'We are all the same, us addicts, and there are far more of us than people would like to admit'

I am a recovering addict.

People never seem to believe me when I say that. Not you, they think, with your degree from Trinity and your nice clothes and your lovely, middle-class parents and your primary school teacher sister. You can’t be an addict.

I believe that I don’t fit their idea of what a person struggling with addiction looks like because I don’t live on the streets, because a fragile veneer of respectability covers the cracks in my psyche.