father, she says, giving me a kiss and a dirty big wink.  I knew then I was in trouble. But it wasn’t until I saw it in black and white that I realised I was in quite so deep. 

Getting your notice by text is bad enough. But, believe me, there are worse exit strategies. Your photo on the front page of The Sun under the headline, Addict Vicar Faces the Sack, for a start.

Sensational, huh? But, like most stories in the tabloid press, there was an element of exaggeration. They didn’t sack me... or at least they haven’t yet. Instead, there was a lot of talk about rehabilitation and counselling, confession and forgiveness, a second chance. Oh, yes, and somebody from the Bishop’s office telephoned me to agree a media response.

What could I say? Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me. Too biblical and, besides, who’s going to accept a plea of original sin in mitigation? 'I’m sorry' just sounds lame… and begs the question every contrite politician replying to the latest kiss-and-tell dreads. Sorry for what you did, or sorry you were caught? So I try to tell it as it is. It was a mistake, a moment of madness. But Bishop John’s assistant thinks that’s too clichéd. He says clichéd, but I know whar he’s really thinking - 'It’s too risky. What else could leak out?'

In the end, he faxes me a draft to sign. My behaviour fills me with nothing but shame and revulsion, which isn’t quite true. I may be full of shame and revulsion, but there’s something else there too.  For a moment, my pen hovers over the paper. I’m grateful for this wake-up call. Yes, grateful, but regretful too. I sign the paper anyway. After all, what’s one more omission? Later, Bishop John calls to thank me for my co-operation. Then he turns to the issues that more properly occupy the Episcopal mind, things like women’s canonical fitness and clergy pensions. There’s no more mention of crack cocaine.

That’s something he leaves my therapist to pick up on. Why did you do it? She asks one day. I can’t remember what triggers this sudden directness after interminable discussions about my childhood, just that I’m lying on the proverbial couch and staring up at the white stucco ceiling of her Notting Hill villa, wondering, hypothetically of course, how far it is to the nearest place to score. For a minute, I toy with telling her the simple truth. Because it makes me feel good. It’s like experiencing every orgasm you’ve ever had at once… But the truth is never simple. And, besides, I don’t think she wants the truth. She needs to find an explanation.

So I start telling her about Smokey Joe and the Bad Ass Crew. Trust me, it’s a lot easier than trawling my subconscious for childhood trauma. I just pretend I’m describing the characters in an Irvine Welsh novel, which, I suppose, in a way, I am.

Really, she says, unimpressed. And you’ve probably guessed it too. Smokey Joe and the Bad Ass Crew only exist in my imagination, the literary embodiment of disaffected youth, a sort of Hoodie elite. What the hell, I’m on a roll. The drugs were part of the ritual, a bit like communion, I explain, hoping my flippancy doesn’t get back to Bishop John. But my therapist just smiles, indulgent, like she’s seen it all before, and I can tell what she’s thinking -  'He’s still using.' 

So here I am now, clean and waiting outside Bishop John’s office, still trying to think of an explanation. And this time there’s no falling back on my unofficial chaplaincy to Smokey Joe’s possé. All I can do is tell it as it is. I was taking the gospel to the streets when I met a crack head called Joe. Well it may sound a bit like Janet and John on acid, but what’s wrong with that? Then he invited me back to his flat and offered me some rock.  Ah… that’s where it really starts to break up. You’ve got to remember Bishop John’s seen the video…and whatever else the papers sent him.

I told them it was part curiosity, part trying to understand what was going on for the people who take it, the poor you will always have with you, people like Joe whose only possessions were the divan we were sitting on and a packing crate he kept his crack pipe in. What makes you take it? I wanted to ask, but the question sounded out of place when I looked at the emptiness around me. So I asked if I could share his crack. It’s not the sort of thing I can explain to Bishop John, but it seemed the right thing to do…at the time.

And even now I can’t say I’m going into Bishop John’s office with a truly contrite heart, or an explanation I can share. Because crack is the best thing and the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. For a split second, I felt God, not the warm glow sometimes grasped in prayer, but a tidal wave of orgasm, a tsunami covering the world with love. But then, just as quickly, the world emptied. And what’s left is worse than empty. It’s a world devoid of God… until your next hit.