12 minute read
Chapter 12 Harry's Story
Chapter 12
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Harry’s Story
I am 18 years in recovery. I was the youngest of 5 kids and also the only boy. My parents were working class. My Father worked and my Mother stayed at home. My childhood was ok from what I can remember. I never really had much growing up and I always seemed to compare my lack of toys to being different to others rather than the fact of being poor. I always felt bad because I thought my Dad never bought toys for me because he would rather keep his money for the pub. As a younger boy growing up, I always wondered why my father always went to the pub but never realised he had a problem.
I just thought screw you and the pub, as you respect that more than me. Obviously, hindsight is great to be able to understand now. Back then, as a young boy, it felt like my Dad never loved me or wanted to be with me, but I grew to understand that during that time, my Dad had his own struggles. These struggles drove him to find comfort in alcohol and this obviously impacted on our relationship when I was young. When I recovered, I was able to understand better and to forgive.
School was always difficult for me as I was very energetic growing up and loved sports, especially soccer. I was quite good at football from a very early age and it was also a great way for me to socially make and meet new friends and peers. You could say it was an escape from home life and how I was feeling inside, in my head and my emotional state.
I felt at the time that football gave me a platform to showcase my talents, help me feel better while forgetting about everything that made me feel down, anxious or sad. Although I played football and really loved that part of my life, I always felt that something was wrong with me. Always comparing, always trying to think what others thought of me and always feeling different. This was ongoing for me, and it was never a nice feeling. I remember my development as a young boy, playing football, being a joker, doing dangerous crazy daredevil stuff for attention and trying anything to feel better and to fit in. This was how I coped. I became different people and I wore different masks for different groups. I was that many different people I forgot about who I was myself.
My teenage years kind of went on like that for a while and I always found myself doing crazy stuff and silly stuff for a laugh. As a group, we’d stay out all day walking everywhere, getting up to mischief, climbing into abandoned warehouses and building sites, always looking to steal and make a few bob.
When we would make money, we’d split it and all the group would get drink and weed, but I’d always spent mine on sweets and Coca Cola as at this stage I had not drank or taken drugs. I never really understood this, but later in life, I did. Football was the one good thing in my life at that stage that prevented me drinking and taking drugs. I always felt that you could not play football and make a career if you took these substances, and making a career was my goal and my way out, I felt. You could say I was putting all me eggs in one basket. Hope is such a great motivation but can also be detrimental to a young boy’s dreams if it never materialised when growing up and I found that out the hard way.
At the age of 14, I was still running around acting the maggot with friends while keeping up playing football and hurting from my home life while avoiding the truth daily. Things came to a very fast end for me in terms of my goal. School was becoming very difficult as I was acting out daily to avoid doing the work that was moving too quick for me and expulsion was on the cards for me. Football was still going ok, or at least I thought it was, until I lashed out in a game and hit an opponent from the opposite team. I got a red card but what followed was a young lad having a mental explosion due to the pressure I put on myself. I lost it that day. I was so hurt from letting teammates down after the red card that I took it out on the referee. I lashed out at him and then the manager, who tried to calm me down. This resulted in me getting a 12-week suspension from football. I was also expelled from school the same week, and life was really taking a turn for the worst and hope was leaving me.
At this stage of my life, I felt I had no one to say it was going to be ok, I just heard negative comments being branded at me. So, I did what I wanted from there on in. I started hanging around more and this was the start of that curiosity that I always had about substances and what the group got up to while I concentrated on football.
The first time I took a drug was December 1994 at the Mansion House at a under 18 rave event. I remember it like it was yesterday walking to the event all dressed up and the gang stopped 50 yards from the queue and I just heard one of the gang say, “right, let’s do them now before we head in, that way, they’ll be up on us when we get inside”. I asked, “what is everyone up to?” The guys said, “we’re dropping E’s” and I said, “what are they?” “They’re to help you dance”, someone said. Another lad who I knew who never really took drugs said, “I am doing it, do you want half of a yoke(ecstasy)?” I just remember that moment everyone standing looking at me waiting on my response. I just felt pressure, but my hope was gone due to school expulsion and a football ban that I just said f**k it and took half the tablet. I remember going into the event full of anxious feelings, not knowing what to expect, worried and afraid, as it was my first rave and first time taking a drug. But when the drug came up on me, it was like a missing piece of my life that I always searched for and craved, or that’s how it felt. I felt confident, alive and part of something as opposed to always feeling that I was on the outside looking in previously.
The start of my drug-taking was not a usual pathway. I had not even drank alcohol, but yet I had taken ecstasy. The following week I went raving again, taking ecstasy again, but this week I went back to a house party and that’s where I was introduced to heroin. A lot of older teens and young adults at the party were smoking this to come down from ecstasy; I was intrigued. I asked could I try it, but a lot of the older crew said no, I was too young. One guy gave me the billy and said if you want a line, buzz into the jacks with me. He was worried other people would give out to him, so he said don’t tell anyone. I smoked a few lines and started getting sick cause of the smell and taste, but the feeling I got was overwhelming. I fell in love with the buzz and feeling I got from using this substance. It quickly became my drug of choice.
In Ballymun, early 1995, everyone who was anyone was using this drug, especially young lads and girls my age. The 14th floor in all tower blocks became a meeting point for all young “dragon chasers”. Heroin was a new epidemic that took the community by storm. I hid my using for over a year before my family found out. By this stage, my using was daily, and I was naive, thinking I’ll never get strung out, till one day I awoke dying sick. This was the beginning of a 10-year substance problem that brought all the negative consequences that drugs bring. I ended up in all the wrong places – prisons, treatment centres, clinics, doctors, hospitals, and the streets. My using wanted me dead and I was giving in to it. I had done wrong on so many people that I never knew who was out to get me. Living in fear, feeling very anxious all the time, and running frightened every day, police after me, dealers after me, and people I hurt or annoyed after me. I burned all my bridges with family members, friends, and the community that I felt so alone and I just wanted to give up on myself. I used alone at this part of my addiction and became very comfortable doing this. I believed the game was up for me and that this was my life now, drugs had won, and I became their slave.
I ended up back in prison and I suppose for the first time in my life, I was thinking I can’t do this anymore. I think things happen for a reason, call it luck or faith, I don’t know, but while in prison, a key worker from Coolmine treatment centre came in to visit the prisoners to offer treatment. I could not believe my eyes. When the guy walked in, as I sat in prison, considering my life for the first time, I recognised a friendly face. The counsellor was a guy who I previously went to treatment within 1998 when I was 17. I left before completion and relapsed; he went on and graduated the programme, becoming an employee and going to college. I never forgot that moment, a real turning point in my thinking and belief. I remember the two of us starting treatment together and the two of us broken young men. I was so proud of him as he looked a million dollars, while I was still broken, only 9 stone in weight, sick from my substance problem that had carried on over those years. One thing I got from our meeting and conversation was hope; if he could do it, maybe I could too. The last thing that friendly face said to me was, get yourself back up to the lodge in Coolmine and take it from there.
I thought long and hard that night, excited from how I felt thinking about treatment. I made a plan that as soon as I get out of prison, I was going to try to get inducted into Coolmine. After a couple of months of attending key work sessions and giving urines, the day eventually came to go to treatment. I remember it like it was yesterday, October 2003, and it was a turning point in my life.
At the beginning, like anything new, change was difficult for me and I was still using negative behaviours in treatment, thinking I could pull the wool over everyone’s eyes. But people who suffer from substance issues notice those behaviours better than anyone else. They have a saying in Coolmine – “where else in our common ground can we find such a mirror”. Meaning people who’ve experienced substance issues know you better then you know yourself, so there was no hiding. I eventually surrendered and said, right, I am here now, might as well try and see we’re it takes me. It was the beginning of change. I started to understand me; I started to understand my trauma; I started to understand my substance problem; I started to understand responsibility; I mended broken relationships; I started to believe in me; I was learning while developing; I was accepting my past and was learning to live with it. Coolmine had given me a platform to grow and find myself. This gave me huge power over my future choices. I owe them my life because I had got it back, but now the real work was going to start reintegration back to society. In recovery, you learn so much about yourself, but the best tool I learned was how to listen to myself, be honest with myself and not turn my back on the values and morals I believe in, the truth of how and who I am, how I was raised, and how I see the world and my place in it.
This was so important for my recovery as I weighed up who I am now and what I could struggle with if I return to substances. Another concept in Coolmine is – “remember we’re you came from”. That’s basically saying remember all the pain hurt and struggles substance abuse brings, and remember what you’ve gained since becoming substance-free, another great tool to compare your worth with now and then. One more concept Coolmine taught me and I internalised, was “you can only keep what you have by giving it away”. Meaning the more you talk recovery, the more you grow. The more you talk recovery, the more you understand it. The more you support others on their journey of recovery, the more you feel good. Do good things, you feel good, do bad things and you can feel bad for the results.
This is what helped me start a career in my chosen field of work. I really grew helping others, so this helped me understand life better. I really love being part of people’s journey of recovery, whatever it is. The work I do is so rewarding, spiritually, financially, and I feel like a productive part of my community. Before, I always felt like an outsider looking in.
My life is a simple life now, but I’d never change it for all the money in China. I live for my work, my family, my community, but most of all, I live free, happy and healthy. I would say to anyone who is contemplating treatment, go for it you deserve to be the best version of yourself. Substances will only attack the individual you are or inspire to be. Hopes and dreams will diminish, bridges will be burned and relationships will be damaged. Recovery has given me all these important things back in my life, a life I’d never change for any substance. I live my life as a teetotaller and it’s been like that for the past 18 years, so if I can do it, anyone can.
Believe in yourself and anything is possible. I hope this story gives hope to someone and might motivate them to try recovery as you’re worth it. So, reach out, ask for help or support because I am sure if someone asked you for help, you’d do it for them. Remember, life is about change and personal growth. It can be gained and learned from our lived experiences. Learn from your past and mould your future to become a better, brighter you. •
