Inspiration from ACE Interrupters in Great Britain
Kevin Neary – wee big man Volunteer for Turn Your Life Around and co-founder of charity Aid & Abet, Edinburgh
As a young teenager, Kevin Neary made a discovery that would set him off on a spiral of selfdestruction. On a freezing cold night in November 1982, he and some other boys tried a bottle of sweet wine they had grabbed off the back of a van. In doing so, 13-year old Kevin broke his resolve never to touch alcohol. “I saw what alcohol done to people,” he says. “It was never a happy memory – parties, even neighbours in the street – there was always violence at the end of it.” He had grown up watching his parents become dependent on drink to cope with the pressures of life in a Glasgow tenement flat. Nevertheless, on that night in the school playing-fields, Kevin took a swig. “I felt I had arrived – feeling confident, taller with a stride in my step,” he recalls. “I wanted to keep that feeling for ever.” Overhead the stars twinkled and with the wine inside him, Kevin no longer felt so cold. The experience awoke a yearning in him for the anaesthetising effects of alcohol. “When I drank alcohol, the best way I can describe it is when you’re in a swimming pool and you hear all the noise and you jump under the water and it goes [quiet]… It was the most beautiful experience.” It set in motion years of chaos; alcohol became a stepping stone to marijuana, prescription drugs, heroin, crack cocaine, methadone and repeated spells in prison. “I had to get out of me with these substances,” he says. “I lost my sense of self – who I really was.” It would take another three decades before he found a reason to live comfortably in his own skin. At the age of 40, while serving a prison sentence for assault and robbery, Kevin finally began the process of overcoming his addictions. Nowadays he works with young people and acts as a volunteer for a project called Turn Your Life Around, run by the City of Edinburgh Council and Police Scotland. The project sends volunteers with adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) into schools to share their stories of resilience with staff and pupils. Kevin has also co-founded a charity, Aid & Abet, which supports people who have been involved in the criminal justice system. He is a big man with a gentle, self-effacing manner. On his hand, etched in black ink, is a Superman tattoo. His efforts to save himself – and others – from a vicious cycle of drugs and crime verge on heroic. Kevin grew up in a household afflicted by poverty and unemployment. He says his parents didn’t know how to communicate with each other; their relationship often degenerated into domestic violence. “My parents were the most loving and caring parents on the planet, however they were unintentionally responsible for my adversities.” Looking back, he believes he had attachment issues with his mother. “Though she loved me, I wanted 100% love and she was giving me 70%.” Kevin was the youngest of seven kids, with twins above him. Two more children would follow. As a four-year old boy, Kevin witnessed a knife fight in the street outside his home when two men set upon his dad. “It was just chaos, I always say that was my first childhood trauma.” There was blood everywhere, including all over his mum. One of his brothers jumped up and looked through the window, shouting, “My dad’s dead!” As it turned out, Kevin’s dad was able to defend himself and ended up taking one of his assailants to hospital. All Kevin remembers, however, is feeling frozen with fear. 27
