Substance addiction was soul sickness, says Black
Having overcome addiction to alcohol, amphetamines, sleeping tablets and slimming tablets, she said she has been on a most amazing journey of recovery.
“I can’t believe sometimes I’m the woman I am to have the strength to come before you today and speak about this journey,” she told a conference on substance and alcohol misuse in Killarney.
The member of the famous singing family — now a qualified addiction counsellor who has worked in the Rutland Treatment Centre in Dublin — told how she started drinking at 13 by taking a bottle of Smithwick’s beer.
“I had an emptiness inside me and the drink that day filled the emptiness. I hadn’t mixed well in school, had been extremely shy and quite isolated. But once I’d tasted alcohol I knew I always wanted more. The alcohol gave me great confidence,” she said.
However, despite being “blown away” when informed she was an alcoholic, she later became addicted to slimming tablets, which she took for 10 years.
“At first, the slimming tablets gave me the best feeling ever, even better than cocaine, which I dabbled in. But I became so addicted to these tablets that I couldn’t get out of bed in the morning without taking them,” she told 150 delegates at the South Kerry Life Education Getting a Grip conference, in the Brehon Hotel, Killarney.
Ms Black, who has made several successful albums, became suicidal and reached a stage in her alcoholism where she was drinking for the sake of drinking, without enjoying drink.
She said entering the Talbot Grove Treatment Centre, in Castleisland, Co Kerry, was one of the most difficult things she had ever done, but it changed her life.
She is now continuing with her singing career, and called for a foundation for people with addictions and felt there should be places for people who are feeling suicidal.
“Many kids are turning to drink, and suicide and alcohol are closely linked,” she said.
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