The ravages of addiction

By Colette Keane

All these things leave you with distinctive scars. You just have to look at Stephen Harris’s face.

There are 29 scars on Stephen’s face and head alone, but the scars go much deeper than that. The ravages and effects of an addiction he has been fighting for almost 20 years are deeper than any outward signs of a hard life.

Born in Dublin in the early 1970s, Stephen grew up in a typical working class home with his two sisters and a brother. His father was an alcoholic as well, who would have a few drinks before work, at lunchtime and after work, then come home, have his dinner and go to bed.

“If you asked my mother today she would never say he was an alcoholic. She wouldn’t even say I was one.”

As a teenager Stephen was good at soccer and played with some older lads who introduced him to drink.

“I started drinking when I was 14. It was just what you did. When I started getting served in pubs from the age of 16 I would have been drinking every day and heavily on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.”

Despite developing a drink problem, Stephen continued his schooling, even though it was on somewhat of a part-time basis, and sat his Leaving Certificate.

“I did the Leaving, I even did the maths exam for one of the lads in my class. I met him last year. He was one of the warders in Clover Hill Prison.”

Stephen’s dad died when he was around 19 years of age. By this time he was smoking hash.

“I gave up the drink, it was getting me in involved with the law. Petty stuff, like, but it was too much trouble.” So Stephen swapped his alcohol addiction for heroin.

“After my dad died, I dabbled in heroin. My family didn’t even know. I was spending around £80 a day to feed my habit. I conned my mother out of a fortune just to get a fix.

"My sister worked it out once that I conned my mother out of £14,000 in five months. It didn’t matter to me what I had to do to get it, once I got the craving I just had to come up with the money somehow.”

It was around this time that the heroin epidemic in Dublin was really bad and a number of people had died. Terrified of catching AIDS from dirty needles, Stephen moved to London and went cold turkey on his own and amazingly gave up his new drug of choice.

Getting a job as a bar manager in London at the age of 22 or 23, he even gave up the booze.

It was here he met his future wife, Maria. But Maria was usually strung out on cocaine. He soon joined her in her cocaine habit and went back drinking.

After six months they were engaged and they married shortly after that. With the constant drug-taking the marriage was doomed and it lasted just 14 months.

“I hated coke, I was terrified of it. When I was 12, I went to the funeral of my friend’s brother who was one of three young fellas who died after snorting strychnine instead of cocaine.

"But I was stoned on hash when she asked me if I wanted some so I wasn’t afraid. I remember it clearly. I took one line and it was brilliant. I knew I wanted more.

"I once kicked in the door of a dealer’s house at four in the morning just to get more. He told me he would kill me if I ever did it again.”

Stephen was taking about three or five grams of coke a day at a cost of around £50 per gram. Once, he says, he took 28 grams. He was both snorting and injecting the drug, but insisted on clean needles.

“One night I robbed this car. I was drunk, didn’t know what I was doing but I just wanted to get home. The next morning when I woke up I felt really guilty, so I went through the glove box and found some documents with the guy’s name, address and phone number on it.

"I rang him to apologise and I told him I would leave his car in a certain place and put £100 in the glove box to pay for the damage to his side window, which I did.

“A few days later myself and some friends were stoned on coke and one guy had a stolen credit card. We didn’t know how we could get money from it but we knew we had to get some more money for coke.

"So I rang the guy I had stolen the car from and told him I still felt really bad about taking his car and that I had booked a meal for him and his family at a restaurant that night for 8pm, paid for on the stolen credit card.

“That night, we waited in a car outside his house and watched him leave for dinner. We then went and robbed everything in his house. That is bad, I don’t know why I’m laughing.

"We even stole the light bulbs to really f**k him up. All that to feed the habit.”

When his marriage broke up he came back to Ireland, leaving his cocaine habit behind him.

Throughout his life he has been in and out of treatment centres. When he came back home he went to another couple of centres and then worked sporadically; a year here, a couple of months there.

For a while, everything was going really well for Stephen. He got a job in a freight company in Dublin and was taking home between £900 and £1,000 a week.

He was engaged to an American girl and then actually met what he describes as “the woman of my dreams” in Dublin. He had the nice car, a job, his own place and a bank account. He even flew to the States to break it off with the US girl.

It was all perfect, he says, until he started drinking again.

“There was no reason. I just remember picking up a drink. Then the job was gone, the girl was gone, I was back drinking heavily and ended up on the streets.”

He has been homeless on the streets of Dublin, Limerick and Cork for the last five years or so.

The first time he went to prison was in London in 1990 for possessing cocaine. While he has been in and out of trouble with the law, he only went to jail here for the first time last year.

He spent five days in Cork Prison last July for robbing a bottle of vodka. He drank it in about 10 seconds in the shop before the security guard could grab it off him.

In November, he spent two weeks on remand in Clover Hill Prison for stealing a water container. He spent two more weeks in Cork Prison in December and on December 26 he was sent to Clover Hill for another two weeks.

He got out on January 7 but is facing trial on May 6 on an assault charge. Despite the impending case, he says he has never been happier. He is getting his life together and is back in regular contact with his family.

“My eldest sister hasn’t seen me in four-and-a-half years. I haven’t even seen my youngest niece. I’m the only one in the family who drank and took drugs.

"I was thrown out of the house for taking money from my mother. But my family never disowned me. In my head, I thought they didn’t want anything to do with me, but they were always there for me. Always.

“If I stay sober, I know I will be part of their life again.”

In the last six weeks, he hasn’t thought about picking up a drink. He is confident he can stay off drink today. He can only say he will try to stay sober tomorrow.

Stephen is living in a house run by a religious order with 11 other men while he is in recovery. They don’t take any money off the men, but ask them to hand over €40 from their social welfare cheques which they put aside so that when they leave they will have enough for a deposit for a house or flat.

“In the 12 Steps programme you are asked to search for a higher power. You can see it in them. They said a prayer for me this morning on my way out to make sure I got back safe and sound. They are incredible,” he said.

Getting his family back in his life is one of the main driving forces helping Stephen stay sober. “I’ve tried to make myself believe for a long time that I didn’t give a f**k about them, but I do.

"When I met some of my nieces and nephews at Christmas, one of them asked me why I chose drink over them. What do I say? How do I answer that?

"I don’t want to stay sober for them and I don’t want to do this for my mother, but I’d like her to see me living clean and sober.”