12 minute read
Chapter 3 Amy’s Story
Chapter 3
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Amy’s Story
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 would go up for the last hour, but they had to finance that. We had our basic needs met. Even though we had come up a long way from the start, we still did not go on holidays, we never got treats and birthday presents were a hit and miss. I started smoking cigarettes when I was about 8 years old. After that, I began sniffing glue which a lot of people did.
Lady Esquire was a boot polish; you put it on your sleeve and sniffed it. We had a shoe shop in the shopping centre. I think I must have robbed every bottle of it that they ever stocked. I used to do a lot of robbing back then. I used to rob the weekly shopping. My Ma didn’t know about this, but me and my sisters used to split the money. I did this for a long time, then my sisters got caught robbing potatoes and I thought f**k that, I stopped it. I was always particularly good at not getting caught. I could read situations because I was (and still can be) hyper-vigilant.
Anyway, I started sniffing gas. Most kids my age did it. I dabbled with smoking joints. I didn’t really take to drink much until I was about 19. When I started constantly drinking, it became my life. I moved in with a guy who was a drug addict. That didn’t go well as he was violent and I had grown up thinking I will never have anything to do with it. All the stuff, all the “nevers”, all happened and I ended up in a very toxic relationship with this guy. Even though every instinct I had told me not to.
I had no self-awareness and no selfesteem. I didn’t listen to my gut or my instincts because I didn’t trust my own judgement and with all the other stuff that had happened to me, I started to believe this is how my life will be. I was very depressed and low from when I was 19. I had considered suicide a couple of times. I was with him until I was 21 or 22. Even though it was a short period, it felt like a whole lifetime. My drinking progressed again, no idea of emotions, no idea of myself, no self–awareness.
I spent a lot of time around extremely sick people who were in addiction and suffered from the same low self-esteem and insecurities that I had. We didn’t discuss these issues. We infected each other with them, I didn’t even know that was a thing. I always thought it was me. I plodded through life, always thinking it was me, always thinking I am the reason I was abused, thinking that I was making him violent because he hates me because I am ugly. I left him and then I moved straight in with someone else who was an alcoholic and that was just a pattern I had. He was lovely, but he was an alcoholic, so he needs a drink and he needs it all the time. I could go a couple of days and you know I would be hanging on with me fingernails, but I could manage. I left and went back to Ballymun; I was living with my friend. We had been through a lot together as kids, and although she never got into recovery, we remained friends up until her tragic, untimely death. I never got into heavy drug use. That was because my drug was drink. I found my happy place and that was all I needed. I would smoke a few joints, but especially in Ballymun, that was never considered drug-taking, so I carried on with that. I met my partner when I was 26, and I had my first son and I thought I need to sort shit out. That was when the reality of my addiction came to the fore because up to that. I was with people who were in addiction, so nobody noticed.
Now a few people that were taking drugs would have said to me, “Your drinking is getting a bit out of hand” and I was laughing at them. I’d say are you having a laugh? You are sticking a needle in your arm. When I decided that I need to stop, I didn’t stop. I drank at 9 o’clock every night. I would get up every single morning and say, I have to stop this; this is not living. Part of me didn’t want that life, but I was a raving alcoholic. I didn’t want this for my child, but I just couldn’t stop. So, I had my second child when I was 33 and the more I tried to get a handle on it, the worse it was getting. I started daytime drinking. I was working; I was trying ridiculously hard to be normal, but I could not hack it, so it just got worse and worse.
We got a house up in Poppintree after years of living in the flats. I had lung surgery; my body was falling apart, I was dying looking. I looked about 60, and I was only a young woman. After the lung surgery, I got off the smokes. I was smoking since I was 8, I got off the smokes and I used to put a bit of hash into a yoghurt, but I went back on the drink as soon as I finished the medication from the surgery. It just got worse again because now I wasn’t smoking, I was compensating for that by drinking more and I was reasoning the fact that I’m not harming myself.
I ended up in Vincent’s Hospital (St. Vincent’s Private Hospital), I was hallucinating, auditory hallucinations. They put me on Librium and I had a week of just madness. I had severe DT’S (severe alcohol withdrawal); I hadn’t eaten for weeks. I didn’t eat when I drank. I would be starving, and I’d attempt a dinner and after a fork full or two, I just couldn’t eat it. I’d make every excuse known to man why I couldn’t eat, but the fact was my stomach had shut down and I wasn’t physically able to eat, I was literally wafer-thin, and my mind was gone at this stage. Someone in Vincent’s gave me the number of AA. I heard of AA years before that because I was brought up in alcoholism. AA would get slagged off as bible bashers or something. I got to a meeting down in Finglas and everybody was lovely, all lovely, well dressed and obviously, they saw how sick I was. It’s hard to remember that coz I was in such a f**kin state, they were so good and they just took me in. They were saying; you’ll be ok just keep coming back. Back then, I just thought I don’t know what’s going, but I felt instantly safe.
After being in the state I was in and coming through that life I came through, there was no part of me that wanted to run away. I just felt the energy they had; it was very, very, real. I was incredibly lucky. I just happened to meet this lovely bunch of people, so I kept going there for a little while and then I realised I was going 3 months; I couldn’t believe it 3 f**king months. That was the longest I was ever off any substances in my life, no hash, no drugs, nothing.
I kept going and then I got a sponsor, and she took me through the book and she was fantastic. I started to get a little bit of self–awareness, a little bit of, I wouldn’t say, liking myself that took a lot of years but like not having my head down. I remember meeting a girl I used to go to school with. If I saw people that I knew from years ago, I’d be putting my head down because I didn’t want to know anybody (if I was drunk, I’d talk to them all night).
I kept going to meetings and I started getting into healthy activities. The first one I ever done was abseiling down the tower block. Oh my god, it was the best. Do you know what was great about that? The thing I was saying earlier about the guy that was violent, we lived in that tower and I abseiled past that window and I thought, oh my god, that is a turnaround in my life. The young woman that was in there that couldn’t hold her head up and here I am, abseiling down in front of a crowd of people and not even thinking about what they are thinking.
It’s a slow process, it doesn’t happen overnight, but the process of recovery was happening for me in my mind. The substance, for me, is only a symptom of the problems. I ended up doing a parachute jump for charity and then another one with my son, who was seeing me doing all this healthy stuff and wanted to be a part of it. That’s the beauty of recovery; it seeps into the whole family. He also climbed Ben Nevis Mountain with me (the highest mountain in the British Isles). There was a time I couldn’t walk from my home to the shop and now I was climbing Ben Nevin! It was so unreal.
I ran a marathon a couple of years ago. I am swimming every day. I played golf. I am playing tennis. Every now and again, I smile to myself, the little girl is still in me and it’s like she’s minded now, she’s looked after and she’s very loved. It’s such a beautiful freedom; I am happy in that sense. Recovery for me is being free. I would have the crack with people when I was drunk and we would be talking about all sorts of stuff and then I would see them the next day and I would be saying ah jaysus because I would be full of shame because I would be thinking it’s not ok to do that. Now I would talk about stuff that I wouldn’t have talked about when I was drunk because I have been freed of it.
If there was a message to be given, it is that recovery is complete freedom of self; it’s complete freedom of the shame that keeps us locked in because I think that anybody that is caught in addiction of any type they are caught in a mindset of that’s what they deserve. I thought I was sick because I deserved it, because I am drug-using and I’m drinking and I am smoking and I shouldn’t be doing that.
The other thing about recovery is that it wasn’t like since I came into recovery, my life got great. It took years for me to mend my relationship with my oldest son. He had had enough of me telling him I am stopping and this time I mean it and every time I did say it, I did mean it, but I didn’t know that every time I picked up, I was gone again. We have a great relationship now, but it took a few years for that to happen. It took a few years for my health to come around. I am still working on myself, my self-esteem and my self-worth. That’s an ongoing thing because I was battered; I was f**king battered.
6 of my 10 siblings have passed away since 2009. When my brothers and sisters passed away, I was devastated, but I didn’t drink and I didn’t take drugs and I rang people and I did what people had suggested to me. This is not a pity me story; this is a hopeful story because I haven’t touched a drink or drug through all of that. I am not shut off, I haven’t been, I’ve grieved them and I am still grieving them and I will be grieving them forever.
Me being drunk, drugging, or having a relapse- all that’s going to do is kill me as well and I will be just another f**kin one that got caught in it. I think the reason I do all the outdoors physical things is because I have been blessed with recovery. I hadn’t got into recovery; I wouldn’t be seeing anything but the misery or the grey. If there was a message of hope, it is that anybody can come through, this anybody can get recovery. I can’t speak highly enough about recovery. I really can’t because it’s been such a turnaround for me. I am not claiming to be cured; there is no cure, only reprieve and that’s contingent on my desire to want to live as good a life as I can. I deserve it, and so does anyone who wants it. I am a world away from the tortured head I lived in when I was drinking. I’m doing a triathlon on Sunday and I’m dedicating it to my friend who passed while I was writing this. May you find peace and refuge, my beautiful friend.•
