Dying to Survive (23 page)

_____

The lights in the
NA
—Narcotics Anonymous—room were cruel and unforgiving. I was in no humour for an
NA
meeting, especially after the group that we had, but it was compulsory for the clients to go to their meetings so I had no choice. Myself, Chris and Jessica huddled together down the back of the room and I just wished I were invisible. I was struck by the numbers of addicts, now in recovery, who had come to the meeting to carry their message, about forty of them, looking so well, as though they hadn’t a care in the world. ‘I
AM RESPONSIBLE
...,’ it said in big black writing on the wall.

The meeting started and for about thirty minutes a man spoke about his experiences with drugs and his recovery. He had also done a stint in the Rutland and he was a long time clean. He couldn’t emphasise enough how important it was for him to have the support of
NA
throughout his recovery. ‘I didn’t come in here brimming with hope and all those good things. I was hopeless, homeless, helpless, unemployable and desperate. I hadn’t a clue what people were on about when they used the words like “surrendering to a power greater than myself,” or “powerlessness”. But I stuck with it, putting one foot in front of the other. And now my life has done a complete turn-around.’ This man was a graphic designer with his own home and he liked to travel the world taking pictures. If he can do it, then so can I, I thought to myself. From here onwards I would be on the look-out for a good woman who could be my sponsor, to guide me through the programme and to support me in my recovery.

After listening to different people speak, my spirits lifted. These meetings really do work, I thought. I knew after that first meeting that I would have to commit myself to
NA
if I wanted to get what those people had. I would give it a bash and try to do the suggested things. I had nothing to lose.

Chapter
14

    FACING THE TRUTH

E
ven though the regime in the Rutland was demanding, it wasn’t all group therapy in the Centre. At weekends we would gather together in the television room for a game of charades. Other times we would have a sing-along in the kitchen as we belted on the pots and pans. There were yoga and dance classes, and when we were really bored we would have an egg-and-spoon race in the garden, which usually resulted in the neighbours complaining about the noise. I would have done anything for a laugh and to get away from the heightened emotion of the group.

I had heard from somebody that my old counsellor Jimmy Judge was coming in to do a workshop with us. Shit, if anyone scared me, it was Jimmy Judge. He was the most gifted counsellor that I had ever come across. And when I was in his presence I felt completely transparent.

The first time I met Jimmy I was only twelve years old. It was one year before I started on the heroin. My school class had been taken to the Youth Action Project in Ballymun for a drugs awareness day. I remember being struck by Jimmy’s tattoos. He had funny cartoon characters on both of his hands. One of them was of Daffy Duck. He was only a handful of a man, standing at around five foot five. He showed my class a video about the effects of drugs and the damage that they did, but I took very little notice. None of it applied to me as far as I was concerned, even though I was smoking hash, drinking alcohol, taking acid and dabbling with ecstasy. Being a junkie just wasn’t something that I aspired to be. So I didn’t have to listen. Maybe I should have listened.

‘I can only imagine what he has up his sleeve,’ I whispered to Jessica now. All the clients had filled the television room and we were sitting in a large circle.

‘Right, so, we’ll get started, will we?’ Jimmy said enthusiastically, doing a little jump. ‘Ok, everyone on your feet. Now, I want you to give every part of your body a good shake. Do a little dance if you want. C’mon, don’t be afraid to shake it all out.’ We all did as Jimmy said and I felt like a right eegit.

‘Now, open your mouth as wide as you can and scream, but without making any noise...’

‘What did I tell you,’ I whispered to Jessica.

‘Now you can sit down. I want you to pick two animals. One that represents your addiction and one that represents your recovery. Have you got that?’

Everyone nodded and Jimmy continued, ‘Now, I want you to stand up here, one by one and act out your animal.’

No fucking way was I going to do that, I thought. I had an image to uphold here.

Everyone was moaning and groaning. ‘Ah c’mon, it’s only a bit of fun. Who’ll go first? What’s your name?’ he said pointing to Michael, one of the clients.

‘Emm, Michael, but I’m not doing it. I’m only new here myself.’

‘Ahm, you might do it later on. What’s your name?’ he pointed to Timmy.

‘I’m Timmy.’

‘Good man, Timmy, you’ll go first, won’t you?’ I was surprised that Timmy agreed. But he had said that he would make more of an effort.

They were like Little and Large standing there together: Timmy towering over Jimmy. ‘Right, Timmy, what animal did you pick for your addiction?’ Jimmy said cheerfully.

Timmy didn’t know what to be doing with himself. ‘I picked a gorilla.’

‘Alright, so do a gorilla.’

Timmy was puce in the face now and he couldn’t stop laughing. Jimmy laughed along with him. ‘It’s ok, go on.’ Then Timmy put his fist to his chest and he start pounding it and making noises as though he were King Kong. Everyone thought that this was hilarious at first but then Timmy suddenly stopped laughing and a strange look came over his face. He began to thump himself harder and harder and his voice had changed. He was screaming now. I had never in my life heard such a noise. Nobody was laughing any more. I noticed that Jessica was nearly sitting on top of me, with a firm grip on my arm.

But Jimmy was only getting started. ‘Hi, Rachael,’ he addressed me. ‘Do you want to do it?’

‘No, you’re alright, Jimmy. I’m not doing it.’

‘Ah c’mon, you know it’ll do you the world of good!’ He reached out his hand for me to take. ‘Don’t be afraid. I’ll even do it with you.’

He was putting me on the spot and I couldn’t say no. ‘What animal did you pick for your addiction?’

I noticed that Jimmy had a lovely light in his eyes. ‘A lion.’

‘Why did you pick a lion?’

‘Because it’s fierce and powerful. That’s how my addiction feels.’

‘Very good. So what does a lion do?’

I was so conscious of everyone staring at me. ‘Ah, I’m not doing it, Jimmy.’

‘C’mon, we’ll do it together.’ Jimmy got down on his hands and knees. So I copied him. ‘Rarr,’ Jimmy growled, urging me to do the same.

‘Rarr,’ I growled back. Then Jimmy began to chase me around the room on all fours. I was trying my best to laugh it off, but I just couldn’t seem to hold myself together. I was so embarrassed that I began to cry. I had no idea why, but my mother had suddenly come into my head. Jimmy took me by the hands and he picked me up off the ground. Then he put his face right up to mine and he blocked the room out with his hands. He was way too close for comfort and now I was seriously freaked out.

‘Forget about everyone in the room. Why did you start to cry?’

‘I was mortified and then I just thought of my ma.’

‘How do you feel about your ma?’

‘I feel that she doesn’t love me and I don’t know why. I’m angry with her.’

‘I want you now to go around each and every person in this room and speak to them as if they’re your ma. Tell her how angry you are.’

‘I can’t, Jimmy.’

‘Try, Rachael.’

I did try. I really did. But something inside me kept telling me that I was betraying my own mother. I just couldn’t let go. I couldn’t do this to my mother with all these people whom I hardly even knew. I tried. I went around the room, around every person in the group and spoke to them, but the words weren’t real; I was only doing it to please Jimmy. Nonetheless, my session with Jimmy was the most powerful experience that I had in the Rutland and one that I would never forget.

_____

At the same time as working things out in group, I was beginning to feel more and more at home in the
NA
meetings. Everyone seemed very friendly and I had even mustered up the courage to speak once or twice. Tonight was the first time that a woman was in the chair, Katriona. I was mesmerised by her. She seemed so relaxed as she sat in front of everyone, smiling and waving to most of the other members. She couldn’t have being much older than myself. She had long blonde hair and a warm open face. Then she began to speak. She told us all about her traumatic childhood, her drug use and her recovery. Her story was scarily similar to mine. Her presence and the way she held herself captivated me. And I
really
wanted to have the confidence that she had. I just had to ask her to be my sponsor. But I didn’t know how. What if she says no? I thought. I’d die.

When the meeting was over I anxiously floated around her, but she seemed to be busy talking to everyone else. ‘Just do it,’ I told myself. And after going over the whole thing in my mind several times, I eventually got the courage to approach her. I told her how much I had enjoyed listening to her. Then I just blurted it out. ‘Would you be able to be my sponsor?’

‘Yeah, no problem,’ she replied. I could hardly believe my luck. Perhaps one day, I thought, I might be Katriona—confident, assured, in touch with herself. For the moment I was very pleased with myself simply to have taken the first step and plucked up the courage to ask her to sponsor me. Katriona has been my rock ever since and has supported me through the worst of times and the best.

I was aware that I was blessed to be in a group of people who were as serious as I was about staying clean. And it was in listening to the others speak so honestly about their addiction that more was being revealed to me about myself. I had been blown away by Timmy’s First Step and his courage in telling the truth. Now, I had to take a leaf out of his book and do the same. It was time for me to share my First Step with the group.

On the day of reckoning I was terrified. I could feel my stomach doing somersaults as I joined the circle in the group room. Then Ann gave me the nod to begin. I told the group about how my addiction affected me mentally. How it distorted my thinking and made me believe things about myself that weren’t true, that I was a failure and that, deep down at the core of my being, I was a bad person. I thought everyone around me instinctively knew this, which made me feel even worse about myself. I was different to everyone else in the worst way possible, but I couldn’t put my finger on how. I spoke about my obsession with drugs: every waking second was spent thinking about how I would get drugs, where I would use them and how I would feel when I got them into me. Even my dreams were ambushed by visions of drug-use. During the times that I was drug-free, the obsession was still there, but it wasn’t an obsession with drugs, but about myself. Morning, noon and night I was living in my head. Thinking about myself and of how I looked and how I sounded. How others perceived me and whether they liked me or not. If I thought they didn’t like me, I would become somebody that they did like. I had a thousand faces for a thousand different people. I could be anyone that you wanted me to be.

I continued to say that, if I wasn’t obsessed with myself, I was obsessed with prayer and meditation. ‘Please God, do this for me. Please God, don’t let this or that happen. If I do this, God will reward me. If I do that, God will punish me. It was mental torture,’ I told the group, explaining how I had replaced an addiction to drugs with an addiction to God.

‘I am an emotional cripple,’ I told them. ‘My emotions are so warped that I can’t tell my arse from my elbow.’ I told them that I loved how the drugs made me feel numb, but only for a while. Even when I used drugs now, I was bombarded with all these emotions that I just couldn’t cope with. I was riddled with fear, guilt and shame. I had no idea of how to express any sort of anger and it was even harder for me to smile. My spirit seemed to be dead. It had been crushed so many times by myself and others that I could never see myself being truly happy again. I had forgotten what it was like to be happy anyway.

I then took a deep breath. It was time to tell the group just how powerless I was over my addiction. About all the things I had done in the grip of heroin. Like the time I robbed my grandmother’s wedding ring. I had only started taking drugs and I promised myself that I would never rob my family. Especially my grandmother, the only one who loved me unconditionally, I thought. I repaid this by stealing her precious ring. I badly needed to get money for drugs and the thought came into my head that I would get at least twenty pounds for it. I remember a voice in my head saying, ‘No, don’t do it, don’t do it. You know that’s not right.’ But I felt that I genuinely couldn’t stop myself, that I had no power or control. In the end I took my grandmother’s ring and I will never forget how she cried when she realised that it was gone. I hid the ring in one of my teddy bears until I could smuggle it out of the house, and when I heard her crying I pretended to help her to find it.