Edited by Criostóir Mac Cionnaith & Laura O’Reilly
Given the explicit and sensitive nature of the content of some of the stories, this book may not be suitable for young children. In addition, some people may possibly become upset, in recognition of this, we have included a list of local and national support services at the back of the book.
Photo courtesy of Sarah Nicole Grace photography
Citation: Mac Cionnaith, C & O’Reilly, L. (2022). Ballymun Recovery Stories 2: Personal Journeys of Drug and Alcohol Recovery. Dublin: Ballymun Youth Action Project.
Funded by: Axis Ballymun: Arts Centre and Community Resource Centre Ballymun Local Drugs and Alcohol Task Force
Cover design/ Illustrations by Anna O’Sullivan, Ballymun Communications. The silhoutte image on the cover was taken at the launch of the 1st Ballymun Recovery Month in 2019
ISBN 978-1-3999-3333-9
From your darkness to your light, You have fought the long fight.
Nobody knows the fights you fought, Nobody knows the sights you saw.
Friends, families, lovers and the rest, All think they know, but you know best.
You said “enough” to the life you were living, Now it’s your best to the world you are giving.
It’s not been easy. You slipped along the way, Sure that’s life, isn’t that what they say.
But here you stand. Scared, bruised and battered, You’re here and that’s what matters.
So go, tell your stories in the light and without shame, It’s others that need to hear them, for them to do the same.
Lives will be changed from your words don’t you worry, And to think, it’s all down to your recovery.
Enough said. Go on, I’ll leave it at that. But there’s one thing I want you to remember, Come back. Tell your stories next September.
- Dee
We would like to thank all the people who have wholeheartedly invested time and energy as they shared their stories of recovery. Without your contributions, this short book would not have been possible.
We would also like to thank the BYAP Ethics Committee who guided the book’s production and Róisín Byrne who provided ongoing administrative support throughout the process.
Thanks also to Ballymun Communications, especially Anna O’Sullivan, for the Artwork and Design, Denise Keating, Veronica Wynne and Hilary Morgan for their assistance and support. Their help was very much appreciated.
Search for Ballymun Recovery on social media for more information
Ballymun Recovery was established in 2019 and aims to reduce stigma of addiction, promote, and celebrate recovery and highlight recovery options. In 2021, Ballymun Recovery launched the first Recovery Stories book comprising of thirteen powerful stories of hope, strength, and resiliency. A sharing of personal life events, experiences of addiction and recovery, reflections, and insights.
Recovery Stories 2 comprises of an additional twelve stories, each story carrying individual emotion, empowerment, and encouragement. Stories which signal a road ahead, direction taken, or pathway travelled. Providing guidance and reassurance that progression and change can happen in individual ways and at its own pace. Presenting hope and enthusiasm that within each challenge is also an opportunity.
Together the two Recovery Story books are a generous gift to the Ballymun community and recovery communities across Ireland and worldwide. Stories written from the heart, which will move hearts by those who read or hear them aloud. Each story sitting beside the other, reinforcing the message of collaborative community support.
On behalf of Ballymun Recovery Steering Group, we would like to wish the twelve people in this Recovery Stories Book the very best for their journey ahead and to thank them for sharing freely their recovery story.
Marie Lawless Ballymun Local Drug and Alcohol Task Force Member of Ballymun Recovery Steering CommitteeBuilding on our first edition of Ballymun Recovery Stories: Personal Journeys of Drug & Alcohol Recovery in 2021, we are delighted to share a second edition of the book ‘Ballymun Recovery Stories 2’. The call for a second edition has arisen from the positive and empowering impact of the first volume and once again we have been gifted inspiring and powerful stories of recovery. The opportunity to produce and publish a second edition symbolises the ever growing occurrence, experience and visibility of recovery in Ballymun. Each year, the month of September marks ‘Recovery Month’, a celebration of recovery, and promotes the idea that recovery is possible, not just for some but for everyone. We hope that this book also reinforces the idea that recovery is possible, available and happening all year round.
In order to share their recovery stories, contributors first described their early life experiences and the factors they believed contributed to their initiation of and continued use of drugs and alcohol. The stories highlight the ways in which drug and alcohol use have been experienced as a symptom of other circumstances such as trauma, poverty, disadvantage and marginalisation and challenge us to continue to consider these factors as we respond to substance use issues from individual, family and community perspectives.
Although each story provides a unique contribution, a number of themes are evident within the stories. The stories clearly highlight the intersectionality of substance use, trauma, and mental health. Similar to the first edition, and even more pronounced in this book is the way in which trauma loomed large in many of the stories. Many of the contributors described their experiences of trauma, highlighting the importance of supporting and building trauma aware and trauma informed services and communities when assisting individuals, families and communities in the process of healing. Contributors also clearly described the ways in which their mental health was negatively impacted by substance use. Again, this encourages us to keep the co-occurrence of substance use and mental health issues on the agenda as we firstly seek to gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between both and
the many adverse impacts; and secondly, to ensure that we provide responsive and accessible services that address the co-occurrence of substance use and mental health difficulties.
Against this backdrop, a number of key turning points for recovery were identified. Contributors identified wide ranging support options as being helpful in aiding recovery, including accessible community drug and alcohol services, fellowships and residential options. The ways in which people seek help and what supports them to do so is also captured within the stories. These insights once again highlight the importance of and the need for a ‘no one size fits all’ approach to recovery.
Along with these key insights highlighted by the contributors, a number of learning points are identified emerging from the process of writing, gathering and producing the individual stories and the book as a collective. The book has highlighted the importance of the narrative approach and story-telling and in doing so this has placed a concerted focus on the importance of process. The writing process provided contributors a creative and innovative space to tell their story. We are reminded of the importance of space and process as part of a recovery journey but also the importance of how knowledge is co-produced. Just like the first edition of this book, the names of all contributors have been changed to protect their identity and to ensure their anonymity. Another salient point raised concerns the question about anonymity in recovery and calls for further debate on this issue. This book affords us the opportunity to extend this learning further.
Like the first edition, this second book builds on the already existing conversations, events and initiatives highlighting and supporting recovery. ‘Recovery’ continues to be visibly celebrated and supported within the community of Ballymun. We once again hope that this collection of recovery stories will inspire and motivate others at all stages of positive change. You will also notice that we have once again left a number of blank pages, recognising the many stories lived but not captured in this book. We encourage you to tell your story and to motivate and inspire others.
Criostóir MacCionnaith & Laura O’Reilly“There is always a way out of the madness and the misery of drugs. Reach out to somebody, use the existing supports and never give up on yourself.” -Séan
“Recovery is not for people who need it. It’s for people who want it.” – Unknown
My name is Séan and I grew up in Ballymun. I had a fairly good and normal childhood. I kept busy. I was out most of the time, playing football and hanging out with my friends.
When I was about 13 years of age I became aware of drugs. I saw lots of drugs in my community and I was always curious about what people were doing. When it came to family members’ I could hear little whispers and people disappearing outdoors. Taking drugs always looked very appealing because I would see people smiling and stuff. As I grew older, I would be around the shops and I saw the boys selling
a bit of hash. Again, I was very curious. At 13 years of age, me and my friends bunched in for the price of a ten spot and we started buying ten spots regularly, it was a nice little way to escape. We would go over to the hills or the bushes and have a couple of joints. I saw an awful lot of drugs around and I started to hear about ecstasy and stuff. I was about the age of 14 or 15 then and I was thinking “I wouldn’t mind trying them out”. I started with ecstasy. I will never forget my first E, I loved it. It took me out of my head, the whole lot. I didn’t give a shit, I had no clarity in my life anyway at that age. I was starting to get a little bit lost,
very side tracked nobody around me to guide me or mentor me or show me a different way of life. I kept doing what I was doing. I was easily led but I just wanted to fit in. I didn’t want to be seen as an outsider so I was using drugs regularly, I was using acid and E’s.
basis, 24/7, from the minute I woke up to the minute I went to bed.
bed. It started to give me horrible anxiety, and a lot of fear used to creep in. Like I said, I was using an awful lot of drugs, and I was people pleasing then, trying to find my way in life. I was around 17 of 18 now and I hadn’t heard a lot about cocaine growing up, but a couple of my mates started selling it and I now was hearing about it a lot. It was seen as the rich man’s drug, and if you were able to do piles of it, you were doing well.
I grew up in a big family and as we got older times got very challenging. My Ma and Da seemed to struggle a bit more and us kids were out a lot more, and we didn’t have a lot. My father wasn’t around a lot and when he was around he literally wasn’t around. I’d nobody to guide me. I felt I had to stand on my own two feet. My mental health started getting very bad when I was using drugs. At that stage I was smoking cannabis on a daily basis, 24/7, from the minute I woke up to the minute I went to
I started doing coke when I was about 17 or 18, and selling it to feed my habit. I was thinking about it, it is the worst substance I ever used. It took a massive hold on me. I was using from Monday to Sunday, week in week out, just on the dry, no alcohol. My mental health was very bad. I didn’t have people around me to challenge my thinking, as I said I came from a big family and I was very close to one of my brothers. I started off smoking hash with him and doing E’s and acid with him. Eventually it led to both of us sniffing coke and like me my brothers mental health got very bad as well but to the outside world it looked like we were doing great. We had the clothes and we had the cars and people thought we were doing well but our mental health was destroyed and every time I was
“I was smoking cannabis on a daily
It started to give me horrible anxiety, and a lot of fear used to creep in.”
left sitting with myself I had suicidal thoughts. Life went on for a few years like that. I hated looking in the mirror because I hadn’t a clue who I was or where I was going.
I did an awful lot to fit in. I was only 25 when my brother passed away from an overdose at the age of 27. That was the biggest eye-opener for me and I stayed substance free for about two years and I kept myself to myself a lot. I didn’t speak much as I was out doing my own thing. I was very protective of my own ways and I didn’t trust anybody in life. I got hurt a lot in life so it was very hard to let people back in. If people were nice to me, I always felt like they were looking for something. I had 2 years drug free after my brother had passed and like I said I didn’t talk a lot. At that time I said to myself I will have a couple of drinks and get a bit of coke and I will be grand, I missed it, I missed it a lot for the 2 years I didn’t do it. I didn’t know how to talk about it but over the past while I have done a lot of work and there’s learning in everything for me and there’s learning for everybody.
I acted on my impulses and went back using coke after 2 years and I was doing it every second or third day. Every problem or issue I had in my life, everything was
to go get a bag of coke, even if I felt good in myself I would get a bag of coke. I would go get a bag believing that it would top the good feeling up. Then when I felt shit it was the same go and do a bit of coke. Within the 2 years that I got substance free I went back to college and got certified as a personal trainer.
My biggest goal then was to go out and open my own business and I did that. Physically I was doing well in the 2 years but mentally I was struggling big time but I didn’t talk about it. So after going back using coke again it took a real hold of me.
I am a father to four boys and I love my kids to bits and I did some shit things on my family. I ended up homeless, staying in hostels and God I thought I would never get there in my life. I just didn’t realise the impact of the bleeding drugs again. I had all these problems and taking the drugs was the only time I felt ok.
“I hated looking in the mirror because I hadn’t a clue who I was or where I was going.”
Its only now I really see that drugs were the ruination of my life and they were the ruination of my life for years and they were the ruination for many people not just me. People don’t understand how we make all these excuses, saying we had this childhood and that childhood and we didn’t have this person and that person. We all struggle. I know from my behaviours now.
I love the gym and I am passionate about it and my eating. Like I said I went out set up my own business but when things got problematic for me again I ended up going to the STAR Project in Ballymun on a recovery programme. I was 2 years acting the goat when I was doing the gym, as I said, mentally I wasn’t well. I ended up homeless and at deaths door having suicidal thoughts every day. I attempted suicide, which was a horrible place to be. I hadn’t got a pot to piss in and I had nowhere to go, thought I was hard man.
I went and did the 2 years in the recovery programme in the STAR Project and it was the best thing I ever done in my life. I am 3 or 4 years substance free and I am delighted. Life can be very challenging very, very challenging, there’s no denying that, but I have a clear mind and
a clear head most of the time. I can deal with anything. I now have great supports around me, so always use your supports.
I am doing well now the past couple of years. I returned to education and done a course in psychology. I am now a mind and body coach, a motivational speaker. I have some other dreams and goals, I am now so passionate about the mind and body because I know how important it is to look after both. Every day I mind my body and my mind because for a long time I lived in my head a lot and I know now the consequences if I don’t look after myself. I try to push myself out of my comfort zone and do new things because it’s very easy to go back into a (bad) mind-set. I hope through the telling of my story I can inspire others who are down the black hole of substance use. There is always a way out of the madness and the misery of drugs. Reach out to somebody, use the existing supports and never give up on yourself.
“I remember I joined the library as a kid. I would be reading books like Paddington Bear and stuff like that. It was like I was in the book and if I was watching a film I would be in the film. I always wanted to be someone that wasn’t me. ” -Niamh
“NO ONE is ever too broken, too scarred,or too far-gone to create change. Never stopfighting. Never lose faith.” – Unknown
I was born in the late seventies. I lived in Ballymun and I lived there until about eleven. In Ballymun, I remember that we never really had money. I had younger siblings. We moved to a different part of Dublin when I was eleven, but when I was a kid we grew up in Ballymun. There was substance use in the family, my Dad was a substance user. I saw a lot of things as a kid, things that kids shouldn’t see or be around. I was in a lot of places and clinics in town, the old Jervis street clinic. I was always quite shy or a little bit awkward as a kid but I always felt really ashamed of my father and what he was.
I loved school and I was quite good at school actually. My first escape were books. I went to my nanny a lot as a child. My mam’s family didn’t really like my Dad. As kids, we went to my nanny a lot, but me more so. My nanny was always very good to me. That was like my little sanctuary going to my nanny’s house at the weekends. I always felt quite safe there. She protected me and looked after me. She bought my communion dress and stuff like that, my Mum didn’t have the money.
I remember I joined the library as a kid. I would be reading books like Paddington Bear and
stuff like that. It was like I was in the book and if I was watching a film I would be in the film. I always wanted to be someone that wasn’t me. I remember being in school and I was quite good in school, quite clever, my dad was quite like that too. As I said my dad was in substance use but my dad was never really there, I don’t really remember him being there. He was always off somewhere and when he came back he would always be under the influence. He wasn’t a very good role model either as a father. Years later, he’s dead now, but years later we used together. He got me on methadone and I robbed tablets on him but that was down the road. I always had this thing about heroin. I hated heroin because my Dad was on it and because of the stigma I felt as a child because my Dad was a heroin addict. In school plays and for parent teacher meetings I used to be so embarrassed because I was quite clever, quite outgoing, a pleasant child but I always felt less than because of the shame because of the way my dad was.
I liked living in Ballymun. I always remember when we moved to another part of Dublin the neighbours and none of them would let their kids play with us. I don’t know what it was. Maybe
because we were from Ballymun or the way my Da was but there was always that separation piece. I was quite wild then moving from one place to another and I found it hard settling in.
I had this one friend and I am actually still friends with her now. We started taking E’s together and when we were teenagers we actually used to smoke hash and we drank together. Our first time, we were about 11 or 12, when I think about when we first started drinking. Myself and that girl were hanging about with people that were older than us. It seemed a cool thing to do and I wanted to fit in. I hated the taste of it but see the feeling that it gave me. It gave me this type of confidence and I felt like I was one of them and you know that stuff that was going on at home was kind of gone then. I could enjoy myself. That feeling it gave me but I still had the thing about heroin. I hated heroin and I didn’t realise where this was going to bring me. At the time it was just fun. I thought everybody was doing it plus the influence that my dad had on me too because this girl (I palled around with) her background was completely different to mine, even though her family were separated too. We did get on. I brought her out shoplifting because I knew how
to do it through my dad and stuff like that. Anyway we started smoking hash together and drinking. My first drink was a can of beer and I drank it slowly because I thought you are going to get more out of it. I held on to that feeling, I loved the feeling and then every week I was drinking and then obviously it progressed to hash. Even before that, I remember sniffing tippex, aerosols and stuff like that from around the house. Going through my teens I wouldn’t bring anyone into my house or anything. I was to embarrassed to bring them in. Obviously my dad wouldn’t have been there a lot but when he was there he would be in the same fu***ng chair in the same position in the sitting room and me ma would be sitting looking at the telly like this was normal. I just had a lot of shame and guilt as a teenager and the substances helped me get away from that. I went a bit wild in my teenage years. I was out partying alot and I am actually glad now but my ma made me stay at school. I did my Leaving Cert during this time. I was still partying doing E’s and coke, I was out partying all weekend and I would go home on Sunday and go to school on Monday morning. Looking back now, I am so glad that I got to do my leaving. I got seven honours, don’t ask me how I got them. I
was still out partying to escape all the stuff that was going on at home, I just thought this was normal, this is what everybody did. Then I met this fella, I knew him from the area. He hid that he was taking heroin. He had been over in England and back and up to all kinds of things. I was really attracted to this and I started going out with him and then within 6 months of going out with him he had come back and his eyes I knew because of my dad’s, I knew by someone if they were on heroin. Obviously I confronted him and he denied it. I remember we were out one night and we came back to his mums and he said “I need to go down and get something”. I had a few arguments with him before and I said “f**k it just go down and get it”. He went down and got his heroin and we smoked it and I remember getting sick but whatever happened that night within 6 months I was strung out from smoking heroin.
I remember I had an interview to become an Air Hostess, it was
“I just had a lot of shame and guilt as a teenager and the substances helped me get away from that.”
my second or third interview in Dublin Airport, I told my Mam I was going for the interview instead I went off and smoked heroin. That was the start of it. A few months later my dad, who was on a couple of doctors, brought me to one of the doctors and he got me a so-called detox. I was about 19, and around that time I moved to England with that guy. We went to London and within a week I was on the tube and I was scoring and up to all sorts. I think that went on for a few years and then the relationship broke up and I left him in England. I ended up coming back to Ireland. I think I was on methadone then, I am not sure and then I remember a period in my early 20’s when I got off it. I did a small detox myself and I was still out partying. I thought right I’ve stopped taking that but I still want to go out partying. I was too young to stop anything else.
I met another guy who didn’t take heroin or anything else and I didn’t want him to know I was on something like methadone or anything. At that time I did an accountancy course and I got a job as an accountant and I got this idea why don’t you go up and reward yourself. I went up and got myself a bag of heroin and then within a month or so I was
back on it. I went into treatment around that time as well. I went to a place down the country and when I was down there it was great fun and I was in a bubble down there, but in the back of my mind I was thinking I will get off the heroin and methadone but I will still go out and drink so that’s what I did. I came back out and started drinking, and that’s when I started back doing all the stuff I promised I wouldn’t do.
My Dad was real sick and he ended up in hospital. I remember the last time I saw my Dad, it was in that same hospital. I was in one part of the hospital and he was in another part. He was roaring crying over me and he was blaming himself but I just went out and used. Weeks later I got a phone call. I was in a hostel in town and the hospital called to say my father had just passed away, he was only 48 when that happened. Whatever happened to me then I went hell for leather and getting clean did not enter into it. I remember going to the funeral, but it was like, it wasn’t me, I was detached completely from it. I was there but I wasn’t really there but anyway the stuff I said I was never going to do I ended up doing and the jobs were gone. I did one accountancy course and then I’d
done a reception course for about 8 months. This was before I got really, really, bad in my 20’s. I was good at walking into jobs and what would happen is I would get a little break and be stable for a certain amount of time and then I would go off using again and the job would be gone. I was on the streets a good few times. Walking the streets of Dublin because I was always really afraid in the hostels, really unsure of myself. I lived like that for a long time in and out of my Ma’s, in and out of different relationships and they were just based around drugs and substances. My drug use developed further. I would get a certain amount of stability and I would go and do courses and counselling or something and then I would forget all that. I might do a couple of meetings and then I would forget about all that and go off using. That was how my life was for a long time. I actually had this mentality that I was always going to be on methadone and prescribed medications. I had gone to a load of psychiatrists, and the diagnosis was that I was just a very damaged young woman, very, very, hurt. I went around as a bit of a loner and then towards the end I was just basically living in a room. I didn’t go outside the door. All the good jobs I had and the education I had just went out
the fu***ng window.
I remember doing a day programme and they put me down to do psychology and we were doing that and I remember sitting in a room with people and doing cocaine and I was telling them all that was wrong with them and I would diagnose them and I’m sure they thought I was fu***ng nuts. That stuff comes back to me every now and again but I was lost and I had the mentality that it was always going to be like this. I hated Christmas, I hated birthdays and hated anything that was a celebration because I would have to be around my family and I would have to show myself. I remember my brother came down with his 2 kids and they weren’t allowed up to the room to see me. I was an embarrassment. At the last few years when I was really bad I spent my days sitting there watching TV, staying up quite late at night, smoking and not going out, apart from going to the chemist every day and that was my life then. I was on social welfare and I would collect my “social” on the Wednesday and go off and get loads of crack and for the rest of the week I would be in my Ma’s and that was my life. The jobs, all the ambitions I had, just went out the window. I hated myself and I hated the world. I
was always on this pity thing about, if Dad wasn’t the way he was I wouldn’t be the way I am but my brothers and sisters are not like me so I couldn’t blame that. I ended up going on this holiday. My sister’s friend had gotten pregnant and my Mam paid for me to go in her place. About a year before that, I had been asking the doctor would he take me down off my methadone because I wanted to detox because this wasn’t working. I just knew I couldn’t keep living like that. My mental health was really bad. I was really depressed, and I don’t really think I would be sitting here right now if I had kept going the way I was going. I probably would have ended it all. It was just misery.
I went on a holiday to Marbella. I remember going over there and it was like I got a spiritual awakening but also got a smack of reality about the way I had lived my life for years and the way everyone else saw me for years, and for a long time I just couldn’t see it. Not only did I look different than all the girls there, but on the inside I was just dead and I was in this world with all these yachts, and the sun, and it struck me that if I continue to do what I am doing now I am just going to die so I need to do something. I need to
change this and that was the decision I made over there. So I flew back to Dublin. I was on the methadone clinic at the time and I didn’t go back near the clinic. My sister dragged me up and I always remember this, the doctor turned around to me and he took out a file, this was 2013 and the file was from 2006, handed my sister the file, and said, shes’ a lifer she’s never going to get off this. So that spurred me on even more. Because I came off everything myself I ended up in a drug induced psychosis. My Mum’s partner was an alcoholic and I didnt get on with him, I threatened him and my Mam threw me out. I was back living in a hostel in town. Because I was living there it was really hard to get out to the clinic. I was on 100 mls but. I wasn’t taking any of it. I asked them to give me 40 mls and a week or two of that my doctor put me on a different clinic. I said I am not going there so I just stopped. I was on valium, zimmovane, and methadone at the time. I just stopped everything but I don’t recommend anyone to do that because of the dangers involved to your physical and mental health.
Despite the psychosis, something was just telling me everything was going to be ok. I was great
at filling out forms and when I was in this hostel my phone got robbed but I was still writing in all these treatment referral forms to every treatment centre. The doctors were ringing to see where I was. Nobody knew where I was and I had this mad thing in my head that I couldn’t go out and collect my money in my local Post Office because I thought people were after me. My head was mad from years of taking substances, mental stuff. I eventually ended up in a Christian treatment centre for a detox. I thought it was like Coolmine. I was so naïve. I remember the girl I started taking substances with and my sister brought me to a church in Dublin. When I went in, I had already been to the doctors a few days before and there was nothing in my urine, it was all out of me. I just went in because I needed to go somewhere. Living in a hostel in town, they are all using around me. I started going to meetings as well and then I went into this Christian place. I lasted six months there, don’t ask how, and I know people talk bad about that type of approach but it helped me to get from where I was and when I came out I moved back into my Ma’s. I had changed, but nothing had changed back out there. I was running around with a woman from Ballymun that was there.
She was taking Lyrica and I had never taken them before and within a few days of hanging around with her I asked her for one. I was in a day programme in town and I relapsed for about a week or two and then I got such a fright. I was honest with them, they kept me on the programme, and that was the last time I ever used and that was over 8 years ago. I got more learning from that experience of relapsing than I did from any book or step work or things like that. I know I can’t go out and have just one drink, whatever is in me, I don’t know what it is.
“The life that I live today is so completely different from the life I used to live, my mentality has completely changed and I am proud of the person that I am today and I’m sure that my dad is looking down on me and is proud of me.”
Today I really believe that if I can get off substances and get drug
free from the life that I lived, anyone can. I actually work in the community today helping people to get to this stage. But just to say again anybody can do it, it just takes time and use the supports that are around you. Start to open up, go to meetings, go to services, put your name down for a treatment detox and anybody I believe can get substance free. The life that I live today is so completely different from the life I used to live, my mentality has completely changed and I am proud of the person that I am today and I’m sure that my dad is looking down on me and is proud of me. I would like to dedicate this story to my Dad who died 20 years ago. I am in a fellowship and I put my badges on his grave every year just because he never got this.
“I knew there was something different in me, there was something happening in me, where alcohol was not working. I had realised it had stopped working for me.”
- Daniel
Hello, my name is Daniel and I am in my fifties I was born and reared in Ballymun. I have a few siblings in my family and like any other family there was alcohol present. There was alcohol at Christmas and all the different events, it was ever present. It was there I kind of became curious about alcohol when I was around twelve years of age.
I started drinking when I was twelve. It was on New Year’s Eve and I drank lots of Smithwicks. I remember I got sick and blacked out and other people cleaned up after me. The next morning when I woke up, I was waiting for a big dressing down or clatter
but instead it was actually something that was laughed at. I noticed when other members of my family drank it was like a funny thing. To drink and drink excessively kind of became the norm after that. Any time I drank, I drank to excess and I drank to blackout. Throughout my teenage years, anytime I drank I got in to trouble. I was in hospitals, I was bawling, I would insult people, so I stopped drinking. I was known as a nondrinker. I remember my 21st I was sober but I kept returning to it. I kept going back to it but anytime I drank, I drank with people who drank to excess. I never drank normally. My whole
“Don’t be ashamed of your story; it will inspire others.” - Unknown
life I have never had just one pint, I never had just one can.
“I heard people say when they went into meetings, they had a life beyond their wildest dreams. I would be looking at them and they would be driving old second hand cars and wearing old socks and I would be saying what are they talking about. Then I realised what it was. It was peace of mind. When you get peace of mind on a daily basis it’s great.”
I remember being in America on holidays people would say to me are you an alcoholic because the way I drank and I would just laugh at this. This was funny. I would go through periods of drinking and not drinking because I always knew in the back of my mind that I had a drink problem.
I had a job, which was a very important job, and it was in the public eye and it became obvious to the people who I was working with that I had a drink problem. They were challenging me on it. One of them I trusted a lot and I went with him to an AA meeting. I stuck around AA for a while for maybe about a year. I never really heard anything of the slogans of AA, let go, let god, keep it simple. I remember just living my life by those slogans. I did not get in to any programme or anything so I left AA and I did not go back drinking immediately. I actually stayed sober, white knuckled as I called it for a long time but eventually I went back drinking. I remember it, I planned it, I actually saved up alcohol for it and it was an absolute complete disaster. That continued for 15 years after going to those meetings. I continued like that, on, off, sober Octobers, dry January’s, all madness you know. A couple of things started happening. One was that new people from AA started coming into my life. There was a boxer from America that gave a talk on a men’s day event in Ballymun and he definitely got me thinking about my drinking. There was also another person I met and I started to think about AA again, but I did not do anything at that time. In my late 50’s I started to
drink very very heavy on a daily basis and it was hidden. I bought alcohol at seven different off licenses over 7 days. That showed me that I had a real problem with drink because I was trying to hide it. I was functioning, I was working, and I had a house. I was all functioning but my mental health was absolutely torn asunder and my self-worth was on the floor. I drank and I drove the car and that was kind of, where it was for a couple of years, it was disastrous.
I knew I wanted to give up so I stopped. I did a sober October, I remember being away with the job on Halloween night, there was an opportunity to drink after midnight, and I didn’t. I said no, no, I am going to do this and I knew there was something different in me, there was something happening in me, where alcohol was not working. I had realised it had stopped working for me. I stayed sober for a couple of days after that and then I drank in November and it was as if I had never taken the month off because during the month I got a lot of peace. I kind of liked myself. I was doing things. I was getting into hobbies and stuff but then when I drank it was straight back into mental health stuff. So I drank and then stopped. I was a couple of days stopped and I
realised there was something missing. I knew I didn’t want to drink again but I couldn’t figure out what was missing, so I rang a mate of mine who was in AA and I said it to him. I said there was something spiritual missing and he said, it was fellowship you are missing. I said right and I went to a meeting the next day.I had been there many, many years before. Instead of feeling embarrassed about going in there and shameful about going back drinking, I felt welcomed, I actually felt welcomed. I actually felt like I was home.
I got a thousand and one days sober today and this time I have done the programme. I’ve followed the programme and I do a lot of service within the fellowship helping others and through that I have had amazing experiences of fellowship. I have mates. My friends in AA are more like family that’s because of how close we have become sharing our stories. In AA there are meetings every day and the
“Do something. Doing nothing achieves nothing, doing something will bring something”
level of conversations at those meetings are amazing. You actually get to talk about what’s going on. Now I love sobriety. My life has completely changed in those 2 and a half years. I used to love chaos. I used to love everything being a muddle. Now I am less inclined to have things in a muddle, I am less inclined to get into conflict with people, I am less inclined to blame others, and I am less inclined to cause conflict. Now it’s not really about the drinking it’s about the living and my life has improved in a whole different way than I had ever imagined.
I heard people say when they went into meetings, they had a life beyond their wildest dreams. I would be looking at them and they would be driving old second hand cars and wearing old socks and I would be saying what are they talking about. Then I realised what it was. It was peace of mind. When you get peace of mind on a daily basis it’s great. I think alcohol is a progressive disease, it will get you worse and for me it got worse and worse gradually over the years. The good news is sobriety is progressive too and living life sober a day at a time has really helped me and I have grown a lot in those 2 and a half years. I have a lot more growing up to
do. I also get outside help. I go to BYAP every week and meet a counsellor and that’s where I can get into the really deep stuff.
The meetings are for staying sober and the outside help is for the deep stuff, for getting into the darkest corners of my psyche I suppose. I think it’s important when I say fellowship. I could also say the community because I have got sober in the community with the help of my fellows in the community and there’s different programmes there not only AA. AA doesn’t work for everybody, there’s other programmes that work for other people and if anybody wants to get sober, the thing to do is to get involved in something. Do something. Doing nothing achieves nothing, doing something will bring something.
“I continue to work on my sense of personal value, even today, and I always struggle to see in myself what others kindly say that they see in me.” - John
I’m John and I am going to talk a bit about my recovery story today. I am in recovery 15 years, totally substance free. I am going to tell you a little bit about how life was, the journey through my active substance use, how I found a way into recovery and how I have managed to maintain it. I grew up just outside Ballymun after being adopted into a household that had one older sibling. I didn’t know I was adopted until I was nearly a teenager but when I did find out it kind of made sense to me. I never felt like I belonged in that house, I always felt like a stranger and a burden and I had always wondered why. Once I knew that I was adopted,
all of this made sense to me and it was almost a relief to have finally found a reason why I had been feeling this way. It wasn’t a household that had any love in it really. My father was always out working or drinking, and my mother was always just sitting in the kitchen waiting for him to come home. My rearing was left to my older sibling. I never had any positive guidance or support in the house and I lived in a constant state of fear. My older sibling would tell me that people would come and take me away if I didn’t do what she said and she would beat me and ridicule and humiliate me on a daily basis. Before long, I was
“The first step towards getting somewhere is to decide that you are not going to stay where you are.” -Unknown
completely under her control while in the house and the sound of her walking across the floor upstairs was enough to send me into a panic. I had no idea what she might do when she came down and as time went on, the physical and emotional abuse became more regular and much worse. I eventually reached a stage where I completely shut off emotionally and became completely disconnected. This was not a conscious decision at the time, it just happened. I now see that this was the only way that I could manage to survive what I was experiencing. This disconnection from my emotional self still impacts me today and makes it very difficult for me to form trusting relationships with people. My adoptive parents did nothing about what was going on in the house and let my older sister do whatever she wanted. This had a huge impact on me as the very people who were supposed to look after me, did not. I felt unloved and worthless at a cellular level, long before I knew what those words even meant.
I continue to work on my sense of personal value, even today, and I always struggle to see in myself what others kindly say that they see in me. I felt a deep shame that I was allowing myself to be
treated like this by a girl and I was terrified that anyone would find out. This reinforced the need I felt to keep it secret and led to me having to create a lot of stories to explain bruises and breaks. My development was severely impacted and when I look back now on the different stages of it I can very clearly see the impact it has had on my life.
My one outlet was sport. Any time that I was allowed out of the house I would play football on the road or in the park. I was football mad and when I played, I forgot all about everything else. As a schoolboy I had really good promise. I had opportunities to go further with football but my issue was that once I was away from the house my behaviour was off the wall. I was overly aggressive on the pitch. It was like once I got out of that really fearful environment of the house, it was like I was let loose. Nobody
“This disconnection from my emotional self still impacts me today and makes it very difficult for me to form trusting relationships with people.”
could tell me anything or teach me anything. Because I was so controlled at home and so afraid to do anything about it, I directed my anger towards everybody else. I developed real issues with anyone who tried to show me the way or be an authority figure in my life, whether that was in a positive role or not, I just had issues with that. So opportunities that I had in sports all went by the wayside. I also experienced violence in the school I attended which contributed to bringing out a very angry and rebellious side in me.
I began hanging around with the older lads and girls and they were all drinking and that kind of stuff and so at the age of 12 I had my first drink. It was in a field, with spirits that I had taken from the house, and resulted in what I now know was my first, but by no means last, black out. Looking back, I thought nothing of it at the time. I was so young I didn’t understand but looking back now I can see that how and why I drank was very different to everybody else I grew up with. They drank to get drunk eventually, and to have a good laugh. I drank to get obliterated. I drank to black out basically and my very first drinking experience resulted in me being told about all the things I had did, but had
no memory of doing. I upended somebody’s house, smashed windows, fights that I started and friends that I had fallen out with. I had absolutely no memory of that whatsoever so right from the get go, my relationship with substance use was very different than most other peoples.
I continued to drink and then smoke hash and then stayed with that right up through my teens, resulting in a succession of incidents and involvement with the Gardaí. I started getting into more and more trouble with the football clubs I was playing for. I was playing gaelic football and hurling at the time as well and I started to steal from the dressing rooms and that kind of thing. I was doing this basically to get the money for hash and my drug use was very quickly spiralling out of control. It started off drinking at the weekends and then smoking hash every day. Very quickly my substance use became very problematic. I started getting into more and more trouble in school. I eventually stopped going to school. I was getting suspended and eventually I got expelled. I started working in small jobs around the place but I always lost them, I could never keep them, then eventually when I turned 18, the first chance I got, I left the family home and moved
up to Ballymun. I moved in with a girl and lived up here for eleven years. I started taking E’s and going out dancing and all that kind of stuff and one of the times when we were out for a weekend I was introduced to heroin. I thought, no way would I ever touch that. I remember I used to look around me and justify my own drug use by saying, well at least I am not doing that. I’m not as bad as them. Eventually I did though. I smoked heroin for the first time. I think I was 19 and I didn’t like it at all. I felt really ill. I vomited everywhere and then about 15 minutes later I felt like I had never felt before. It seemed to meet every need I had and all the pain or sadness I felt, faded into nothingness. Very quickly, as was the nature of my drug use, all the way through my whole life, it progressed. I think I smoked it for about 4 months and then I started injecting because smoking it wasn’t enough for me anymore. My rationale was that as I couldn’t afford to buy enough to smoke, surely it made sense to inject as I wouldn’t need as much. Very quickly then I was injecting as much and then more than I had been smoking and it just got more and more out of control. I found myself then getting involved in all sort of things in order to feed my habit, getting into trouble with the
guards, getting arrested, ending up in custody and you know in and out, in and out.
Eventually I decided that I needed to stop so I went looking for help. It was suggested that I go on physeptone (this was before methadone), and stabilise, then detox. Clinics were designated to specific catchment areas and I lived in the middle of where I was neither eligible for Domville House in Ballymun, nor Trinity Court, Pearse Street so I was kind of in no man’s land as far as being able to access a clinic went. I ended up having to go to a private doctor and get a private script and pay for my physeptone. I went on physeptone and the plan was to do a 3 week detox, that was in 1991. Little did I know that this was more the end of the beginning than the beginning of the end (I did not get off a methadone maintenance until 2007). Despite being on physeptone, I continued to use heroin so my doctor increased my dose steadily.
Clinics became more accessible and I ended up on most of them at
“Eventually I decided that I needed to stop so I went looking for help.”
one time or another. Very quickly
I was up to 80 mls and then I was up to 120mls and at that point my life was really on fire. I started taking tablets of any description and was soon injecting them with the heroin. As has always been the way for me, just taking drugs was never enough for me.
I had to find the most effective way of taking them possible. Anything that could be mixed and injected, was done, despite the succession of overdoses I experienced. While I didn’t have it in me to actually kill myself, I would frequently hope before I injected that this would be the one to do it. I couldn’t maintain any sort of friendships, any sort of relationships, my family didn’t want to know me, I wasn’t allowed down near the house, there were protection orders and barring orders against me as my behaviour had become very aggressive and threatening. Any time I was seen down around my old area, the guards were called. I became very well known to the gardai and was frequently arrested and charged for all sorts of offences.
I had become homeless by this stage and was living in sheds, parks or on the landings of the blocks that were by now being emptied. I had contracted Hep C through sharing needles by
this stage and was jaundiced from head to toe. As a tall man
I weighed 9 stone at the time. I was constantly overdosing and couldn’t eat anything. This became my way of life and I decided that this was what I was meant for. I was going to die using drugs and that was acceptable to me. Looking back, I remember that I felt so hopeless at that time in my life and I had done so many bad things to so many decent people that this was all that I felt I deserved. Accepting this also freed me from having to try to change I suppose. As miserable as I was doing what I was doing, the thoughts of stopping and having to change was terrifying and I believed at that time, impossible for me.
As a result of charges I had built up, I linked in with different community drugs projects and started to put in applications for detox and treatment centres. This started an eleven year cycle of going in and out, in and out. Often completing detox and not going on and doing further treatment and relapsing very quickly, occasionally completing detox and then doing the further treatment, lasting 3 or 4 weeks and then relapsing and regularly overdosing. I remember in town these toilets you had to pay 20 pence to use and I remember
getting pulled out of one of them by two guards after overdosing. I was only out of treatment about 2 days and I went back on it. I gave one of the lads tapping on the bridge a fiver for clean ‘works’ and citric and I went and I used and I overdosed. Only for the garda pulling me out of the toilets I definitely would have died and that was my life. I couldn’t believe that I was back there again but felt unable to maintain any positive change or outlook. I resigned to getting pulled out of toilets, arrested, in and out of custody, homeless hostels, clinics, psychiatric units and hospitals and made all this ok with myself. This seemed easier to me than having to try to change it. The reality for me was that I couldn’t even maintain a methadone maintenance. If I was using anything I was using everything, there was no half measures for me. I know that’s not the way for everybody, but for me, that’s just the way it was.
My using was difficult for me physically because I didn’t have great veins at the start and very quickly I went through them all. I was covered in abscesses and sores and it would take me hours to successfully inject. Eventually I ended up having to inject into my groin. I got away with that for years, then all of a sudden I
noticed that I started developing infections. My knee started to swell one day but I didn’t pay it much attention. As always, once I was able to get around, get my stuff, and get it in to me that was all that mattered. It continued to swell and then it started to change colour. Eventually it was so swollen and infected that it went black.
I was so consumed by my using that I was prepared to just keep going. Because of my condition and my mother being aware of it, she let me sleep out in the back shed without my da knowing. I had also used my condition to emotionally blackmail her so I’d have somewhere to sleep.
There was an old chest freezer out there and I used to sleep on that. She would come out and get me to take bits of porridge and other food and kept trying to get me
“If I was using anything I was using everything, there was no half measures for me. I know that’s not the way for everybody, but for me, that’s just the way it was.”
to go to hospital. I could see how heartbroken she was but I was so consumed with myself that I couldn’t see past it. Eventually she called the D DOC. He just looked at my leg and said that it needed to come off immediately or I was going to die. My mindset was, I’ll get enough stuff to do me for a few hours or a day or two as I will probably be in hospital for a while getting this sorted out. I went in and had a serious infection in my knee (Staphylococcus Aureus) that I got from unsanitary injecting into my groin. Basically the plan was, I had to sign a load of forms for them to take my leg off from the hip just in case it had spread up into the thigh. Basically it was going to kill me if it wasn’t dealt with. It also meant that there was no option for a prosthetic leg as it was to be taken at the hip. I was only 31 at the time. I was very fortunate with the surgeon that I got. Instead of doing one operation to take it off from the hip he did two surgeries to drain and clear out the knee and then he put this drain in that continued to drain the knee for a couple of weeks while I was in hospital. I was laid up for four months. When I got out of hospital. I couldn’t move so was stable on my methadone and tablets, thankfully with my leg intact. I was left with septic
arthritis in the knee from the infection but this was a small price to pay considering.
My ma let me go back to the house so I was laid up on her couch. Eventually I became able to walk with crutches and started taking short walks. As soon as I was able to get mobile enough, I was back out using and I was back injecting in the same place that had almost cost me my leg and my life. I know it must sound insane to some people but it just made sense to me. I couldn’t see a way out. I believed and I had myself convinced that this was all I knew, this was what I deserved and this was how it was going to be for me. I was back out, I was back using again and this went on for another 6 years. I ended up living in hostels in town then I ended up getting placed in a hostel up in Swords on the main street and I suppose my real kind of … if you want to call it ‘bottom’ kind of moment where I thought do you know what I need to stop. I was up in a B&B using like mad. I was in terrible condition and I was getting myself into Cuan Dara again. I had been in there three times and I completed my detox and got drug free, came off tablets and the methadone in there and went on to Keltoi and completed Keltoi. I wouldn’t let them help
me with my housing. My idea was, I was 36 at the time, and I was thinking I should be able to sort this shit out myself, I don’t need help with housing. I came out of Keltoi with nowhere to go, so I was homeless and I ended up back in the hostel up in Swords, I think I lasted about 2 weeks before I started messing around again. Very quickly, I was fully back at it. I don’t know whether it was because I was a little bit older this time or what it was but my mind couldn’t take the level of substance use. The fact I had tasted being drug free however briefly and then I was back in the middle of substance use again, having to rob, breaking into cars, doing everything, getting arrested, in and out of custody again. I just couldn’t take it and I lost my mind basically, and I entered into a psychosis. I ended up being transferred up to Portrane mental health institution and onto St Ita’s Ward. This experience there made me realise that I didn’t belong somewhere like that and I thought at that point that I just had to stop.
I had been in and out of treatment centres, detoxes, in and out of custody, in and out of garda stations my whole adult life and there I was in a lock up psych ward at 36 and I decided that I
just couldn’t do this anymore.
I had reached a place where it became more painful for me to keep using than it did for me to stop and that was the only reason I was able to stop I just couldn’t do it anymore. When I got out, I went back using but I made contact with Cuan Dara again and because I had been in there 3 times I had a really good relationship with them and they knew how desperate I was. It was about 9 months later when they took me back in.
I detoxed successfully in there, and made another application to go to Keltoi in the Phoenix Park. I did 8 weeks in there and this time I did ask for help with my housing. I got one of the apartments they had as a step-down with Focus Ireland in Georges Hill. I got a lovely apartment in there for six months. I was offered a RAS Scheme after that so I ended up in Summerhill for about 3 and
“I like to help people to understand that it is possible for people to be in a real place of absolute desperation and to find a way out into a lasting recovery.”
a half years. From there I got a transfer up to James Street and from there I got myself a brand new 2 bedroom apartment just outside the city centre. I have an amazing eleven year old son who is my whole life and I try to be the best father to him that I can be. I went to college and got my Degree. I have been in full time employment for the 14 of the last 15 years that I have been in recovery. I now work in the services as an Addiction Counsellor and I love what I do. I fully invest in people because I know what it is like to be desperate, I know what it’s like to feel there’s no alternative, to feel that there’s no way out. I know what it’s like to feel hopeless. I know what it’s like for people to just want you to f**k off and disappear and stop causing problems in their lives. For people to feel that the only way out for them is in a box. I like to help people to understand that it is possible for people to be in a real place of absolute desperation and to find a way out into a lasting recovery. The greatest thing that has happened me in my life and my recovery, was the birth of my son. I was 4 years in recovery when he was born. He has never known me to be drunk or to take any drugs, he doesn’t know about any of that. I use the benefit of my experiences growing up and
how difficult it was for me and what I didn’t get emotionally, to inform how I parent him. I make sure he gets all that he needs emotionally because I learnt what is important and what kids need and I make sure he gets all of it. He is my whole world.
I played in the street leagues world cup for Ireland abroad and have an international cap for that. I got involved in coaching the Irish street leagues team and went to the world cups in Rio and Paris as well. I played league of Ireland futsal and I ended up playing football with a team here in Dublin which was a nice way to finish out my playing days. Loads of really good things have happened for me in recovery, it’s not always easy, at the start it’s particularly difficult but it’s so worth it. Just
“Loads of really good things have happened for me in recovery, it’s not always easy, at the start it’s particularly difficult but it’s so worth it. Just find what works for you and stick with it.”
find what works for you and stick with it. Whatever people decide is for them, whether it’s going to meetings, counselling or both, whatever they feel they need to do for their recovery.
that his da loves him, believes in him and that everything is possible for him because that’s what I tell him. And I am able to be that father to my son because I am in recovery.
My life is very different now, although I never forget where I have come from. I have a home, a car, a job and I am able to enjoy my life. I’m able to get away for a holiday here and there. I make sure that I am down supporting my son at his football matches, and I make sure that he gets everything that I didn’t get. I make sure that he has a Dad on the side-lines who tells him he did great, that telling him they are proud of him no matter what. I don’t want him to have a dad that that’s too busy in the pub with the lads on a Sunday morning to come and watch him play a match. He’s not going to know what that’s like and that’s really important to me. He knows
I was definitely one of those people who never thought it was possible for me there was no way out for me. I never gave up, I kept trying after years in clinics, years with doctors, psychiatric institutions, prisons, garda stations, you name it, all that madness that people unfortunately are living today. There is a way out, there was a way out for me. I never gave up despite wanting too many times, but something just kept me going. Honestly, I don’t know how I am still alive. I have people telling me when they meet me now that they heard I was dead 15 or 20 years ago and are amazed that I am still alive. So for anyone that’s full of despair and thinks that there’s no way out for them just don’t give up, just keep trying and eventually you will get there. Reach out, look for a bit of help, maybe do a few things that you might not want to do but probably need to do. That’s what worked for me in the end anyway. Just never give up, because it is possible!
“So for anyone that’s full of despair and thinks that there’s no way out for them just don’t give up, just keep trying and eventually you will get there.”
“I always said that my child never had my head only my heart and now my child has both.” - Celine
Hi, my name is Celine. I was born in Ballymun. I am 35 and I want to share my story of recovery with you. Growing up I was always cheeky and wild. I always found it tough to keep friends so I had new friends regularly. My secondary school was no different. I felt like I didn’t fit in. I struggled a lot with concentrating and also started to lose my head and get angry.
I had my first drink at 14. I can still remember to this day the taste and feeling it gave me, how I felt when I drank it. It was amazing, I was free of my thoughts, and my emotions. I felt alive just from drinking
an alcopop. I got expelled from school and got put into another one. I only lasted 5 months in the new one. My mental health got bad and so did my drinking. At 17 I tried to take my own life. I was drinking that night and I just wanted it all to end. I was brought to St Vincent’s Hospital and was told I needed to stop drinking and attend AA meetings. I didn’t want to because I didn’t think I had a problem. I was just sad and lonely.
When I got out of Vincent’s I was moved down to my aunties in the country. My Ma was hoping I would change, so she was changing jobs looking for
“Remember…you are the most important person in your recovery.” - Unknown
somewhere to live and move us all down to the country. I went to my first AA meeting at that time still not believing alcohol was the problem. I had a sponsor down there going through the big book, but I just wasn’t happy down the country. I remember my aunty had this wine fridge that I kept drinking from when they weren’t looking. The feeling that came rushing back was amazing and I started a big fight with my aunty and left, walking the roads. She collected me and brought me back to Dublin, finally I was home.
I got twisted that night and my drinking carried on and taking drugs continued from there. The love I had for alcohol grew. I remember one weekend I was drinking for days but this one day I couldn’t keep the drink down I kept shaking. I rang my Ma and told her I was pregnant. She knew, I was 6 weeks pregnant. I was excited, happy, but also at the same time terrified with a growing life inside me while I didn’t have my own life together. I didn’t work, I had no desire inside me whatsoever.
Fast forwarding to the birth of my child, seeing that face for the first time was magical. It was love at first sight. All my bad thoughts left me for a while, but then my drinking crept back
up, and the partying all started again. For the next few years I went through detox. The daily hell, and I relapsed shortly after. I really started to hate myself, I hated who I had become but still loving my drinking and the partying, the chaos. I was told again by my doctor that I had a drinking problem and advised me to attend AA meetings, so I did. I remember walking in the door of the meeting thinking this isn’t for me, I’m only 25 these are all in their 60s. I went for a few weeks and then it clicked, I do belong here, these people are me, it’s a home away from home and I’m grateful for them. They welcomed me and helped me find myself without drink.
I’m not ashamed anymore. I don’t have to say sorry to people for partying or upsetting them. I’m trying to heal now and I don’t have to hide anything anymore. I’m grateful. I’m alive. Grateful for my family and child and friends.
One of the greatest challenges today in recovery is the stigma
“I’m grateful. I’m alive. Grateful for my family and child and friends.”
around addiction. You are made to feel dirty, hopeless, and judged. No child in school, puts their hand up and says I wanna be an addict or alcoholic. For many people, addiction comes from pain, trauma, loneliness and wanting to mask pain, and trauma within. People shouldn’t be so quick to judge and instead should try understand more. They should try talking with addicts instead of judging them. There’s more to an addicts life than drink or drugs, that’s only a small part of their story.
Finally if your reading or listening to this story and think there’s no way out of addiction I am living testimony that there is. There’s somebody that needs you, somebody that loves you. Ask them for help. Pick up the phone. Go to a meeting. Recovery starts with you. You need to help yourself first. Don’t stop drinking or taking drugs for loved ones
it doesn’t work, you
only end up resenting them
know because I did it to be a better sister, daughter, mother, and it never worked out. I kept going back until I wanted to be sober and drug free for myself. I always said that my child never had my head only my heart and now my child has both. I’m so grateful for that and also the programme I was on, I owe my life to a lot of people that helped me along the way, and I couldn’t thank them enough “one day at a time.”
“There’s somebody that needs you, somebody that loves you. Ask them for help. Pick up the phone. Go to a meeting. Recovery starts with you.”
will
I
“The support is out there for people struggling with their drug use, it’s never hopeless even though you may feel that way. There is a way out, you just need to reach out and find the right help for you”
-Rory
“Recovery is a process. It takes time. It takes patience. It takes everything you’ve got.”– Unknown
My name is Rory and I am 47 years old and have lived in Ballymun all my life. I lived in a home with my Mother, Father, a few brothers and a sister. I was the middle child and always felt very uneasy when my Father would have a few drinks, it was more mental torture than physical abuse or whatever. I played football, hurling and boxing and I had dreams.
I started on drugs as a young kid. I started messing with Tippex, gas and other types of solvents and I liked the feeling I got from them. I just wanted to do what I wanted to do. I didn’t listen to my mother or father. I started off sniffing petrol and gas and
stuff like that. I remember being down an alleyway off the courts and a bunch of older lads were all huddled together, and I just wanted to know what they were doing. They were sniffing Tippex and thinners on their jumpers. That’s when I got my first blast and that was it. It took me away from ME. I hung around with them for a couple of years from around the age of eleven until around the age of fourteen. Then I left the family home and went into a hostel.
It was Halloween night my first night there. A bloke asked me to light up a joint and I lit it up backwards. I didn’t know anything about hash and that
was it. I got sick and I swore I would never take it again. I was living around all these other fellas and hash was all they did. So, after a couple of weeks, I was out buying it myself. There was a lot more drugs coming into the house, a lot of hard drugs and tablets, so I would experiment with a few cans and tablets and a bit of hash. That was every weekend. After a couple of years dabbling with these substances, we started going to the raves and then I started taking E’s.
us that hung out together at that time and seven of them are dead. They all died within a couple of years from drug use. I got a year or two of the E’s but the come down off the E’s wasn’t a nice experience. I was at a party one night and there were people smoking heroin in the corner. I was wide awake on the E, and one of the lads invited me to take a couple of lines of “gear” saying that it would help me to sleep and come down off the ecstasy.
Before I knew it, it had become a regular thing. I had to feed my own habit. I needed money to pay for my drugs at the weekend cos once you have a habit you need money for it. I was only 15 or 16 at the time.
That was a whole new ball game. I initially was on the love buzz, and everyone was dancing and partying. It was great fun until one or two people from the hostel died on it. I brushed it off by saying their drug use was worse than mine and I just kept using. There is a photograph of eight of
Then I went on to harder drugs. I was on the heroin, so I sold it to feed my habit. Yes, it was hard. I crossed that line at an early age. I was nineteen and on a methadone clinic and they told me that it was a six-week programme, but I ended up on the clinic for 28 or 29 years. They show you the entrance, but they don’t show you the exit. No one ever told me this is how you get off it or anything about going into treatment. So, I thought this is it. I made my bed and now I would have to lie in it. I thought there was no hope for me.
“I started on drugs as a young kid. I started messing with Tippex, gas and other types of solvents and I liked the feeling I got from them. I just wanted to do what I wanted to do. I didn’t listen to my mother or father.”
Even from an early age I had always taken some kind of substance. There were a lot of people from Ballymun who took drugs and your peer group thought there was something wrong with you if you didn’t. I was selling drugs for a long time to feed my habit. I regretfully tormented my community selling drugs and I was on the clinic so long that the years just passed, and my drug habit got worse, and my methadone dose would go up. At different times I tried to reduce my heroin use but it was just like a rat race, and I kept just going around in circles. I honestly thought there was no hope for me.
I met a girl when I was eighteen. By the time I was twenty-three we had our first child. I swore blind when I picked him up that he would never turn out like me, but I pulled out a bottle of drink and a joint and ran downstairs to drink and smoke the joint and that went on for years and years and years. I hurt my two boys and my partner through my drug use, but I couldn’t see it.
The chaos I was creating with police and other people knocking at the door, the kids being dragged out of their beds. I just needed my drugs. I could never hold down a job I could never be
on time. I never had the head to hold down a job. I always wanted what I believed was the easy way. I just wanted it my way and that was me. This is what you do to feed your habit. Everyone around me got burnt because of my drug taking.
My turning point was when my boys were in their teens and my partner had enough of me and my attitude and I was asked to leave our family home. I was broken mentally, spiritually, and physically. I was looking in the mirror and I didn’t like the person I was seeing, but I just didn’t know how to stop taking drugs. I wanted to, but I thought the mountain was too big and I couldn’t climb it. A friend of mine called up to me out of the blue. I hadn’t seen him for a couple of years, and he said come on I’ll bring you on a spin and he brought me to a Fellowship meeting. I didn’t know anything about meetings. I didn’t know anything about recovery. I didn’t know about changing my ways, but that was the start of my journey. I gradually reduced my use of methadone. I didn’t want to go into residential treatment, so I started going to BYAP a local drugs service in Ballymun.
I began by talking to counsellors and going to SMART recovery meetings. I had started to
reduce my methadone and other substances. I would get down to a certain amount of methadone, stay at that for a while, and go again to dropping 2mls a week for a few more weeks. At this stage I could really see a difference in myself. I had so many people in recovery and in the local services helping me and giving me a dig out. I just wanted to change but at that time I didn’t know how to surrender a hundred percent. I didn’t go into treatment because I had seen too many coming out of treatment and going back on drugs and sometimes even harder than they were in the first place.
This is where I lived, and this was my community, and this is where I had to come back to, so I opted to do a community detox. I used to drop into BYAP and see people going upstairs. I thought they were students, but as it turns out they were part of the STAR Project a local community drug rehab centre. I knew one fella that was going there so I asked him what goes on there and he told me and after a while I was referred to STAR. They really started working with me to get down to my last few mls of methadone. They really encouraged and supported me through it. I really held on to those last few mls as my security
blanket. I just couldn’t imagine myself with no methadone or tablets in my system. I was in the STAR Project for 2 years and I did a lot of work on myself, and finally I let my methadone and tablet use go. I owe a lot of thanks to people in the community, YAP, STAR, and people in the community.
“My turning point was when my boys were in their teens and my partner had enough of me and my attitude and I was asked to leave our family home. I was broken mentally, spiritually, and physically. I was looking in the mirror and I didn’t like the person I was seeing, but I just didn’t know how to stop taking drugs. I wanted to, but I thought the mountain was too big and I couldn’t climb it.”
They know who they are who helped me along the way because I would never have been able to do it on my own. The support is out there for people struggling with their drug use, it’s never hopeless even though you may feel that way. There is a way out, you just need to reach out and find the right help for you. There are meetings and services.
There is help out there for those who thought they would die on drugs to become drug free and live a good life. From sitting in a room on my own with my methadone, thinking that was all my life had to offer to a person who is out there doing a lot in the community, going on holidays, and giving back to people who are trying to get to where I am today. Recovery is possible for anyone but at times it is a hard rocky road. It’s not a simple straight line from A to B, there’s a lot of zig zags along the way but if you can keep working on yourself and put the work in you will be rewarded for your efforts. I am living proof of that.
“I started to get a sense of purpose which every human being needs.” -Mícheal
Hi, my name is Michael and I have been asked to give a little bit of my life story to try and inspire or give a little hope to others about my challenges and possibly overcome them like I did. I come from Ballymun. I grew up in the flats. I had a fairly normal childhood, there was no real trauma in the home at the stage. Things went wrong when I was around 7 or 8 and my father went to prison. I didn’t know what prison was until later on in life. That was a huge detachment from the family home, I had a fairly structured homelife, I was in at a certain time, I had to have my homework done, all the kind of normal stuff. There was boundaries and structure in the
family home, and then when my father went to prison that was a huge fracture in that stability that I had experienced.
“What you deny or ignore, you DELAY. What you accept and face, you CONQUER.” - Unknown
“I grew up very fast at a very young age and I suppose the innocence of childhood left me. There was no boundaries or structure to my life, I just wanted my mammy and daddy back.”
For the next year or two, I started to make sense that things were not the same as they had been. I used to go up and visit my father and we were getting left with babysitters and my mother would stay out a bit longer than I had previously been used to. Then my father got out of prison, and he didn’t stay in the family home for too long. He was there a few months and then he left with a black bag never to return, I think I was 10 or 11 years of age when that happened. I started to be exposed to a lot more unsavoury kind of behaviours. There were issues with drugs and alcohol in my extended family. There was plenty of money in the extended family but there was no sense of family unit it was sort of ‘Brown Thomas’ on the outside and ‘Penny’s on the inside’ kind of stuff. As time went on I kind of seen the deterioration in my mam and I sort of knew at that stage that she was getting involved with drugs. I could see it and I was starting to come of age where I knew something wasn’t right.
I grew up very fast at a very young age and I suppose the innocence of childhood left me. There was no boundaries or structure to my life, I just wanted my mammy and daddy back. I started to get in to trouble, I wasn’t going to
school, I started to hang around the blocks and up until that age I wasn’t a streetwise sort of a kid. I was a little bit out in the wilderness when it came to that but I had to put on the brave face. It wasn’t long after that, that the authorities got involved because I wasn’t going to school. We had to go to the children’s court and I remember going to the children’s court and I was that upset at how my homelife was, I had no faith in my mam or the family unit especially coming from a normal family in the years previous. I remember being in court and the judge saying I will send you to ‘St Michaels’ and I asked to go, 11 years of age I asked to go and he sent me to St Michaels for 3 weeks and I fu***ng loved it. It was an old detention centre for youth delinquents and I went in there with 25 other young lads. It was supposed to be for 3 weeks and I stayed there for six or seven months – I loved it, it was a holiday camp. You would go swimming, play football, trips out but it was the safety as a child I was craving. I was craving that safety, that feeling that I was alright. There were carers there, there was adults that gave that sense of security so however strange it may seem I kind of took to that structure because it was absent in my family home. Over the next six or seven years
I became institutionalised. I craved that, I sought out that security and I went from St Michaels to St Lawrences for a few years and then I went from there to Oberstown. From there I went into the care system. I was in so many different care units along the way, I was even in specially designed units. I was in about 16 different care homes and by then as I started to be processed through the care system and absorb all these different characters, these tough kind of street kids. I adjusted to that way of life. I got involved in criminality and then within all that I started to take my first kind of experience with drugs. I was probably 12 or 13, the usual smoking the hash, then at 14 or 15 started taking E’s.
I remember taking methadone tablets and smoking heroin at this age, but it never got a hold of me. I just wanted something all the time. I would escape from the care homes and go looking for drugs. I loved that feeling that they give me. I loved how the drugs affected me. Along the way there would be little bits of token gestures and interactions with my family. They would come up and visit but the kind of feeling of being wanted or needed in a family was well gone from me. I was very young and now I can
see when I started to act up at 11 or 12, it was easy to make me the scapegoat because they didn’t have to look at their own behaviours. I started to develop this complex that I was a scumbag that nobody wanted. At 18 I left the care system, and there was no aftercare back then. The day I turned 18 I was fu***d out and I ended up back out in Ballymun homeless and heavily involved in drug use and petty crime. I’d do anything to get drugs but when I look at it I’d do anything to get a sense of belonging, so the drugs and the sense of belonging went hand in hand. There was a group of young lads that I hung around with. The drug use went hand in hand with the belonging I was seeking with them, if that makes sense and I chased that to the extreme where I would have nowhere to go. I’d be standing on the block with a tee shirt on in the middle of winter and one by one the lads would fall away with somewhere to go and I’d miss the opportunity to go into a hostel in town because I was just craving that connection. Wherever I went, or with whatever group of people, I was seeking that connection.
I had great times on drugs and I wouldn’t have kept taking them if there wasn’t good times. The E scene and all the visual crap that
you hear about, there was great times you felt connected, felt accepted, felt loved. You felt you could love but it was short lived, it was a night or a couple of hours and I chased that. I’d be looking to do that every day of the week. The lads would all be taking an E or a half an E on a Friday or Saturday night, but I’d want to take 4 of them. I’d want to take them every day. They would say you mad ba***rd and I would play up to that but really I was just trying to fill that emptiness inside of me. When I was 18 or 19 I met a girl from Ballymun, and she ended up pregnant and sure it was like the blind leading the blind. We had a young boy, he’s my eldest but sure I was only a child, I was a broken, lost child myself.
in the house with them. We had this baby and sure I’d no future, no opportunity, no nothing, all I knew was taking drugs and hanging around with a group of adolescents. All I knew about sex and relationships was from a load of young people talking about. My perception of women, my perception of life was distorted. I was fu***ed up. The relationship didn’t last long, a couple of years. A lot of shit went on. I started to get into harder drugs. My son was about a year and a half or 2 years old, I was petty dealing so that I could have a daily supply of weed and cocaine. I never had any money. I wasn’t a drug dealer other than dealing to use. One day there was no weed and I had a bit of the ‘gear’ and sure that was it.
I ended up clinging onto that relationship. It was a dysfunctional, toxic and codependent relationship. She was 18, her mother allowed me to live
A few months later I was strung out and using everyday. She found out and I left the house. I think I was about 21 or 22 at the time and I headed into Dublin city centre. I am skipping forward but from the age of 18 when I left all the institutions and the care homes there was loads of little stints in prison. I learned how to survive by this time on very little. I had my wits about me. I always had and it’s relevant for where I am today in my life. I always had, I don’t know where it came from but I always had a thirst
“I was just craving that connection. Wherever I went, or with whatever group of people, I was seeking that connection.”
for knowledge. In school I was far too advanced for what they would teach and I would swallow up whatever they were teaching in ten minutes and then I would mess. Whatever care home I was in, I’d read 2 books a week. When there was structure and you had to be in bed and there was no telly, I’d get a book and I’d sit up all night under the covers and I’d read, however thick the book was you give me, I wouldn’t put the book down until I read it. I always had that capacity to learn. I had the experience in the care homes, the institutions, all the characters you meet, learning how to duck and dive within them systems. I was intelligent but I wasn’t intelligent enough where I could prosper, but I had a little bit of book smartness about me where I could survive if that makes sense.
I ended up a heroin addict at 22. Me and the children’s mother parted ways and through a series of events I ended up in Dublin city centre within 4-6 weeks. I lost what was my only connection to a family with that girl and kid. My whole illusion was shattered. Whatever I thought of the situation, it was all I had. My mother was a drug addict at this stage. I had major anger issues because I blamed her on everything in my life, how shitty
life had become. My father was off doing whatever, he wasn’t a drug user but he was a drinker. I went in to the city centre and within 6 weeks I was sticking needles in my arms. The pain was that much, I would say it now, that the pain was that much but when I look back I can say, it was pain. At the time I didn’t know it was pain, I just felt lost. I couldn’t see a way of functioning so the best way to make the days go quicker was to get out of my mind and the easiest and quickest way to do that was to stick a needle in my arm. Slowly but surely after 5 or 6 years of heroin, crack and snowblow, I was destroying my body with needles. I had no veins left. There was no sense of love like when I started to take E. The mates had gone by this stage. I was in methadone clinics, psychiatric units, public health nurses giving me injections every month for my mental health. I literally was like a mad bear out of the zoo. I was all swollen up with psychiatric medication. I would go down and get my methadone and then go find something to stick in to me. I lost all dignity or respect for myself as a human being. If you see somebody, a street addict that lives on the streets on their own, that looks unapproachable and unsociable, that was me. I was 7 and a half stone and I am
a big lump of a fella but I was 7 and a half stone, emaciated. My cheek bones were coming out. I had a big head of hair on me, and same pants and socks on me for months at a time. My body had shut down, physically, mentally and spiritually. I was just a shell of bone and skin and on occasion my body would not allow me to walk. It was like my spirit had given up.
I had loads of suicide attempts. On occasion some of the professionals I came across in the different services and some of the professionals along the way who got into that line of work for the right reasons, they showed me a little bit of compassion and empathy whether it be a treatment centre or hospital. There were moments of kindness shown to me, times I was treated like a human being. That left some sort of impression on my heart. I have met professionals along the way that did that. Psychiatric units gave me the security and safety I craved as a kid. I’d get in there and all my problems would be solved. They would give me loads of medication and I would sit in a room watching T.V. If I could have stayed there for the rest of my life, I would have.
I didn’t know where my children lived. I had no connection with
family, it was just me, my mind and where I was, but I felt safe and I longed to stay in there. Eventually they would move me out because they would start to figure out that this fella hasn’t got a psychiatric illness. After a few days of respite and getting clean clothes on me and a couple hours sleep and still getting my methadone and the psych medication, it became apparent.
“some of the professionals I came across in the different services and some of the professionals along the way who got into that line of work for the right reasons, they showed me a little bit of compassion and empathy whether it be a treatment centre or hospital. There were moments of kindness shown to me, times I was treated like a human being. That left some sort of impression on my heart.”
I reckon these professionals who deal with mental health illnesses assumed that this fella is just lost so I’d be moved out of there but then I’d play the game and and I would say I want to kill myself when they tried to discharge me so I could stay. I became this really sad case, going back out on to the street, back down to the clinic to get my methadone. In all that I had an unquenchable thirst for drugs so I’d still have enough motivation in me to go and get drugs wherever I could. I never had loads of drugs or thousands of pounds it was all opportunity stuff. It had eventually brought me to a place, was it a rock bottom or was it the gates of insanity I don’t know, many times I had got to the gates of insanity. I tried to take my life. In hindsight it was pitiful. Is that somebody who has had enough or is it a cry for help. Where’s my rock bottom?
I could tell you loads of rock bottoms. I was in loads of situations where I was thinking is this my rock bottom but I would continue on. I suppose I would have got off the horse it I had of known there was a way to get off the horse. I tried treatment centres once or twice, the real hard core stuff, Christian based stuff. I was so impressionable, people would come along and they would offer
you something and I would just go with them, but I didn’t know where I was going. I would be there in those environments, the safety, the security the belonging, the sense of connection, whether it was in an institution as a 11 year old, whether it was the care homes, whether it was the psychiatric units, or whether it was a treatment centre. When I got into those environments, I felt safe. Then I’d get out and use drugs.
I was on 110mls of methadone and I was on anti-psychotic medication. I was on injections and I was on whatever street drugs I could get. At the same time then it was maximum affect for as little money as possible. The crack was long gone and it was just heroin. I was in a hostel and I was sharing the dormitory with about 16 others who were using, and I was terrified of everybody. I was a real fearful type of person, I had this fear in me since I was a kid. I have this innate fear and still have it til this day. Near the end of my drug use, I couldn’t sleep I was petrified. My body was dismembered with needle holes and I was psychotic in the bed. I was like a crazed animal and a guy walked passed the bed. I attacked him out of fear. I thought he was coming to stab me and I was in a mad state. An
ambulance came and brought me to a psychiatric unit and they came around with my methadone the next morning and I refused it. I didn’t know I was making a decision to stop taking drugs, I just thought I’m not going to take what they are offering me. They came with the methadone and I told them I don’t want it and they told me I was going to go into all sorts of fits and I was screaming I don’t want it and I never took the methadone. One week went by, two weeks went by and I didn’t experience the withdrawals as I had experienced previously when I missed my methadone by 1 hour. I used to miss my methadone in the clinic and my world would end but whatever happened to me in the hospital, something changed internally. I learned a load of lingo along the way in recovery about surrendering and I don’t know what happened but grace entered into my life in that moment. I was able to get through whatever was thrown at me without too much suffering by not taking the medication, the methadone, and I spent 4-6 weeks in the hospital psychiatric unit.
When I talked about the professional showing me a little bit of kindness along the way, I had an outreach worker from a homeless service, he wasn’t
much older than me and he used to come up to see me. He sat at the end of the bed, looked at me, and I felt a sense of something from him, that it was the only connection I had with any human being in the world. This professional sitting at the end of the bed, on a visit in this hospital where I felt the loneliest man on the planet and I remember he put his hand on my shoulder and he said ‘You can do this, you are going to be alright.’ We are going to get you somewhere to stay’. That was all he could offer me as an outreach worker from the homeless service but it was the kindness I felt. He meant what he was saying to me and I felt he was genuine and that was enough for me to engage with another human being. That kindness. In hindsight I understand what his role was professionally but at the time I sensed the compassion in him, he was the only human being I had a connection with and when I left the hospital he got me an emergency hostel. I went in there and I lay on the top bunk, the fella on the bottom bunk was injecting heroin. I remember lying on the top bunk and the sun was beating in the window, I’d nowhere to go, I’d no friends I wasn’t linked in with any day programme. I didn’t know any of that. My options weren’t great in terms of leaning on family for
support. I remember lying on the top bunk thinking to myself how am I going to cope? I had no clothes just a set of slacks and a pyjama top on me that the hospital gave me. I’d no possessions. I had no options family wise. I didn’t have any friends. I didn’t know where my children were. I had nobody to manipulate in my life, let me stay and play the game. I had none of that, just a bed in emergency hostel and I had the yellow card to go and get my social welfare the next day. I went down to get my social welfare and I bumped into this fella that I half knew from drug use and he said ‘where are you going’? I told him I was on my way to get my social welfare and he said ‘are you using’ and I said ‘no’ and he said ‘do you want to go to a Cocaine Anonymous meeting with us’? I went off and got my scratcher and went back and lay on the top bunk. Later I walked down and met him at the bridge, and went to a fellowship meeting cocaine anonymous (C.A). I saw loads of fellas there from my local community, loads of people from Ballymun that had taken drugs the way I did, had similar life experiences. Another fella there at that meeting asked me was I on a day programme. I didn’t know what it was and he explained to me what it was and if I wanted to go out.
I was clean from drugs at this stage. I had post traumatic stress I had no doubt about it, all that stuff that I had spoke about … psychosis, the experiences, the environments I was exposed to and all the aggressive situations you get yourself into on the streets. When you stop taking drugs, the guilt, the shame, the trauma, was alive in me and anyone that met me could see it. I went out to the day programme and for 7 months, 9 months, 10 months I don’t know, I sat in a group and I looked out a window. I didn’t know where I was. I wasn’t in any sort of position to engage in that kind of therapy, I just needed respite. I needed to rebuild myself but they were very good to me they stayed with me for 2 maybe 3 years and kept me on the programme. It was a C.E. programme, and I know now they had to jump through hoops to keep me in there. I did that and along the way I got heavily, heavily involved with recovery in Dublin because I had nothing
“When you stop taking drugs, the guilt, the shame, the trauma, was alive in me and anyone that met me could see it.”
else to do. I used to leave that day programme would come home at 2pm, but I would stay there with the staff. They would let me use the kitchen, I’d clean up, I’d do anything I was just grateful to be somewhere. I would go back to the hostel and then I would go to a meeting, the fellowship meeting. I went to cocaine anonymous. At the time there were meetings on everyday in different locations and I would go to 9 meetings every week. I got saturated with recovery. I got obsessed with recovery out of necessity, then I started to come alive through recovery. I was on a C.E. drug rehab programme during the day and then in the evening I was just exposed to recovery, recovery lingo, recovery talk, fellowship people wrapped themselves around me. They showed me kindness, they gave me clothes, they brought me for meals, they accepted me into their homes then they started giving me keys to open up meetings. I thought I was a scumbag but these people didn’t. I started to get a sense of purpose which every human being needs.
After 2 years I thawed out and I started to look at addressing some of the issues that I couldn’t ignore anymore. The first year I was in no state to find the children. The second year I had
to have a look at how would I find them. I knew they were in Ballymun but I didn’t know where they were. My recovery didn’t centre in Ballymun it was in the city centre and Blanchardstown.
I started to do a bit of work and address some of the problems in a therapeutic way with therapists, all that stuff around my children.
I was walking through the Ilac centre in Dublin city centre one day and I saw the children’s ma. I left when she was pregnant with my daughter and my son at this stage would have been around 6 or 7. I got her number and started to see my children.
I started to see my son initially and I got a little flat in town and then began to see my daughter and build that relationship. I was landed with the challenges of how to be a father, how to be a responsible adult. I was taught by other men in recovery, my father didn’t teach me, my mother didn’t teach me. Everything I learned about how to take part in life came from everyone in recovery and I stayed
“I got obsessed with recovery out of necessity, then I started to come alive through recovery.”
heavily involved in that kind of circle. Every decision, every big decision in my life I would go and meet with members in recovery to work things out.
I went to college, I always had a love of learning and knowledge. At that time I wanted to be an addiction counsellor and I went and did a degree in addiction counselling. I went working in one of the addiction services, initially as a volunteering as part of my university work placement and they kept me on. I worked there for a few years and eventually I landed up in a family residential unit attached to the main service. I worked there for about 4 years. A friend of mine rang me one day and told me that he was working with teenagers coming out of the care systems and that they were recruiting for new staff. My rent allowance had been stopped and the wages in the drug services wasn’t great. I was delivering takeaways too, on a little motorbike in the evenings. I was hustling to try and get by. I started to work with 18-yearolds in the care system and I loved it. Within a few months I had progressed in the company because of my qualifications and experience in other services and I became a manager in this company. I went and set up my own company using what I had
learnt in that place and that’s where I am today. I never set out to do this, it’s like I was guided here, like I was being shown a little bit of my story in it. It’s like there is a pathway for me and all my experiences guided me to try and be a benefit to myself and to other people. I have probably the best life and first hand experience of anybody who has ever worked in these organisations so I have an opportunity to really make an impact in the lives of children rather than somebody coming from a middle class area and opening up these companies. I have come from the gutter. I am in a position now to really make a difference in these children’s lives.
“Everything I learned about how to take part in life came from everyone in recovery and I stayed heavily involved in that kind of circle. Every decision, every big decision in my life I would go and meet with members in recovery to work things out.”
I am back in Ballymun trying to help a few lads here that I’ve met along the way, My children are out here and I usually would collect them and go and I have family out here aswell. I never really got involved out in Ballymun but there’s obviously this recovery initiative going on and I’ve started to be drawn back to my community. That’s where I am today. What I would say to those struggling with drug addictions alone is that you can do it but you can’t do it alone. When you come to that place, when you feel hopeless, more than likely that goes alongside loneliness. Do you feel hopeless because you feel lonely and you don’t know a way out? If you can manage to reach out, reach out whether it’s to a priest in your parish, whether it’s a methadone clinic, someone on a soup run, whether it’s dragging yourself into a fellowship meeting. If you can make that initial reach out to somebody more than likely whatever gives you strength to reach out will also give you the opportunity to be helped.
“I have become a better mother daughter and sister because I’m making good choices. It has a knock-on effect for your family and for everyone involved in your life that can help generation after generation.”
- Maebh
I am not defined by my relapses but by my decision to remain in recovery despite them. - Unknown
Hi, my name is Maebh, and I am from Ballymun. This is my story of drug use and recovery. I came from an ordinary workingclass family, a mom, dad, and a brother. I had a great childhood and I had a very close bond with my family.
At the age of 15 I started drinking with my friends on a Saturday night. I was trying to fit in with my peers so I started smoking hash. At the age of 18, I started seeing my first boyfriend. Most of my friends disliked him as he was a heroin user. I was very naive and I would take his word that he only tried heroin a couple of times. I started going to discos at the weekend and doing
ecstasy. One night I went back to my boyfriend’s house with a few other of his friends and his brothers. His brother gave me two Valium to come down off the ecstasy but they turned out to be morphine pills. I can’t remember much but know I was out of it for two days and I couldn’t go home. My boyfriend said he fought with his brother for giving me the pills, but I later learned they gave them to me so they could smoke heroin while I slept through the effects of the pills. I was with my boyfriend for two years before he smoked heroin in front of me. I remember watching him smoke it and thinking ‘how can you get addicted to something you inhale’. I always thought heroin
was meant to be injected. The relationship became toxic and violent and I was afraid to stand up to him. I smoked a few lines with him one day and it started a spiral of heroin use.
I would minimise it because I only smoked it. I felt it blocked out the abuse I was suffering in our relationship. My relationships with my family and real friends broke down too and I felt more isolated and trapped in my addiction. The guilt and the shame from using kept me repeating the same cycles and making bad choices. I depended more and more on my boyfriend, he knew where to score and how to run it on the foil. I held down a job and every penny I made went
to him to fund our habit. I ended up in a very dark place. As much as I hated the consequences of my drug use, I couldn’t un-know the high it gave me. I broke up with my boyfriend after five years. Due to the years of abuse and toxic drug use, I was a shell of myself. Finally, I got myself together for two years, then started going back out with my friends drinking and partying. I forgot the misery of where drugs had taken me before. I made new friends who were cocaine users and I started doing it on weekends thinking I was in control until I couldn’t go on a night out without a bag or two, sometimes more. Then I needed something to come down and that’s when I’d have the odd smoke of heroin here and there, until it became problematic again. I was still holding down jobs and working but never having a penny.
I started buying methadone to get me through the week. I’d wake up with the dread of going through my day without a substance. The obsessive thinking and feeling sick, it was ground-hog day full of misery, heartbreak, and tears. I decided to get myself a doctor and was put on a programme. In 2006 I went through some mental health issues. Unresolved trauma kept coming at me and the only way doctors thought they could
“My relationships with my family and real friends broke down too and I felt more isolated and trapped in my addiction. The guilt and the shame from using kept me repeating the same cycles and making bad choices.”
help was to put me on Valium and Dalmaine. At the time, it numbed the pain and pushed it down but unresolved still. This kick started my pill addiction. I stopped doing other street drugs as I was getting them prescribed. I met a new partner in 2004.
“I was so unhappy in life and it showed. I would blame everyone and anything except the substance. I protected it like you would protect a loved one because to be honest, the drug was the love of my life until I had my son.”
He was only out of treatment for his methadone and pill addiction and we soon fell into bad habits together. I was so unhappy in life and it showed. I would blame everyone and anything except the substance. I protected it like you would protect a loved one because to be honest, the drug was the love of my life until I had my son. I knew I wanted more for him. Motherhood gave me a purpose. I tried numerous occasions to
sort myself out but I hadn’t the tools to pull myself out. I had no awareness of my behaviours or triggers. I linked in with YAP and I did Boxing Clever. It felt great to be on a natural high but when the Programme ended I dipped. As my mental health and drug use went hand in hand, I used drugs for my mental health but the pills made things worse. The contradiction of the cycle was crazy. I started in the STAR programme in 2016. I lost one of my closest friend’s to addiction and the reality of addiction hit home but still I masked my grief with a substance. One year later my dad passed away. Things just kept knocking me. I’ve had my fair share of losing people I loved. I’ve had a lot of death around me. It changed me as a person and the only way to cope was with a substance. It wasn’t until they brought in resonance factor that I never looked back. The last two years the resonance factor to untangle my trauma and addiction and work on them separately as you can become overwhelmed when they are tangled and go back to old behaviours. I have been able to look at my behaviours and to red flag them before picking up. I even did a grieving piece on my methadone before my detox and after. I started reducing 2mls every 2 weeks. I felt nothing. I
didn’t feed into the myths that I will be dying sick or the last 20mls is the worse.
“It all starts with that one step of reaching out for help if you are serious about your recovery and wanting a better life. Let’s be honest substances brings nothing but misery and death. If I can do it anyone can.”
I done it slowly and breezed through it. I was 23 years on a methadone programme and I am now substance free 4 months. Something I never thought I could see myself doing. I now have started to plan goals and the feeling I get from my achievements are feelings that no substance could give me. I’m building my confidence that had been knocked from taking substances and the stigma attached each day. Anyone contemplating recovery- GO FOR IT. It’s worth it. Life will always throw obstacles and there is never a right time to start so don’t waste life waiting. Life is too short. I’ve learned that the
hard way. There is always a way out, just reach out. Talking is key and there are so many services willing to help.
I have become a better mother daughter and sister because I’m making good choices. It has a knock-on effect for your family and for everyone involved in your life that can help generation after generation. Your community will benefit and it shows others a way out. It all starts with that one step of reaching out for help if you are serious about your recovery and wanting a better life. Let’s be honest substances brings nothing but misery and death. If I can do it anyone can.
couldn’t see any way out. The family kicked me out of the house and in hindsight it was the best thing that ever happened to me.” - Sam
“I
My name is Sam and I am fifty odd years living in Ballymun. I work locally in the Ballymun community too. I didn’t come from a big family, there was three of us, me and my two older brothers. We had a good upbringing. There wasn’t a lot of money around so my ma and da worked.
My Da drank a lot and I would have seen a lot of drinking in the house as my ma liked a drink too, but they were good people. They worked hard and they gave us the best they could. I went to the Comp in Ballymun and as soon as I started school I was up to no good, I was up to mischief. I was
hanging around with a gang and I always kinda looked up to people that were older than me. I got a buzz out of seeing them doing things. Around 3rd year I got involved with a gang and started getting involved in petty crime. I was doing my Inter Cert at the time and instead of focusing on my exams I was more focused on hanging around with the lads. I started to sniff gas around this time too, I was about 14 or 15. I was smoking hash and stuff like that and I remember a few times getting charged in the children’s court and my mam seen the police coming to the door. She wasn’t a happy camper and I remember her telling me she didn’t want
“It’s gonna get harder before it gets easier. But it will get better, you just gotta make it through the hard stuff first.” - Unknown
me in the house anymore. It was like where do I bleedin go from here so I persuaded her to let me back in and I promised I would change.
In the meantime I was introduced to drink and any time I drank I would drink to get drunk. One or two cans wasn’t enough. I had to have a good few cans and I just thought that this was normal. All my friends that I was with were doing the same thing. I was drinking more and more and it began to be a bit of a problem. I was still involved in petty crime. I had a few lucky scrapes and was fortunate not to get arrested or go to prison. I was sort of getting worse. I was drinking a bottle of wine and 2 litres of cider mixed together. I blacked out and I remember the next morning the lads telling me what I did. I was a scared teenager growing up. I was full of fear. I didn’t like my appearance and anytime I drank it made me forget about all that kind of stuff. I still had this false confidence then, I would be able to chat to girls. I remember going out with a girl when I was just 17 and she was the first girl I had went out with. A couple of days before we were due to go on holidays we went to a concert in town. We were going around robbing drink and I was left on my own and I
got a hiding. I remember waking up in Beaumount Hospital and my ma and family members were around me and I couldn’t remember. I had to be told what had happened.
That happened on Sunday and I was going to Spain on the Friday. The doctor gave me these tablets, I remember the label on the tablets said avoid alcohol so I ended up going to Spain and I
“If you are struggling with addiction, there are lots of doors that will open for you if you just knock on them. I used to always think that everybody was like me. I didn’t know anybody in recovery. I didn’t know anybody that was able to stay clean and sober on a daily basis but there’s loads, there thousands of people in different fellowships whether it be NA, AA, CA, GA.”
stayed off the drink for 2 or 3 days and of course I went back on it. I had started to work at this stage. I was putting my name down in local bakery and I got the job and that gave me money in my pocket and I was drinking and smoking hash and doing all them kind of things, I was just carrying on.
My mother was diagnosed with cancer, I was seventeen at the time. She didn’t last too long, I think we got 3 months with her. That was a turning point for me where I had no one to answer too. My ma was the one who tried to keep me on the straight and narrow. My Da loved his few pints and getting out. It was then that my drug taking took off. I continued drinking but I was in a different job just outside the area and it was there I was introduced to LSD. I’ll never forget it. It was a Friday night and I gave in to temptation and I tried a half of one. That was it then, that was the start of where it all took off, and from there it escalated to ecstasy. The rave scene had started in Dublin and we started using E tabs. It was just constant then, going into town dancing, staying out for 2 days. In the meantime, I had left my job and I was working in a family run business. I was getting good money and I was spending it all on drugs. I lived that life of
raves and E’s for about 6 years. I had never ever dealt with the death of my mother. I was always running from myself and the drugs gave me what was missing at home. I was missing that feeling of belonging and that’s where I thought I was getting it. I thought the people in the rave scene were my best friends ever. A couple of my mates that I hung around with when I was growing up were all gone so I had all these new mates. I was going raving and partying, and then feeling crap coming down off the ecstasy. There was always drink and I would have to drink and drink and drink. I remember being in a house one night and two guys there would always go missing, they would go in to a different room and then they would come out and they would be brand new. I had never seen anyone take heroin. At this stage it had escalated were I was now taking a load of cocaine, a load of speed and I don’t know how I didn’t die from a heart attack. I just hated the fact of coming down, I hated coming back down to reality and that’s what it was. These two guys would go off and be in bits and then come out like brand new so of course curiosity killed the cat. I remember saying to them one time ‘Give us a shot of that’ and I tried heroin for the first time. I felt numb. I am not
trying to justify the way I felt but it took all that sick feeling away. I remember trying it and that was the start of it then. I was doing it every day. I was a great man for hiding stuff. I was taking methadone, I was taking tablets, I was smoking heroin and I was hiding it and everything was normal. Nobody knew, people knew I would go raving but that was it, or so I thought! So then of course with heroin use, people start noticing things. I was in a new relationship with a girl who had a baby with me, my eldest girl. I did awful things but I always thought it was never my fault, it was always someone else’s fault. That went on and then all the things I swore I would never do I did.
I would see drug addicts hanging around the shopping centre and I used to say I would never ever do that. I was shunned by people started because the word on the street was that I was strung out on the stuff and I was. I was addicted to hard drugs and I was going around in circles. It wasn’t a rock bottom or anything, but the family found out about it and there was trouble in the house. I swore I wouldn’t do it again. I was around 24, maybe 25 years old and I started injecting and again that was one of the things I swore I would never do. I went off and I
was with a certain fella who was constantly doing it. I went up to him one night and I was getting a buzz out of smoking and I asked him to give me a ‘turn on’. That was it for 2 years then then it was crack cocaine too as people were starting to smoke that too.
I was just a mess. I couldn’t see any way out.
The family kicked me out of the house and in hindsight it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I was now 27 and about a year before that my sister- in law saw that I was struggling. There was a referral made to YAP in Ballymun and I remember going down half-heartedly and talked to one of the women that worked there. She was just asking me what I wanted to do and I honestly didn’t know what to do. I got back to the family home and I got clean and stayed off everything. I was treated like a lord. My exgirlfriend would bring dinners up to me in the bedroom but I didn’t know anybody in recovery. I didn’t know all my friends were doing what I was doing and as soon as I left that bedroom I bumped into someone and they gave me something just to calm me down. That was the start of it again and that’s how easy it is. You’re ‘clean’, your staying off it, and you just bump into the wrong person and you are gone again. I
was a mess, I really was.
I tried to get into the Rutland Centre as my sister in-law brought me over and being a real addict I went over and the guy says listen no beds here but we will give you a call in a few weeks. He gave me a meeting list and I said I wanted to go to the Rutland today and he says that’s not the way it works. We give you an assessment and I am going to give you a meeting list now, do me a favour and try and get to a few, so I was going home and I was going I thought I was going in here today. I remember going home, I was clean and I was after getting clean. It was a big turmoil for me to go to a treatment centre and I was battling in my head what to do. I remember there was something on the telly and I said I would stay in and watch that but after a while I called a taxi and I went to a meeting. It was the very first meeting I ever got and it was in a busy Church. I remember going in and seeing one or two faces I knew from the past. I was sitting there and they were talking about this good life they had from coming to meetings and they shared about how they were broken, how they were in bits, how they had found these meetings and how they were living a good life today and trying to stay ‘clean’ one day at a
time. I felt like they are talking about me but that was the first time that I ever identified with people that were in the same boat as me. I didn’t share.
I didn’t open my mouth. I think I mentioned my name and that was it, but they welcomed me to the meeting and said that I was very welcome to come back and I was really really thankful. I knew people there and they made me feel very very welcome from my first meeting. I remember going back and I went to a different meeting, and it was the same as
“I was introduced to drink and any time I drank I would drink to get drunk. One or two cans wasn’t enough. I had to have a good few cans and I just thought that this was normal. All my friends that I was with were doing the same thing. I was drinking more and more and it began to be a bit of a problem.”
well. I remember starting to open my mouth slowly and sharing. I knew some of the guys who were there and the staff that they were talking about and what they had done and what they didn’t do. I felt part of something.
well so I turned down the lad in the treatment centre to return to work. That was the worst mistake I ever made. I thought I could drink again and I went back down to the local pub that weekend and had a few pints. I hadn’t even left the pub and I had a bag of ‘gear’ and that was the start of it again for 6 months and worse than ever back using, back smoking crack doing everything that I had stopped doing. It was another horrific bleeding time. My daughter was growing up and I wasn’t there for her. I remember selling one of her prams for drugs and I just was in a mess.
I will never forget when I got 49 days clean, seven days, four weeks and I didn’t touch a thing. The guy in the treatment centre called me back and told there was a spot in the Rutland Centre because I am doing so well. I got my old job back and I was doing
I was suicidal coming towards the end of that year and I remember often lying in my bedroom and thinking that there had to be a better way of life than the one I was leading. I could not stop using drugs and thinking I would be better off dead, but something always pushed me on. It was a horror scene. I went back out there for about 6 or 7 months and it was really, really rough. I got ‘clean’ again. I remember doing the detox, doing the rattles in my bedroom and I went up to Domville House and done a test for Hep C and we had made contact with a treatment centre in town Coolmine Day Programme. The day before I was to start was the day I was
“I was suicidal coming towards the end of that year and I remember often lying in my bedroom and thinking that there had to be a better way of life than the one I was leading. I could not stop using drugs and thinking I would be better off dead, but something always pushed me on.”
to go up and get my results for the Hep C. I remember the nurse calling me in and telling me I had tested positive for Hep C virus and it was like a fu***ng slap in the head. I thought I was going to die and I just couldn’t get it out of my head. I ended up starting the day programme the next day after I tested positive. My head was melted.
The day programme was just what I needed. I went in there when I was 27 and one particular friend of mine was on the same programme. He is dead now, god love him and I got assigned a big brother and met loads of new friends. The programme gave me was structure on a daily basis. I was able to go in there from half nine in the morning to half four in the day and there was always stuff to do. It got me back in to doing a bit of work in the house whether it would be hoovering, dinners, making breakfast, cleaning the halls, stairs and landing. It was about that being your job and you had to do it to the best of your ability. It was 10 years since my ma had passed away and I had never shed a tear. I had a tear on the day of the funeral but never talked about it. I remember doing a group in there, my god, I cried for 2 days over my mother dying so young and I thought I had
dealt with all that kind of stuff but taking drugs and drinking I was just pushing it down. I did 18 months in the day programme and what stood out to me was one of the staff members that was in there was heavily involved in the meetings outside told me from day one I would need meetings, a sponsor, a programme. He said I would need the 12 steps in order to stay ‘clean’. I was willing to do anything.
I turned my life around. When I came out I got a bit of work in the airport, and then I got a position as an assistant supervisor and I loved it. I stayed up there for about 15 months, by then the taxi discs had been deregulated back in 2000 so I went for the
“I had never ever dealt with the death of my mother. I was always running from myself and the drugs gave me what was missing at home. I was missing that feeling of belonging and that’s where I thought I was getting it.”
taxi license and got it. I went taxiing, working for myself and it was great being my own boss. I could come and go as I pleased. My daughter was growing up, she was about 5 at the time and it was great seeing her growing up. I did my own hours and things were good. I was going to meetings. Another turning point for me was the relationship break down all the stuff I had done on my ex-partner. I tried to get her in to treatment, to talk about it and she just wasn’t open to coming to talk. I know deep down inside of me that that was going to come back and haunt me and true enough she met someone else. I had hurt her a lot of times. She met her new partner and took my daughter with her and that was hard, that was like losing my right arm but I didn’t use over it and I didn’t feel like using because I was going to meetings, I was sharing about how hurt I was, how sad I was.
I had a sponsor and I was talking about it to him all the time. It was tough, my own flesh and blood being taken away to live with someone else and that’s the hard part. I was dealing with that. I went on and stayed clean and sober. I went on holidays and did all the things that I had never done before because drugs were in my life.
In the meantime, I went back to work in one of my old jobs because I was good at it. I let the taxi go. I relapsed back in 2007. I stopped going to meetings. I have heard a lot of times it being shared by people in recovery that you think you have arrived somewhere, thinking you are cured. I always knew that I couldn’t drink and I can’t take drugs but me not going to meetings meant that I thought I hadn’t a problem. With the likes of gambling, if I do something new and I enjoy it, I will flog it like a dead horse. I ended up gambling for about a year and a half, hiding out in the bookies and that lead me to, believe it or not, to taking painkillers and before I knew it I was back to square one.I wasn’t going to meetings. I picked up again. The painkillers led me to drinking and as soon as I was drinking I was back using cocaine. I checked into a treatment centre. I knew I had to go off the grid again for a while. That was back in 2007, and I graduated from Coolmine in 2000, so 7 years down the road I found myself back in a treatment centre for 12 weeks. It was just what I needed was to see where I went wrong.
Since then I have managed to stay ‘clean’ by going back to meetings, by having people in my life that I can trust and talk to. I had a new
partner then, we are together about 19 years now and we have 4 lovely kids now. It’s not about me today it’s about the kids and it’s about other people. the less I think about me and more about other people, is how it works for me as well the self-centredness of the addict would have me doing nothing for nobody and then it’s all about me, me and what’s in it for me and that when I was at my worst. The other side is when I give back or when I try and help somebody, I am feeling free in myself. I am able to live a normal life and that’s what it is about for me today. I have a good life today through taking part in recovery. I still go to meetings. I am around lots of people in recovery as all my friends are in recovery now. I still talk to my old friends, all we do is talk. I wouldn’t go around sitting in pubs with them or anything like that.
If you are struggling with addiction, there are lots of doors that will open for you if you just knock on them. I used to always think that everybody was like me. I didn’t know anybody in recovery. I didn’t know anybody that was able to stay clean and sober on a daily basis but there’s loads, there thousands of people in different fellowships whether it be NA, AA, CA, GA. There’s a great life on offer if you give
yourself a break and get to a meeting. It’s hard at the start. It is a process but the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step and that first step for me was going to that meeting after trying to get in to the treatment centre so give yourself a break and get to a meeting.
“Always remember that when you think you are in a dark hole and that there is no way out just reach your hand out and there will always be a service or someone who will reach out their hand to help you. Remember to stay strong because recovery is possible for everyone. “ -Síle
I would rather go through life sober, believing I am an alcoholic, than go through life drunk, trying to convince myself that I am not. - Unknown
I grew up with my mother who was a single parent who worked hard to bring me up on her own. I was a very happy child growing up. I loved school and playing with my friends. I never caused my mother any bother as a young child that is until I got to secondary school. It all changed from there as I felt like I didn’t fit in. Most of my old friends went to a different secondary school and I felt lost in my new school.
I started to miss days and my ma was getting into trouble with the school because I wasn’t going to school. Instead, I went to a youth project which I loved, but
it was only for a year. Then when the year was over, I was left just hanging around the streets.
As the time went on, I started mixing with other people from different areas. I started drinking and smoking weed. I thought ‘wow’, the buzz you get from weed and drink is great. I felt full of confidence and bulletproof, no one could touch me. I was living my best life not a care in the world, sitting in the park drinking and smoking weed. But the drink and weed was making me feel stoned so I needed something to wake me up so out came the Coke. The buzz I got out of that, up for days
partying, no responsibility, not a care in the world. After getting used to the coke I couldn’t sleep so I started taking tablets to help me sleep. I started off with one or two tablets but before I knew it I was taking a lot of tablets daily.
that had me up said to me I could be dead at the end of the year if I didn’t stop taking drugs or I could make something of my life. So, I went to my GP for a benzo detox which I finished. Then COVID came and there was a drought on with the dealers so I couldn’t get any weed. So in the heatwave of 2020 I came off the weed and the coke.
As time went by, I picked up charges, back and forth from the courts and breaking my mother’s heart. I went from 14 stone to 7 stone in a year from my drug use. I thought I was living life to my best but I wasn’t. My mother’s heart was broken. Family members stopped talking to me. Everybody lost trust in me. Doctors said I would be dead from my drug use and so did the Garda. I’ll never forget the day I was up in court and the Garda
wanted to stay drug free so I joined the STAR project in Ballymun. The support I got from there was great. They taught me how to change my thinking, to be honest and to become a great daughter and to live a normal life. This was something I always wanted. I thought when I was in addiction there was no hope
“I thought I was living life to my best but I wasn’t. My mother’s heart was broken. Family members stopped talking to me. Everybody lost trust in me. Doctors said I would be dead from my drug use and so did the Garda.”
“I thought when I was in addiction there was no hope for me and that there was no help out there. I thought nobody understands what it is like to be on drugs but I was wrong there is help out there and lots of support.”
I
for me and that there was no help out there. I thought nobody understands what it is like to be on drugs but I was wrong there is help out there and lots of support. It is scary coming into recovery at first but you get your life, family, mental health back and you are able to walk with your head held high for the first time and to be proud of what you have achieved.
I went from having a drug addiction, self-esteem on the floor, nothing to live for, to being two years drug free and becoming a peer mentor. And wait for this, I am going to college which is something I thought I would never be able to do but guess what? Anything is possible once you put your mind to it. Always remember that when you think you are in a dark hole and that there is no way out just reach your hand out and there will always be a service or someone who will reach out their hand to help you. Remember to stay strong because recovery is possible for everyone.
“I just try and live my life and try and stay out of all the drama.” -Josh
Hi my name is Josh, I grew up in Ballymun, born and bred. I had a great family background. My mother worked and my father worked. My father worked in the building game and we had a lot more things than other people had in Ballymun. Life was good. I don’t really have any complaints about my childhood up until I was 13, when my mother suddenly passed away from a massive heart attack. I suppose just before she died I was dabbling a little bit in alcohol and ‘mushrooms’. I’d say it could have been about 6 months before she died. When she passed away the whole family was turned upside down. My father is an alcoholic, and has been in recovery for a while. His
alcoholism started before that but the madness started when my mother passed away he started drinking really heavy. There was a few of us in the family. A couple of my siblings went to live with family. I stayed around and I could do what I wanted because the old fella was out drinking so I could really do what I wanted in the house.
When I was 14 or 15 I was going out drinking cans and smoking hash, and basically getting into a lot of trouble. I think my mother was probably dead a year and my old fella fu***d me out. I was getting into a lot of trouble with the police. I was just running amok, rebelling,
I suppose because of the fact that my mother passed away and I couldn’t deal with what was going on. From then on the alcohol, hash, mushrooms, snowballed, and I started doing it a lot more. I was taking a lot more alcohol, a lot more drugs and more frequently. I left the house when my father said I had to go. I went to live with my mother’s family but I went from there back to Ballymun, and from there to another part of Dublin. I was homeless, I was in different Aunt’s houses and that went on for about a year. I moved in with a friend of mine in Ballymun, and things progressed from there. I started taking ecstasy, as the rave scene came around in the early 90’s. I found ecstasy. I absolutely loved it, going out raving, not a care in the world. I was working at the time too. I worked to get my money for the weekend. There was a nightclub in town and I was going there when I was about 16 nearly 17 before I started smoking heroin. I started smoking it for the come down after taking ecstasy and then I stopped taking ecstasy, I stopped going out and I continued on with the heroin. I was 16, 17 and I was still going around bouncing from house to house, back to my father, back to my friends house, to my aunts house and I never really had a stable home. I was 18 when
I ended up in a methadone clinic. Through all this, I worked. When I say worked, I was there more or less to get a few bob to pay for my drug habit basically. I don’t know how many jobs I had. I started an apprenticeship as an electrician and as a plumber, probably got about 6 months out of each. I was using pretty heavy drugs at that stage then I started in the kitchen game fitting kitchens.
From 18 up to maybe 30, I was working in this place, driving the van stoned, trying to get from my job to the methadone clinic to get my methadone without the boss knowing. I was getting into trouble with the police, getting involved in crime here and there, and my life was quite unmanageable. I was just all over the place and I still hadn’t got a stable home.
“I was getting into trouble with the police, getting involved in crime here and there, and my life was quite unmanageable. I was just all over the place and I still hadn’t got a stable home.”
In my 30’s my drugs use had got really, really bad. I lost the job again. I had no way of getting money. I started injecting heroin and cocaine and I met a girl in that time. She wasn’t on drugs and she got pregnant and throughout all that I was still using. I didn’t care about anyone else. I wasn’t seeing my family, I just wanted to use drugs. I just wanted to use heroin and at that stage I was doing crack as well. I tried to go to Liverpool to get ‘clean’ and I brought 2 bottles of methadone with me and tablets. When I got to Liverpool, I ended up going into a crack house for 6 weeks and nearly died. I was in Liverpool, no money, and no way of getting home. I had to ring my da to ask could he help me out and get me home and he sent money over to get the plane home. I ended up getting the boat and spent the rest of the money on crack so for that whole period of my life it was just absolute carnage going around. I had my family living in fear I was going to die. I was in car crashes and getting arrested. I was coming to an end. My body was destroyed. I was thin. I had nowhere to live with this girl, and she was pregnant. I had a prison sentence hanging over my head and I had a little baby on the way and I was in my early 30’s. I would pray to my ma. I lived with my grandmother
for a while and I prayed to her. I really, really didn’t want to use drugs anymore I wanted to stop because I knew I was going to die if I continued to use. I thought I was going to catch a disease. I didn’t care who I used with, I didn’t care where I used. I cried a few times, and I got down on my knees and I cried out , please help me if there’s anybody out theregod, ma, anybody, please help me because I am going to die. I got in touch with a treatment centre. I was on 80 mls of methadone. I used drugs when I got money. I had absolutely nothing. It was basically the methadone and the tablets I was using and I got in touch with Coolmine through a friend of mine who is in recovery now and I basically asked him for help. I said I need to get treatment and I tried so many times in my mind to get ‘clean’. I would say I’m finished tonight, tomorrow I’m stopping, and that went on for years. I’m stopping, I’m stopping, I’m stopping and I really wanted it but I just couldn’t I hadn’t got the power to stop. I didn’t realise how strong this disease is. I couldn’t do it on my own, I needed to be taken out of society and put somewhere to detox. I got in touch with Coolmine and the pre-entry for Coolmine was probably the hardest. I had to go and give clean urines. I couldn’t do it. There was either valium in
it zimmovane or smoking a bit of crack. This was going on for weeks and weeks and finally I got clean and I was over the moon. I needed another 2 more and I eventually got them and went in to Coolmine.
“The way I was using and the hectic way I lived I couldn’t let it go. It was killing me and I said ‘I can’t do this’.”
My partner was 4 or 5 months pregnant and I started a detox in Coolmine and I was still on 5 mls of methadone every 3 days, cut down from 30 mls. The way I was using and the hectic way I lived I couldn’t let it go. It was killing me and I said ‘I can’t do this’. I was going to meetings in there in Coolmine, I was going to N.A. The 30mls went quite quick. I was coming off zimmovane I was coming off valium, crack, heroin. I was injecting coke and I was off all that sort of stuff and my mind was destroyed. I think for the first 4 or 5 weeks in the treatment centre, everyday I wanted to leave, every single day. I thought I can’t do this, I can’t do this but I didn’t have anywhere to go nobody wanted me nobody
wanted to know because they had heard it all before. People thought he won’t do it, he will be back. It was my second time in treatment. When I was 21, I went in to Merchants Quay but I wasn’t ready. I was still using. I wasn’t finished and I did it for everybody else and I think I lasted 2 weeks. This time I didn’t have anywhere to go, nobody wanted me at home, nobody trusted me. I was in the treatment centre when my little girl was born early, so she was a little dote. I was going from the treatment centre to the hospital and I stayed ‘clean’. I did the detox, I didn’t sleep for weeks the pain. When I look back now it wasn’t that bad but at the time it was horrific. I kept saying I can’t do this, I won’t be able to do it but anyway my little girl was born in hospital and looking at her I realised I needed to change. I needed to do something because I have a little person here that’s depending on me to run her life.
I was going up and down from Coolmine, so I completed the 1st phase of Coolmine. I went into the 2nd phase which is where you are outside the treatment centre and that’s where it was dodgy for me. I had forgotten about all the pain, all the misery I had caused and decided it would be a good idea to drink. I didn’t realise every time I drank I ended up
taking drugs. Every single time the first bottle, the first pint I would think about getting ‘coke or ‘heroin’. Coolmine never actually found out. It was like a game. I was scamming them and they never knew but they had their suspicions. In the 2nd phase I was going downhill pretty rapid. I drank and I wouldn’t have to give a urine until the following Thursday.
I would try get around it but I ended up going to court and I got 4 years in prison with 2 years suspended. I was never in prison before. I was in custody a couple of times but prison was a different ball game. I went in ‘clean’, when I say I went in ‘clean’ I was having the odd dabble of drink and stuff like that before I went in. I went in and I wasn’t going to be sick, fear alone kept me clean in there. When I was there I saw people getting cut up with blades and all sorts over tablets so I kept my head down for the first few weeks and then my mind started to say ‘you’ll be alright to take a couple of pills’. The addict creeped back in again and I remember being out in the yard after taking a few valium and a couple of sleeping tablets. I was out in the yard and going back to my cell and I said ‘right I can’t do this’. I had a little taste of recovery. I had a little taste of being clean and I
knew that if I start taking these things again I am gone, there will be no hope for me and I still will end up getting a scar in prison or dying. I met a fella in prison and thank god I met this man. I was sitting out in the yard, I knew him from Ballymun years ago, and we got talking. I told him my story and about treatment and he said ‘I will get you a job in prison in the bakery’ so I went to work in the bakery shortly after and it was the best thing I ever did. There was a great bunch of lads down there, they were into their training, their fitness. I stayed ‘clean’, gave up the cigarettes and I was running, I was boxing I was really really looking after myself but I was sheltered when I was in there, like a cocoon. I think I did 14 months and I got out of prison. I was really fit, not smoking, drug free. I went home to my partner and my little girl and I was out about a week with the greatest of intentions to stay clean and my sister had a little party to welcome me home. I will never forget the party. Everyone there was saying I was looking great, he’s doing this he’s doing that and I thought I would be alright to have a bottle of beer. I had 2 bottles and I forgot about my little girl. I forgot about my sister. I forgot about my partner and I ended up in a house in Ballymun for 3 days smoking
crack and heroin. I was in a mess and after 3 days of it I remember going to the bathroom, looking in the mirror and I broke down crying. I said please somebody help me!
I continued using for the next few hours but something happened, I don’t know what happened to me, I had something inside of me that said ‘I don’t want to use anymore’ I really don’t want to use anymore. After 3 days in this house, my partner with our little girl, she didn’t want me back at home my da didn’t want me back. I went to live in a place that a worker got for me and I went in there nearly 10 years ago and the whole house was using drugs. There were 14 people in the house, and I said I am fu***ng done. That was on the Sunday and I went to my first meeting on the Tuesday. I spilled my guts. I just told everybody what was going on and that I wanted to stay ‘clean’.
From that first meeting on a Tuesday which was an AA meeting I then went to a CA meeting the following Sunday. I got a sponsor and I stayed drug free for nearly 3 years. I started the 12 steps programme. I got a month ‘clean’, got 3 months ‘clean’, 6 months ‘clean’. I got my daughter back in my life and I just started to grow. I got a little job, I did a day programme in ‘Soilse’. I stayed in ‘Soilse’ for about 6 months, the best thing I ever did. I did a bit of counselling in ‘Soilse’ and my life just transformed. Either, I would have went back to prison or died if I hadn’t gone to my 1st meeting in Priorswood House. I continued to go to meetings. I got 4 or 5 meetings a week at the start. I finished the 12 steps, I started putting my hand up at meetings for sponsorship to bring others through the steps and I brought a few people through the steps. I kept going. I got a job. When I was working away didn’t think I needed as many meetings at the time. I started taking my daughter more. In recovery I have had my ups ands downs. I was about two tears in recovery when one of my siblings came
“I continued using for the next few hours but something happened, I don’t know what happened to me, I had something inside of me that said ‘I don’t
want to use anymore’ I really don’t want to use anymore”.
to me, about a problem with solpadine and nurofen plus. I ended up bringing my sibling to a treatment centre who has since sadly died of alcohol poisoning. That’s just some of the struggles I’ve had in recovery that I have had to deal with. I have lost a couple of aunties that I was close with to addiction.
and I am powerless over him. The things I have now like I started my own business, these are all things I would never do because I thought I was going to die. I thought I was going to die in that methadone clinic basically.
Sometimes life is hard, but recovery can be hard as well. You have to find a balance in work, in meetings, with family and that’s really hard to do. At times you just feel like you are getting torn. Too many meetings, too much work, you are with family too much so that’s the struggles I have at the minute but my life is absolutely amazing since I have come in to recovery. I got engaged 4 years ago, my little girl is making her confirmation next year, I have a great relationship with my family. I have a good relationship with my father but he is back drinking really heavy
Growing up in Ballymun you have this expectation of yourself that you are only to go so far. When drugs are involved you have no self- esteem whatsoever. My life today is that I have my ups and downs. The work is hard, I get tired but I am happy. I go away on a few holidays. I get a couple of meetings when I can. I try to help anybody, anybody that asks or even if they don’t ask but are interested in going to a meeting with me. If you don’t want to go with me I would tell you where there’s a meeting on. I just try and live my life and try and stay out of all the drama.
What I am trying to say is if I can get clean anybody can get clean and the way I did it was by doing a detox in a treatment centre and the follow up to that was meetings, sponsorship and basically looking after myself. That’s what kept me ‘clean’ and I am 10 years ‘clean’ in January. I never thought I would get a day and if you ask anybody that knows me they thought I’d never get a day either. Miracles do
“Miracles do happen and if you stick around, be honest and stay around the right people you will have an amazing life and I promise you that.”
happen and if you stick around, be honest and stay around the right people you will have an amazing life and I promise you that.
“Please give yourself a chance.” -Maureen
“Time to Create” said her Heart “It’s about Time” replied her Soul - Unknown
Hi my name is Maureen, I am 46 years of age and I am from Ballymun. There are two of us in the family myself and my sister. My father was an alcoholic and when I was young there would be an awful lot of fear in the home, though I know today that my parents always done their best.
I was an only child for a few years and even then I struggled with fantasizing about food that was how I escaped. I remember writing in diaries from a very early age, even before I picked up a substance. I thought that there was something wrong with how I was wired. I would write at the end of my diaries “I wish that I
was dead” because I was so sad and lonely as a child, and when I found drink and drugs it sort of took all that sadness away from me.
I picked up my first drink when I was about 15 years old and I was quite fearful because of the smell of drink in the home. Even though my father was an alcoholic he was very strict. I didn’t like the smell of alcohol on me because I would have been given out to or given a clatter. I found hash back then as well. My using progressed very quickly and I started smoking heroin in joints by the time I was 16. I just loved it because it give me that sense
of ease. Growing up I was a real tomboy, I hung with the lads all the time in school. I still question why I did that, and I think it was because I felt accepted.
At 18, I was on a methadone clinic. I remember going to the clinic and being told that it was only a six week detox and my mother bringing me down to a doctor. I was sent to a psych ward even though I had a drug problem and I lasted a couple of nights there.
I didn’t know then that the methadone was going to take a hold of me. I was the kind of addict that took anything whether it was an upper or downer. I loved the party scene. I would go missing for days but I would always have my methadone and a bag of heroin with me for the come down. I went into my first detox treatment centre when I was about 18 or 19. I hadn’t got a clue at all about recovery. I really went to treatment to get my family off my back. I remember getting out and ‘picking up’ again and having to go back on the methadone clinic. Looking back, I had been on that clinic for 26 years and the only time I wasn’t was when I was in treatment centres. I was in a lot of treatment centres over the years and each time I got out I would pick up
again as I didn’t know how to live in the world without a substance and that was just the way it was for me.
In my early 20’s I started working. I had a few jobs. My father was always badgering me to get out and work as I said before my father was real old school and strict. I would go from job to job. I kept losing them because I would go into work after being partying all night or being stoned. During that time I never knew anything about recovery. I didn’t know anyone in recovery and I didn’t know there was a way out. I thought the rest of my life would be spent going to a clinic every week and that eventually I was going to die in active addiction.
I had another stint in a treatment centre when I was about 27. It was the same thing. I would go in and do the 14 weeks and come back out and pick up where I left off. I was going with a fella at the time. Through the years I had a tendency to go out with older men, I think I was looking for that connection. I never got that emotional connection, like hugs, at home and I was always seeking it from others. I was always seeking that reassurance and validation especially because of the ways I felt about myself. I literally hated myself for harming
others and stealing and robbing people and my little spirit was dead. I had no self-confidence, no self-respect and that’s where drugs and alcohol brought me. The more I would do them the worse I felt inside.
I also had a thing for slimming tablets and that had started at an early age too. I always had an obsessive mind about being overweight. Even when I was strung out and you could see my protruding bones because that was the way I thought about myself.
I met a fella at 27 and fell in love. I finished treatment and picked up again and I was back on the clinic and that was were my attempts to get clean where leading me. I was not the type of addict that could pick up once and leave it, I would go all in. My life was a never-ending cycle of drink, drugs, treatment centres and clinics and I never had any hope until around five years ago. My partner died from this disease or illness whatever you want to call it. He was an alcoholic and he had severe liver problems. I was heavy on the crack cocaine and for the years I was on heroin or any other drug, nothing destroyed me like the crack cocaine did. I was out shoplifting, and any moral or value that I had
was gone. I ended up getting a prison sentence. I had many rock bottoms, but this was the major one that sticks out for me.
Through the years I had been in and out of hospitals and the doctors were telling me that I was going to be dead within the year from a lung condition or my lungs collapsing. Even that wasn’t enough to stop me from using crack. My health was very, very, bad, and I ended up going into a stabilization treatment centre because I needed a break from crack cocaine and to get stabilized on my methadone. That was where I got a little bit of hope because I knew I was broken, internally broken, mentally, physically and spiritually. After losing my partner I didn’t want to live. It was like there was half of me gone and it was in this place and in this emotional state that I got a little bit of hope.
The fellowship came in to hold meetings that I attended. I was able to eat well and get a little bit of strength back. While I was in the treatment centre I was shifted over to the hospital because of my health. All of this was going on and the grief, the pain and the hurt I had caused to other people and myself. I forgot about myself, about the hurt and the harm I was doing to myself.
I got a little bit of hope as that was where my recovery journey started in a sense. I didn’t stay clean but it was then that I knew there was a way out. That I could live an ok life in the world without a substance.
“Life is a struggle when you are after coming out of treatment. I didn’t know what to do. I was trying to find myself, trying to build that connection back up with my family. All the hurt I was feeling.”
From the residential treatment centre, I then went to a stabilization day programme. I was going there every day but still I was obsessed with drink and drugs because I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know why I used at the time. After a while I went back to treatment to detox off my methadone and I remember coming out of there and feeling so alienated, like what do I do here? This is against the background of nearly 30 years in active addiction and I was ill prepared at not having
anything to make me feel ok in the world, it was like Whoa.
I ended up coming out of my own area to recover. I took on all the things that other people were doing and I was like “show me what to do because I haven’t a clue”. I was taking other peoples suggestions on board because I found it hard to communicate with people. I would pretend I was on my phone talking because I didn’t know how to interact with other people. This was all new learning for me. I kept going to meetings and my little journey sort of started from then. I began to learn how to communicate a little bit better and just be present in the world. I think I got about 9 months out of that stint. I moved from a recovery house into my own place and with the onset of Covid I just picked up again. I thought that having achieved a little bit of time drug and alcohol free that I shouldn’t be the way I was. I couldn’t tell people “I am struggling here”. Life is a struggle when you are after coming out of treatment. I didn’t know what to do. I was trying to find myself, trying to build that connection back up with my family. All the hurt I was feeling.
I also had to deal with court cases from the past and the fact that I had been in prison and
had a sentence. There was a lot of shame around that stuff. My family were so ashamed of me. The shame, guilt, the loss and grief and getting clean and having to deal with all that. These emotions had been pushed down with the drugs and alcohol and so I picked up again and I was in another relapse. I had picked up a drink and before I knew it I had a crack pipe in my hand and that’s how quickly it just goes for me. I was the real deal, an alcoholic, an addict and I had to reach out again to my doctor.
Because I had been in the fellowship and in recovery, I had made a decision that it was only to be a small dose of methadone and for a short time and I knew that in my heart. I did a community detox and I was logging into meetings and connecting with people like my sponsor. It was like everything was alright on the outside but internally I was bunched again. I completed the detox and the last time I took methadone was about 14 months ago.
It was like in some way I sort of needed that last little stint, to have that surrender they talk about in fellowship - ‘The gift of desperation’. I knew what I had to do this time because this time
in recovery is so much different. I knew I had to do everything that was suggested to me and I am free today. It’s mad, I do have my struggles and I have to do with a little bit of outside help to deal with the loss and the grief and building up my self-worth and confidence. Some days I struggle and it’s the emotional sobriety that gets me but now I am able to lift up the phone. I was a dying drug addict that had no hope today I have hope that I can be ok in the world and that I can live alcohol and drug free. Today, I have got a new place to live, a new home. I’ve come from being somebody that relied on my parents to do everything for me like pay my bills, cook my food and do my washing and now I can go out in the world and be responsible. All that is a big achievement for me. To just be ok with myself and to build connections with people and have conversations that help others along the way.
Life is pretty simple today in recovery. My recovery goes in waves - up and down. My little spirit can be lifted and go down, but I know one thing - picking up again is definitely not an option. I want to heal from all the traumas I have witnessed and experienced.
I would say to all those people in addiction that have given up on themselves that there is a way out. You really don’t have to live in despair, there is help and support available whether it’s the fellowship, people in recovery or a service, you don’t have to do this alone.
“Life is pretty simple today in recovery. My recovery goes in waves - up and down. My little spirit can be lifted and go down, but I know one thing - picking up again is definitely not an option. I want to heal
I was 30 years in active addiction. If I can do it, get clean and sober and be ok in the world anybody can do it. Please give yourself a chance.
from all the traumas I have witnessed and experienced.”
These few blank pages are an acknowledgement of the many local recovery stories that have not yet been recorded, written or shared.....
These few blank pages are an acknowledgement of the many local recovery stories that have not yet been recorded, written or shared.....
These few blank pages are an acknowledgement of the many local recovery stories that have not yet been recorded, written or shared.....
These few blank pages are an acknowledgement of the many local recovery stories that have not yet been recorded, written or shared.....
A drug and alcohol service for young people and adults, offering a drop-in centre, brief interventions, key working and case management, stabilisation programme, counselling, complimentary therapies, smart recovery meetings, day programme service, educational sessions, occupational and social integration groups/programmes, aftercare counsellors and infant parent support team. (01) 842 8071 http://www.byap.ie
THE STAR PROJECT
Provides a range of individual, group and aftercare services to people with current or past relationship with drugs and or alcohol.
01 846 7930 https://starballymun.ie
BALLYMUN FAMILY SUPPORT SERVICE (STAR PROJECT)
Supporting families living with addiction 085 200 9763 https://starballymun.ie
Detached street work team who identify & engage young people aged 10-28, impacted & exposed to the harms of substances. Provides brief interventions, key working, case management, onward referral & sign posting. The team uses street games, street education & positive alternatives to encourage pro social behaviour 086 136 96 35 https://starballymun.ie
BALLYMUN LOCAL DRUGS & ALCOHOL TASK FORCE
Ballymun Drugs and Alcohol
Task Force funds and coordinates initiatives around education, prevention, intervention, treatment and rehabilitation. 01 883 2142 www.ballymunlocaldrugstaskforce.ie
Currently offers education, support and treatment for individuals, couples and families affected by alcohol. 01 537 3946 087 391 4438 ww.aitlinn.ie
PACE
PACE is a service that provides accommodation, training and employment for people who have been to prison or have criminal convictions 01 8427997 www.paceorganisation.ie
BALLYMUN JOB CENTRE
One-to-one support, guidance and career advice for clients who have had drug or alcohol issues. 01 866 7000 www.bmunjob.ie
BALLYMUN CASE MANAGEMENT SERVICE (DE PAUL)
Provides specialised housing and addiction support for people in the local community. Early interventions are implemented for people that are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless. 086 385 8701
A 15-week family skills programme for parents and teens aged 12-16 or children aged 6-12 01 8832142 www.ballymunlocaldrugstaskforce.ie/sfp
COMMUNITY OUTREACH
Ballymun Communications info@ballymuncommunications.com
AISLING PROJECT
Out of school support for children aged 8-14 years and their parents www.aislingproject.ie
BALLYMUN REGIONAL YOUTH RESOUCE (BRYR)
Local youth service supporting the welfare, well-being & development of young people of ages 10-24yrs in Ballymun. 01 8667600 www.bryr.ie
POPPINTREE YOUTH PROJECT
Local youth service supports the personal, interpersonal, and social development of young people within the catchment area of Poppintree, Ballymun. 01 8624580 www.poppinyp.ie
YOUNG BALLYMUN Provides a range of services from birth through to teenage years 01 883 2177 www.youngballymun.org
SOILSE
Addiction Rehabilitation Service (01) 872 4922 www.soilse.ie
HSE BALLYMUN
PRIMARY CARE TEAM GPs, public health nurses, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, social workers, psychiatric nurses, speech and language therapists, dietician and family support services 01 8467000
HSE OUTREACH WORKER
Information on harm reduction, treatment and needle exchange services.
Caitriona Brady (Senior Outreach Manager) 086 854 3770 Anne Hanney (Outreach Worker Finglas/ Ballymun) 086 854 3759
DOMVILLE HOUSE HSE Drug Treatment Centre 01 862 0111
CUAN DARA Inpatient therapeutic detoxification Centre 07669 55050
NATIONAL DRUGS HELPLINE 1800 459 459 NARCOTICS ANONYMOUSNA 01 672 8000
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUSAA 01 842 0700 COCAINE ANONYMOUS- CA 087 317 4989
GAMBLERS ANONYMUS- GA 01 872 1133
RUTLAND CENTRE
Addiction Treatment Centre 01 494 6358 www.rutlandcentre.ie COOLMINE Drug and Alcohol Treatment Centre 087 122 9307
AOIBHNEAS
Women & Children’s Refuge Domestic Abuse Support for Women & Children 01 867 0701 www.aoibhneas.ie
www.drugs.ie Drugs and alcohol information and support. www.askaboutalcohol.ie Information on alcohol and alcohol services finder
BALLYMUN FAMILY PRACTICE 01 8467094 www.ballymunfamilypractice.ie
ADDICTION COUNSELLOR
(BALLYMUN FAMILY PRACTICE)
Service provided to patients registered with Ballymun Family Practice who wish to address problems with addiction and associated issues and concerns. Ask your GP about availing of the services. Ballymun Healthcare Facility (01) 846 7000
BEAUMONT HOSPITAL (01) 809 3000 www.beaumont.ie
ST.VINCENT’S UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL (01) 221 4000 www.stvincents.ie
NATIONAL OFFICE FOR SUICIDE PREVENTION Information on Suicide Prevention www.nosp.ie
AWARE IRELAND Aware provides support services to individuals experiencing depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety. 1800 80 48 48 www.aware.ie
DUAL DIAGNOSIS IRELAND
Provides information on services that responds to addiction and mental health in tandem. www.dualdiagnosis.ie
LET SOMEONE KNOW Information on Mental Health. www.letsomeoneknow.ie
MENTAL HEALTH IRELAND Information promoting positive mental health and wellbeing. www.mentalhealthireland.ie
SAMARITANS
Provides emotional support to anyone in emotional distress, struggling to cope, or at risk of suicide. 116 123 www.samaritans.org www.dublinsamaritans.ie
Free therapeutic support to people who are in suicidal distress and those who engage in self-harm. 1800 247 247 www.pieta.ie TURN2ME
Self-help, peer support and professional support through an online platform for those who are experiencing poor mental health. www.turn2me.ie
REACH OUT
Information on mental health aimed at teens and young adults www.reachout.com
BALLYMUN COMMUNITY LAW CENTRE
Provides free legal advice and information to people in the community 01 8625805 www.bclc.ie
BALLYMUN GARDA STATION (01) 6664400 www.garda.ie
The cravings cradle you like a mother cradles her newborn child, Memories flooding in of all the good times you got high, I think for a moment, just one more, But then I remember how my mental health got poor, Just one more,
How I sat outside the shop with a cup in my hand, Not knowing where I would sleep to land, Just one more,
Praying to god that if I could just make up this score, That would be it, I’d do it no more, Just one more,
I had sold the devil, my soul, And got left with his huge empty hole, Just one more,
It just couldn’t be filled no matter how hard I tried, It continued to make me cheat and lie, Just one more, And who was this child calling me mom, Where the f**k did he come from, Just one more, Responsibilities? I couldn’t look after myself, Never mind someone else, Just one more,
Bills went unpaid, the house would be freezing, Every morning I’d wake up coughing and wheezing, Just one more,
Swearing every time that this would be my last day, But then of course, I’d get my pay, Just one more,
Off I’d go again and again, A million trips around that bend, For just one more,
Till one day, someone brought me back to ground, And helped me off the merry go round, There was a way out, Which I didn’t know about, They said you only have to change one thing, What’s that I asked, They said everything
By Christine Woods