Falling into addiction: A look at alcohol and drug abuse

Journalist Roisin Burke looks at what it means to be psychologically or physically dependent on a substance such as alcohol or drugs and what you can do if you fall foul of addiction.

Addiction to drink and drugs is a complex problem that can have a number of contributing factors according to healthcare professionals dealing with substance misuse in Cork.

Coordinator of Drug and Alcohol Services for Cork and Kerry, David Lane, who has been working in drug and alcohol treatment for the past 18 years said it is rare to have someone seek help for a single addiction to a particular substance.

David Lane

“It is usually, poly addiction, cross addiction, using more than one substance at a time, but alcohol is often the gateway. It is often the first substance a person will have used and it will be the primary addiction.”

Mr Lane said within the drug and alcohol services offered by the HSE, they often work with people at the point where their drink and drug use is out of control and they are physically or psychologically dependent on a substance.

The drug and alcohol healthcare professional said the HSE offers their service to anyone who may need it. All age groups are treated, from under 18 to people in their 50s and 60s.

Speaking about the motivation to get clean, Mr Lane said it can come from varied sources.

“People come at different times in relation to their addiction. It could be family involvement in encouraging them to get help. Falling into homelessness or ending up in hospitals and other services that exist across the region here, and it is at that point that we pick up people.”

Mr Lane said the important thing was that people had a genuine desire to improve their lives.

“Another hugely important thing is people have to be wanting to change and want to recover and have a better quality of life for themselves.” Mr Lane stressed that addiction does not discriminate in terms of who falls foul of alcohol or substance abuse.

It is not just a problem for the poorer parts of the city. It can happen anyone at any time. People come to us from all walks of life. It doesn’t discriminate in terms of social class, gender, age.

“We see such a massive variety of people coming to us for a selection of problems that they face. Sometimes it is not very straightforward.

“Some people might be abusing a variety of substances legal and illegal and might have a mental health issue on top of that then again. So we can be dealing with very complex problems at times and it is not easy in terms of resolving the complexities of problems people have in their lives. We do our best, in terms of tackling as many things as we can.”

Clinical Director of Tabor Lodge Mick Devine said there is a strong connection between mental health and addiction.

Mick Devine

In a recent report issued by the treatment centre Tabor Lodge, it showed that from a database of 50 clients, 40% reported four or more Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and over 50% showed a diagnosis of mental health.

Mr Devine said ACEs are extremely complex and can take a lot of working through.

“An ACE can be a parent addicted to drugs or alcohol, a parent in prison or who had mental health challenges, a parent or someone else who sexually abused you or being a witness of domestic violence.

“The ACEs has the impact on the person of not being able to deal with an experience as it is happening. A lot of ACEs may have stopped people developing healthy coping mechanisms.” Mr Devine said the services work collaboratively to help people with complex needs.

The people who are succeeding don’t have complex needs, they have simple needs.

“They have an addiction problem, but they still have families intact, they still have accommodation, support, they are trained, educated and employed. It is straightforward to deal with this addiction because all the other supports are in place.

“When the needs are complex when the ACES are high, accommodation is precarious and the education system has not been a favourable experience for the person, so they are disadvantaged, they are starting from further back.”

Tabor Lodge’s clinical director said that there is a very eclectic mix of people who arrive at their door and in many cases they are referred from other services.

“TUSLA might refer a mother here because they feel the child might be in danger from the mother’s addiction.

“The probation services might refer someone as an alternative to sending someone to prison for drug related crime.

“A workplace might refer someone, because the alternative is to terminate the employee or a doctor might refer someone or hospitals. There is a whole cluster of people sensitive to when someone needs to come to Tabor Lodge.”

In terms of recovery, Mick Devine said all addictions are not created equal. “I think heroin addiction is very difficult to recover from. The dependency is very strong and the level of social unacceptability is very high.

“We are more amenable to alcohol addicted people. Probably because we all probably know an alcoholic, we have a kind of a tolerance or familiarity with it We have a very ambiguous relationship with alcohol, one day we hate it and the next it is very endearing and it is a good way to celebrate.”

We tend to go the extra mile for an alcohol addict, but for a heroin addict, the family member might not have the same patience or tolerance.

Mr Devine said another problem with opiates is they are very addictive, very quickly whereas it can take a while to build up an alcohol addiction.

Discussing alcohol Mr Lane said even when consumption doesn’t reach the level of addiction, you can be doing a lot of harm to yourself.

“The general population is who we need to target around the harmful effects of alcohol. It’s about the impact that it can have at a physical level. It is a carcinogen that we consume regularly.

“The link between consumption of alcohol and cancer is one the industry is trying to reject for some time. We take for granted the health messages on cigarette packets for instance and how in your face those can be in terms of the link between cancers and cigarettes. People accept there is a very clear link between smoking and cancer. There is a very clear link, supported by research, between alcohol and cancer and we can’t continue to ignore it.

“While it might not get us into trouble with addiction or a need like that, people still need to know there are risks associated with drinking alcohol regularly.”

Mr Lane said that alcohol is normalised and even glamorised in society and we need to look beyond the marketing campaigns and look at the consequences of consuming large amounts of alcohol.

“All you need to do is look at what the drinks industry spends on advertising and you would be horrified. You would be horrified with how much is being spent getting people to drink more. Hundreds of millions of euro are spent on advertising in this country. The alcohol problem is stitched into our society”

For more information on drug and alcohol misuse or to see the supports that are available in your locality, check out the Cork Local Drug and Alcohol task force website on www.corkdrugandalcohol.ie or speak to your GP.

Jonathan O’Brien: ‘My initial reaction was why?’

Family members of people with addictions go through a great deal of stress and trauma while coping with their loved one’s disease.

In 2015 Sinn Féin TD Jonathan O’Brien spoke in the Dáil about his younger brother’s issues with homelessness and heroin addiction.

Jonathan O’Brien

“My brother was a heroin addict for four or five years and a gambling addict over 15 years,” Mr O’Brien told the Evening Echo.

Mr O’Brien said that his brother tried to kick the habit a number of times and has now been clean for the past two and a half years.

Talking about the impact his brother’s addiction had on him, Jonathan said it was very upsetting.

“My initial reaction was I found it hard to believe and I couldn’t understand it. I knew before the rest of the family because I am pretty close to my brother and it was very difficult in the sense of not knowing what to do.”

Mr O’Brien said at the start he did not have the knowledge he needed to understand his brother’s addiction.

“I was very ill-informed. I said things like: ‘Why are you doing this? Just give it up.’”

The politician, who has been a TD for the past seven years, said he did not realise that it is how hard it is to give up an addiction.

It was quite upsetting. There were a lot of questions, ‘Why?’ was the main one. The question we asked every day was ‘Why do you keep doing it? Why don’t you just stop? You can see the damage you are doing to your life, it is easy, just don’t take it.’

“That was the initial reaction because we didn’t know too much about heroin addiction and how difficult it was.”

Mr O’Brien said he has walked streets looking for his brother when he was homeless and stuck in the spiral of addiction.

“When you hear on the radio that someone has been found dead or somebody was pulled out of the river,. last night, your instant reaction is to think, ‘Is it my brother?’ It’s really difficult, knowing you have a loved one addicted to heroin.”

Offering advice to anyone who may have a loved one struggling with an addiction, Mr O’Brien said the first thing he would recommend is to speak to the services.

“Get as much information as possible. Try and get as much understanding as possible and for me, the most important thing was just to be there for my brother.

“It’s not like he enjoyed doing it. Heroin addiction takes over your life. It absolutely destroys a person. It destroys their ability to think rationally, to look after themselves.”

Support for family members vital for recovery of addict

Family support is a vital element on the path to recovery that is often overlooked.

Alvina Cassidy, programme co-ordinator of the family programme at Tabor Lodge, said that family members go ‘through hell and back.’

Tabor Lodge offers a range of supports to the relatives of an addict in order to relieve the stress and strain they are dealing with.

Ms Cassidy said: “Family members have been through hell and back. Their focus is on the addicted person and they want to do what they can to support that person mostly. But the focus should also be on how they are deserving of recovery themselves because most families are carrying the brunt of addiction.”

She added: “They have often spent years and years living with addiction.”

The family programme coordinator said at Tabor Lodge an addiction is treated as a family illness.

“The symptoms of addiction in the addict are also in the family, but this is often not recognised and not understood. Family members might know that they are stressed out with what they are living with, but they often don’t fully really comprehend the level of physical and psychological stress.”

Ms Cassidy said that it is often the case that family members do not go for treatment until the addict is in treatment, but getting support could be extremely beneficial to the whole family system even before the addict person with addiction is in rehabilitation.

“We are trying to shift the focus so that family members see they need support long before their relative goes for treatment.”

Ms Cassidy said an addiction within a family can have devastating effects on the whole unit.

They lose sight of their whole life, the addicted person becomes the centre of attention so other members of the family lose out., partners, parents lose out. Their own quality of life suffers.

Clinical director of Tabor Lodge Mick Devine said working with the family can be hugely beneficial to the recovery of an addict.

“The needs of families can be huge. The big thing is to get them to look at themselves. The easiest thing to do is to say that the cause of all the problems in this family is the addict and the addict becomes a scapegoat.”

Mr Devine said it can be a very sensitive time when an addict returns to the family unit.

“All eyes are on the addict. and what he/she is doing. We encourage the family to look to themselves and to see where do they need care? So that their wellness is not dependent on the addict’s wellness. That is the difficult thing that the families have to wrestle with while here.”

Mr Devine said while a person is in treatment at Tabor Lodge, it is the perfect opportunity to ask the family to look at how they are doing themselves.

“The family can start to get some care and treatment for themselves so they can take some responsibility for how they are in such a way, that how they are is not dependent on how the addict is. It’s important for the family to grasp that.”

There is a way back from drug addiction

There is a way back from addiction if you fight for it, is the message from former alcohol and drug addict Conor Flynn.

Conor, 43, began drinking and dabbling in drugs at the age of 10-11 and continued to use drugs until the age of 36.

Conor Flynn

“Tipp-ex, glue, petrol and nail varnish remover. Anything to get the high, numb feeling in the brain, taking you away from where you were at,” he said.

“A lot of my using came from escapism. Escaping from physical and mental abuse that occurred as a child outside the home. I didn’t know how to deal with pain and I was very angry growing up.”

Conor said his activities became more aggressive as he got older.

He moved from hash to cocaine, mushrooms, LSD, tablets, prescribed tablets and eventually onto crack cocaine and heroin.

It also led to crime.

“There was a lot of burglaries, a lot of joy riding, a lot of madness.

It was a big mad buzz,” he explained.

“I was constantly breaking and entering, stealing from people’s houses, I was a robber and a thief to feed my habit, I had to find money some way.”

From 16, the Knocknaheeny native was in and out of prison.

He spent more than two decades in and out of prison ‘non-stop’, he said.

“The first time in prison, I thought I was the man. I was full of ego. I felt I had to portray something different to fit into my society. I could never be myself.”

He also spent time in St Stephen’s Psychiatric Hospital in Sarsfield Court.

All that time, all I wanted was someone to listen to me and understand me, give me a hug, ask me if everything was alright and understand me. I never got that.

“My parents and my nan were there for me growing up, but it was gone too far. I was very dysfunctional and I was caught up in the madness.”

He continued, “I was running from who I was. Now I know who I am what I am and what I want out of life, but at that time I didn’t understand back then and I didn’t have a clue what life was about back then.”

“I always wanted to change, I just didn’t know how to. The pull to drink and use drugs was more attractive and I knew I would have to give up everything. It was safer to stay in my little bubble.”

Crime and drug abuse had a damaging impact on all aspects of Conor’s life, he said.

At 22, he had a child. However, his addictions made it difficult to have a proper relationship with her.

“I didn’t even have a relationship with myself, never mind anyone else,” he said.

At the age of 24, Conor attempted to get clean at An Cuan centre in Dublin.

After spending two years there, he soon relapsed. Conor said he didn’t use the help available to him when he left the centre.

“I came out full of arrogance. I thought I had everything sorted, I never used any of the support that was on offer when I came out.I fell back into the old ways, I was on a relapse for 13 and a half years.”

Conor described his life with an addiction as a ‘horrible existence.’

“It was so hard, I ended up homeless. I was on crack cocaine and heroin. I was homeless for two and a half years. I was in and out of prison, when I came out I was straight back into the same patterns.

“I was using for a long time. I overdosed once or twice.” Conor had a second child and again could not engage with her as he was so far into the spiral of addiction.

Weighing just eight stone and living in squats and under bridges, Conor was unrecognisable to who he is now and he had an epiphany moment.

“I was homeless, I was sick of living that way. I thought to myself ‘Conor you need to get your sh*t together or you are going to die.’ By the age of 35, Conor said he was ‘strung out to the backbone.’

The best way to describe a craving is when a baby is crying for a bottle of milk. They have a routine, every couple of hours they need a bottle to relax, to calm down. It is the same thing. That’s what drugs were doing for me.

“I’d rob anybody, didn’t matter who it was, family, friends, it didn’t matter who I met along the way.

“I was near death. So lonely, isolated, vulnerable, hurt and angry and I knew the only way I could fix it was if I got off the stuff. I knew I could do it. I had to dig deep and do what I had to do.” Conor went to his ex-partner and asked if he would be allowed visitation rights if he got clean.

“I asked if I got my sh*t together could I see my daughter and she said yes. They thought I was destined to do what I was doing for the rest of my life or end up in a box.”

He tried to go cold turkey himself in order to be admitted to a detox centre in Carlow called St Francis Farm.

“I went up for my assessment to St Francis Farm and they said the only way you can get in here is if you come off everything.”

St Francis Farm

At the time Conor was on 110 ml of methadone as well as taking other drugs on top of that. St Francis told Conor if he got down to 50 mls they would take him, so he did.

“I made the decision there and then. I went off all my medication, went off all drugs.”

Conor ended up having seizures in his dad’s bath and was arrested.

“My body was so used to taking such high volumes of drugs and then suddenly it had nothing.” Afterwards, he was taken to an adult psychiatric unit in Shanakiel.

After a month, Conor came out of Carraig Mór and a few weeks later he went to St Francis farm.

“I went into their detox centre. It takes eight weeks to get down off 50 ml of methadone and then I did four months in the treatment part.”

From there, Conor was housed by Cork Simon in a property on College Road. He became heavily involved in Narcotics Anonymous (NA).

Six years later, he is still clean.

“I’m heavily involved in Narcotics Anonymous, that is my saving grace.

“It was my only structure at the start. I had no friends, no one could trust me because I was very unpredictable. I went every single night for the first two years. It was a safe place. I was able to identify with people there and relate. When people were talking it felt like they were talking about me, but they were just telling their own story and I was identifying.

You think to yourself if he went through that and he is two years sober, then I can do it too.

“It is a fellowship. We help each other to stay clean.” As well as attending Narcotics Anonymous, Conor began reeducating himself doing a number of courses.

“I did courses in woodwork, art, cooking, computers, horticulture, addiction, community development courses, parenting classes, I did a lot.” Education gave him exactly what he needed: structure and the opportunity to meet new people.

Reflecting on how things have gone, Conor knows how lucky he is.

“I should be dead, I should be in an asylum, in hospital or dead. I don’t know how I managed to stay alive.”

The recovering addict said that he feels remorse and guilt for the things he did in his past, but he is in a good place now and he can deal with it.

“I was bringing hassle to my family’s door, I was putting my family in danger’s way. I never wanted that path. I have a lot of remorse and guilt about it now.” His family came back into his life and he is now spending time with his daughters. He has found new friends and has adopted a completely different outlook on life.

“If I am struggling now, I ask for help. I have no desire to cause anybody any harm anymore. I just want to get on with my life, I’m in a nice relationship now and the people in Knocknaheeny are proud of me and my family are proud of me.” While he hasn’t been able to repair all his relationships, he has accepted his past and is moving on.

“There is no more anger. I am able to talk about my feelings I got back my voice. My opinion matters.” Offering advice to anyone who might be struggling with an addiction, Conor said: “Stick around the right people who are doing the right things. Look at the people who are doing it right and stick with them.

None of the things in my life would be possible without recovery, meetings, support. The meetings are key when you come out.

For the past year and a half, Conor has been working in construction and recently finished working on the new courthouse.

“I was working on the courthouse, I was one of the last to leave and about 30 prison officers came in to view the building and I was there and they were like ‘Flynn, what are you doing here?’ “A couple of them were delighted to see me doing well.”

Conor said he still likes to go out partying, but he just doesn’t take any substances.

“I still go out, partying, I do the same things I used to be doing with no drink and no drugs.

“I decided when I had to get clean, I said ‘Conor, there is so much to change about yourself, but don’t change who you are as a person.’”

This report first appeared in the Evening Echo