Ballymun Recovery Stories: Personal Journeys of Drug & Alcohol Recovery
3 Amy’s Story “Recovery is about progression not perfection.” -Unknown
I was the youngest of 5 kids, and we lived in absolute squalor in the inner city. My Da was a chronic alcoholic, and he was very violent when he was drinking. My Ma left him when I was 3 and in 1970 this was a very brave thing to do. We were living with aunties and uncles for about a year, and we were moving in and out of other people’s houses. Then my Mam met my stepfather and after a while, we moved out to Ballymun in 1972. It was like heaven. We got a 3-bedroom flat. It was huge, with three bedrooms, a sitting room, a kitchen and a bathroom. We still had nothing. We had a fridge, but it was an empty one. I went to an all-girls
school; I felt very safe there. I met a girl in the flats and we became the best of friends. As I was growing up, I experienced abuse on all levels. My stepfather was a tyrant, domineering and controlling and there was a threat of violence and fear in the house. Sometimes he was good-humoured, but it was always short-lived. We moved to Shangan. My Mam had three more children, half brothers and sister, but we never referred to them as that, and my stepdad had 2 daughters from a previous marriage and they came to live with us when I was 13. My Mam and stepfather drank every night in the pub. They 7
