Dying to Survive (13 page)

I was seventeen, and four years had passed since I first started to use heroin. I now lived on the streets with the other junkies, squatting in flats in Ballymun. My life was rapidly falling down around me. Even though I knew I had a problem, I still thought that I could stop whenever I wanted to. I just didn’t want to, that was all. I was comfortable with the other junkies. They didn’t pester me with encouragements to do better with my life. Most of the time they didn’t even want to talk with me. We were all there for the same reason and that was to use drugs.

Around this time, Ballymun got the nickname ‘The Devil’s Playground’. A society unto itself, hemmed in by seven towers, magnetic to junkies. But there was talk on the streets of a drought, a massive cut-back of drugs that would make it nearly impossible to score heroin. Some dealers were sitting on their heroin, in case they needed it themselves. Others were selling bags for double the usual price, forty pounds, and making a fortune for themselves. Junkies from all over Ireland were making their way to Ballymun in the hope of buying drugs, congregating in the blocks, hunched over and huddled together in the cold, with their hoods pulled up and a manic look in their eyes. Cursing the dealers for leaving them waiting so long, dying sick. As soon as the dealer came he would suddenly become everyone’s best friend. Most times the dealers wouldn’t have enough heroin for everyone. It was first come first served and usually fights would break out among the junkies.

The residents of the blocks wouldn’t let their kids out to play for fear that they would stumble upon someone with a needle in their arm, or even overdosed. They decided to start up an anti-drugs campaign, which was run by no-nonsense vigilantes. They decided to take the law into their own hands and were willing to go to great lengths to clean up Ballymun. It had very little effect. Even when the vigilantes marched on drug dealers’ houses, the dealer would just move up the road and sell from there. By now, the drought had got so bad that drug addicts were handing themselves into prison, where they would be guaranteed Physeptone.

At this time, I was in a relationship with a young man named Peter. He had saved me one day from being ripped off, and at such a dangerous time, when I was living on the streets, he was just what I needed, someone to protect me and possibly to keep my habit going. Peter was around six foot tall, well built, with a scar going right down his face. People were afraid of him. Even dealers would run when they saw him coming. They knew he would take all their drugs off them, leaving them with a bag or two if he liked them. Peter and I became like hobos, laying our heads wherever we could and sometimes resorting to sleeping under the stairs in the tower blocks, wrapping ourselves in cardboard boxes and nestling into each other for body heat and to block out the overpowering smell of urine. I was oblivious to everything, injecting all sorts of drugs into my body, from heroin to cocaine, duck-egg tablets, to Benzodiazepine and Napps, anything to take away the pain of how petty my life had become.

Sometimes I would spend the day on my own, endlessly walking the streets in the rain, feeling so sorry for myself and wondering how I had got myself into this mess. My grandparents were adamant about showing me some tough love, closing the door on my face, looking torn apart as I cried on the door-step, begging them to let me back in and give me one more chance. Then one bitterly cold night I had nowhere to go. My only option was to break into my grandparents’ shed and sleep in the dog kennel with the dog. My grandfather found me the next morning and gave in to me, picking me up and carrying me back into their house.

It was around this time that I began to get heavily into taking tablets. Especially Dalmane, because I could easily inject it and mix it up with heroin. Dalmane strongly enhanced the buzz of heroin and made me feel like I was invisible and wrapped up in cotton wool. The downside was that I was a recipe for disaster, getting myself into all sorts of trouble because I was so out of it. My grandmother was a nervous wreck. She never knew whether I would burn us all alive while I goofed off during the night smoking cigarettes in bed. Other times I would goof off right in front of her, defying gravity with my head inches away from the floor or my dinner. I would swear that I hadn’t taken anything. ‘I’m not on drugs. I’m just thinking of something,’ I would tell her.

My nanny’s patience and her health were running thin. She was sick of sticking up for me, only for me to let her down over and over again. She was tired of all my tricks, my bullying her for money, emotionally blackmailing her into believing that I could die from withdrawals if I didn’t use heroin, trying to convince her that I owed money to people and that they would do terrible things to me if I didn’t get them their money, making her feel as guilty as possible by telling her that if I got locked up it would be her fault. She was the one person who loved me and believed in me the most, but she was beginning to see very clearly the person that I had become. I was the complete opposite to what she had always hoped for. I was a junkie, just like my father, and when I looked into her eyes I knew that I was finished.

_____

So, when my mother’s boyfriend, Mick, asked me if I would go into treatment, I readily agreed. I wasn’t ready to give up drugs, but I wanted to make amends to my family and to make some kind of effort to get clean. Mick had made it his mission in life to help me get clean and make a good life for myself. Admittedly, he sometimes did it in unorthodox ways. Firstly he tried to side with me by buying me drugs—preferring to ensure that I was safe taking them than in some dingy shooting den. He would ring me in my grandmother’s house and ask me if I was sick. I always said yes, even if I wasn’t. Then he would meet me at the shops and give me money to go and score. We would drive to the nearest beach and he would watch me while I had a smoke or a turn-on, asking me what the big deal was about heroin and why I couldn’t just have a drink. Then he would try to level with me, asking me why I was doing this to myself. I couldn’t answer because I didn’t know the answer myself.

Sometimes Mick would bring me up to Benburb Street and show me where the prostitutes worked. ‘That’s what you’ll end up like, if you keep doin’ gear,’ he would say.

‘Yeah right, that’s one thing I’ll never do,’ I insisted, comparing myself to some of the girls and thinking that I was above all that.

‘Ah, yeah, I’m sure that’s what they all said.’

‘Well it won’t be me,’ I assured him, convinced of what I was saying, selectively forgetting about the fact that I had already sold my body for drugs.

The day came for my assessment and I was accompanied to the Rutland Centre by my mother and Mick. Mick introduced me to one of his friends, Big Mick, who was a recovering addict and had been through the Ruts himself. He met us at the gates of the treatment centre and guided us up the lengthy driveway and towards a Georgian house. He could have passed for a copper, standing at about six foot two with a beefy build. His hair was fair and fell around his face like a pair of curtains. He had his dog, Roxy, with him and I couldn’t believe my eyes when he lay on the pebbled ground and began to roll around and howl along with Roxy. His playfulness immediately broke the ice and made me feel comfortable.

After convincing the Rutland that I was ready for treatment, they agreed to take me in the day after my seventeenth birthday, but only if I could find a way to get clean first. The two Micks decided to bring me to Co. Mayo to go through my detox. I bought some methadone, which would help me to come off the heroin without too much withdrawal. The three of us stayed in a
B&B
while I weaned myself off the heroin and eventually off the methadone. Big Mick kept me distracted from my craving for drugs by acting silly and slagging everyone off in Mayo. He was a big child in a man’s body and I was so glad of his company. I didn’t realise then that Mick would come to play a huge part in my life and that I would come to owe him so much.

I had just turned seventeen and I was completely drug-free and ready to go into treatment. What I wasn’t ready for was to do it for myself. I was entering treatment to keep my family happy; to do what they so desperately wanted for me, but not to give up drugs for my own life or sanity.

My six weeks in treatment flew past in a haze of twice-daily group therapy, where counsellors, nurses and clients alike spoke in a language that was alien to me, a language in which they openly talked about their feelings and how different things affected them. As far as I was concerned, they were all a pack of weirdos. I was told I had the disease of addiction, whatever the hell that was, which meant that I could never, ever again take drugs or any other mood-altering substance without it having serious consequences. I had an addictive personality; I was the kind of person who would get addicted to anything if it helped me to escape from myself and from reality. The drugs weren’t the real problem, they told me,
I
was.

I wasn’t one bit happy to hear this. The fuckin’ cheek of them, I thought. Seventeen years of age and they’re telling me that I can’t even drink. I don’t think so. But I played along, for my family’s sake, telling them what I thought they wanted to hear. However, I didn’t get away with it. My two group counsellors, Jimmy and Marie, could see right through my façade and they had no qualms about exposing me in front of the clients in my group. ‘Take off the mask, Rachael, and get real,’ Marie would say. Then I would start crying.

‘Are you upset now because you’ve been exposed?’ she would prompt me.

‘No, I’m upset because I can’t take this any more,’ I would protest.

‘So you’re feeling sorry for yourself, are you?’ Marie had hit the nail on the head, but I wasn’t about to admit it.

‘No, I just feel terrible over everything that I’ve done,’ I lied, when really I wanted to tell her to fuck off and to stop picking on me. Jimmy and Marie continued to chip away at my so-called denial and I just went along with everything they said.

Narcotics Anonymous meetings were held twice weekly and it was compulsory for me to go. The
NA
crowd were another group I couldn’t get my head around, recovering addicts who claimed to have a life beyond their wildest dreams. And apparently they achieved this by staying abstinent from drugs and working a twelve-step programme. I couldn’t fathom for the life of me how sitting around talking about my problems would give me a life beyond my wildest dreams.

‘Just for today, you never have to use drugs again,’ they would say. So if it’s just for today, does that mean that I can use drugs tomorrow? I thought. I found a loop-hole in nearly everything they said. Ninety meetings in ninety days, they suggested. Get a sponsor and use your sponsor. And no matter what happens,
DON’T PICK UP DRUGS
. Even if your arse falls off you, just don’t use. They spoke of
NA
being a spiritual programme and the importance of having a higher power in their lives. Then at the end of the meeting, we would all stand in a circle, with our arms around one another’s shoulders and say the serenity prayer. Then everyone would shout in unison: ‘It works if you work it, it won’t if you don’t, so work it, you’re worth it.’ I would be dying to laugh and I came to the conclusion that
NA
was a cult, trying to brainwash me. Sure they probably weren’t even drug addicts, I told myself. They were more like sad cases who had nothing better to be doing with themselves than giving me a hard time.

CP
day also went right over my head. ‘Concerned Persons’ day offered friends or relatives the opportunity to come and tell the group how they had been affected by their loved one’s or friend’s addiction. Laurence came to see me and gave me a right earful in front of the group. He brought everything out in the open: about how I had robbed his clothes and sold them, how I had stolen his girlfriend’s gold ring and the arguments that had caused between the two of them; the trip to Cuba and how it left him devastated. I was an ungrateful little bitch, he said, and I was full of shit. He was right. I
was
full of shit, but I wasn’t ready to see it.

_____

Before I knew it, I had a needle in my arm again. But going to the Rutland had awoken something inside of me, an awareness of myself that had disappeared years earlier. I could no longer use drugs in peace. Maybe the counsellors were right. Maybe
I
was the problem and not the drugs, I wondered. Why did I keep going back to the drugs, then? It must be because there was something wrong with me. Maybe
I’m
the one who’s a weirdo, I thought to myself. Oh my God, I’m a weirdo and everybody knows. That’s why nobody wants to know me any more. My head would race when I lay in my bed, night after night. And no matter how much drugs I used, I couldn’t get away from it.

I needed answers. I had to find out what was wrong with me, so I decided to read every book about addiction that I could get my hands on. I thought that if I could find out what was missing inside of me, I could resolve the problem myself and then maybe I could be like everyone else and have a social drink and a few lines of cocaine. But reading books gave me no answers. It only made me more fearful and analytical and ultimately pushed me further into the drugs.

_____

Drug addicts were beginning to drop like flies in Ballymun. The heroin was taking its toll and lots of people were overdosing and dying. I knew that I could be next, but it was a chance I was willing to take. I didn’t want to die, but the thought of living without drugs frightened me even more. Sometimes I would see my old friends driving around in their new cars and getting on with their lives. I cursed them and I cursed myself for this affliction. I couldn’t bear being in my own skin, so I tried to soothe myself by shop-lifting the best of clothes, jewellery and make-up. If I looked good on the outside, then people wouldn’t think I was that bad.

By now I was well known to the gardaí. Every couple of weeks they would raid my grandmother’s house for stolen goods or to take me into custody. But then things became so bad that I got arrested for robbing blocks of cheese and rashers from the local shop. It put a real dent in my pride when I stood in front of the judge and the garda insisted on reading out the charge as loudly as possible. I could hear people laughing at the back of the court. I was ashamed and embarrassed.