Dying to Survive

by Rachael Keogh

  From then on, life got easier for me in the community. Adjusting to the monotony of routine was the hardest and at times I missed the excitement of my old life. But my old life still haunted me in my dreams. At times I would wake up in a panic, convinced that I had used heroin and relapsed. Or I would be left feeling disturbed by dreams of having sex with monsters, spending the rest of the day riddled with guilt and repeatedly questioning my morality. My body and my mind felt distorted and sensitive and the smallest of things would trigger off a craving for drugs.

  I was eventually given back my clothes and I now understood why they were taken from me in the first place. They reminded me of my drug use. They brought me back to the person that I was on the streets of Ballymun. I couldn’t stand that person inside of me. I wanted her to go away, so I decided to change my image by cutting my hair into a short shaggy bob and I was ready to embrace the holy Joe look with open arms.

  Working in the garden was making me stronger in all senses. My mind was clearer from the good weather and the fresh air. My appetite was slowly coming back and I was beginning to gain some weight. The prayer and meditation seemed to stabilise me emotionally, restoring my faith in God. And for the first time in my life, I felt as though I belonged somewhere.

  My tolerance of the community was put to the test during Lent: forty days and forty nights of adoration at all hours of the night. Renunciation of chocolate, coffee and anything of pleasure. I was eating, breathing and sleeping the mysteries of the rosary. And after three months I had had enough. I had found the solution to my addiction. It was God. Once I prayed every day and practised everything that I had learned from the community, then I would be sorted. I wanted out of the community.

  Dubrilla and the other girls didn’t agree with me. ‘You need at least a year or two before you can even think of going home,’ they said. They gathered around me in the office, saying everything that they could think of to try and persuade me to stay. They even rang Father Adrian and asked him to talk me out of it.

  ‘Rachael, you can’t come home. As soon as you set foot in Dublin, you will be arrested,’ he said.

  ‘Not if I stay clean,’ I told him.

  ‘Rachael, yourself and Derek were on CrimeCall recently. You were both seen robbing a jeweller’s. The gardaí are just waiting for you to mess up.’ I knew Father Adrian was telling the truth. If I was on television, I would definitely be arrested, but I convinced myself that once I stayed clean, no judge in their right mind would lock me up. I made my decision to go home.

  But my mother wasn’t making things easy for me. She refused to send me over a flight ticket. If I wanted to come home I would have to find my own way back, she said. I wasn’t going to let her get the better of me. So without letting the girls know, I took my English-Italian pocket translator and my set of rosary beads and off I headed to the nearest Irish Embassy.

  I got half-way through the cornfields when I realised what I had just done. ‘Fuckin’ hell, what am I at?’ It was the type of thing that I would have done when I was using drugs. Acting on impulse and never thinking of the consequences. I was in a strange country with no money, no passport and nowhere to turn. But I couldn’t go back now. My pride wouldn’t allow me to. I would have to keep going and just hope for the best.

  It was beginning to get dark and I was becoming more and more fearful that something awful might happen to me. I could see a town in the near distance and I decided to knock into the first house that I came to. The front door opened and I was shocked to be met by the local priest who took confessions from us every Sunday. I had no choice but to tell him the truth. He wasn’t one bit impressed and without any delay he drove me straight back to the community. I felt humiliated when I saw the girls waiting for me in the yard. ‘Don’t worry. You made your point. You’re going home,’ said Dubrilla. She was disappointed in me and that was the last time we spoke.

  Chapter 12

  BACK TO SQUARE ONE

  ‘Lord Jesus, create in me an intolerance for alcohol and drugs that will prevent me from ever offending those who love me,’ I prayed over and over again, as I landed in Dublin airport. I couldn’t afford to mess up this time. There was no sign of any gardaí and I began to wonder if Father Adrian had been telling porkies about me being on CrimeCall.

  My grandmother welcomed me back into her home and she was happy to see me back in full health. The rest of my family, however, were not entirely convinced that I would stay clean. They knew that being back in Ballymun so soon was dangerous for me. All I had to do was walk out my front door and heroin was there. But at the time I couldn’t see myself anywhere else. The pull of the past was too strong.

  By now my mother had split up with Mick. She had found out that he had been living a double life. He had been in another relationship for years without anybody knowing. When the truth came out, she was devastated to say the least. The life that she had built up for herself and Philip came tumbling down around her. In a short amount of time she lost almost everything. The house they had lived in on the southside was taken from under her feet, along with many of her material possessions. The break-up left her shattered and bitter towards everyone.

  Myself and my mother were like strangers to each other at this stage. I knew about the break-up only because my grandmother had told me. Sometimes I would see her in my grandmother’s house, but our conversations were light and of very little meaning. I also knew that she had taken heavily to the drink. It was frustrating to know these things about my mother and to have such a big wall between us. We were both beyond each other’s reach, living in separate worlds. And for now there was nothing that we could do about it.

  So, she made the decision to do what she had done best all of her life. She ran. She packed a bag and she moved over to America to live with my uncle Jonathon and his girlfriend, Jennifer. And in a way I was happy to see her go. She had nothing to keep her in Ireland. Philip was fifteen years old and he had decided to stay with his father. Everyone knew that my mother was on a slippery slope and that staying with Jonathon was the best thing for her.

  My grandmother urged me to get myself a job. ‘It will keep you sane,’ she told me. One of my friends, Antoinette, got me a job in a taxi company. Two years older than me, she had sometimes dabbled with taking heroin, but Antoinette knew of my own battle with drugs and she promised me that she would never even mention the word ‘heroin’ in my presence.

  Getting a job and going out into the real world completely drug-free was a big step forward for me, but my vocabulary was limited to drugs and religion and I had no idea of how to communicate with normal people. So I stuck close to Antoinette and it wasn’t long before we were good friends. For the next couple of months I stayed clean, abiding by my plan of prayer and work, but my resistance to the drugs was wearing thin. This was hardly surprising: after all, I was back in Ballymun, where my associations with drugs were everywhere and I had fooled myself into thinking that I was strong enough to hang around with Antoinette and other old friends who were using drugs. It would only be a matter of time before I had a needle in my arm again. By now I was under no illusion that I could control my drug use. I was managing to keep it at bay, but I knew that it would only be a matter of time before I was back to square one.

  The frustration that I felt towards myself when I came back from Italy, and all the work I had done there and ended up back on drugs, was indescribable. And it all happened so quickly. I had convinced myself that I was strong enough to help my friend Antoinette and to stay clear of drugs. My heart had been in the right place, but all along I had been unconsciously setting myself up to use again. I was right back where I had left off.

  As I lay in my cell in the Bridewell garda station after being nicked for shop-lifting, I tried to get my head around how stupid I had been. What the hell is wrong with me? I screamed at myself for the millionth time. Why can’t I think before I act? Why do I keep ending up in these fucking situations? God, I’m so sorry. I’ll do anything, just pl
ease don’t let me get locked up again.

  I knew that if I came before the judge who had, reluctantly, allowed me to go to Italy, he would lock me up straight away. I found out that Derek was still in prison since I’d been in Italy. He had taken the rap for all our charges. Even the one that was on CrimeCall. Father Adrian had been telling the truth all along. I dreaded seeing Derek again.

  Thankfully, that day none of my previous charges was mentioned in court and my new charge was put back until another date. I was free to go for now. I was more than relieved. I made my way back to my grandmother’s house. My grandfather went mad when he saw me. He knew that I was back on drugs and he gave me a right earful, calling me all sorts of names.

  How many times had I been in this position before? That first drug always left me a wreck, and once I used once, nothing could stop me. But my habit wasn’t in full swing yet and I knew that I had to do something very quickly before I got strung out. I decided to ring my old friend, Big Mick. He had recently bought himself a new house in the country. And if anybody could help me, he was that person. After helping me that time in the Rutland and taking me to Texas, Big Mick had kept in touch with me. He took a genuine interest in me and had always supported me as best he could. After telling Big Mick everything that had happened, he agreed to let me go through cold turkey in his place. The agreement was that I would stay with him for two weeks and we would take things from there.

  But two weeks turned into months and I ended up staying with him for two years. Big Mick was a character who had an amazing ability to make everyone around him laugh, but he had had his fair share of difficulties in his life. He had been a chronic drug user for a long time, but with the help of Narcotics Anonymous he had managed to get clean and get a good life for himself. He knew that in order to stay clean he had to give back to people what had been given to him. He had a big heart and he went out of his way to help others, never losing his sense of humour and always seeing the funny side of things. We spent the first few months of my stay in the country laughing our heads off and amusing ourselves by slagging all the culchies.

  My experience in Community Cenacolo had taught me that the only time I felt truly fulfilled was when I prayed. I was terrified now of having a relapse, so I frantically prayed morning, noon and night. Big Mick had also been encouraged in his recovery to make contact with a power greater than himself, but it was something that he could never succumb to and he laughed it off as though it didn’t apply to somebody like him. He watched my transformation in amazement and he began to question me about prayer and meditation. We would sit for hours philosophising about spirituality and life.

  It was during this time that myself and Big Mick became really close. I was beginning to have feelings towards him. I was sure he could give me everything that I needed: love, security, happiness and fun. He had been clean for ten years now and maybe he could teach me how to live my life without drugs. I was shocked when I began to realise that Big Mick was falling for me as well. I wondered what my family would think about all this. Mick was double my age, forty-two years old. I had never before looked at Big Mick in the light of being my lover. What was a lover anyway? I had no idea. Steo had been my first love. All the others were a necessity to keep my drug habit going, or a drug-fuelled mistake, so, in many ways, I felt that being with Big Mick would be my first real relationship.

  At first we took things very slowly and we kept our relationship quiet. Mick treated me like gold, looking after me as best as he could, protecting me from myself and my addiction. At first I was living on a pink cloud. I was finally free from drugs and Mick was teaching me how to cope with my life drug-free. But before long everything came crashing down around me.

  The prayer was becoming like another addiction. I couldn’t function without it. It was my great escape. The heavy meditation was bringing me deeper and deeper into myself, leaving me crippled with fear and paranoia. But without the prayer I was convinced that I would relapse.

  Mick was beginning to worry about my mental health. He encouraged me to get a job and to get out more. I took his advice and I forced myself to get a job in a nursing home. I was working with patients who had Alzheimer’s and I found this work really rewarding. For the first time in my life I felt that I was doing something good with myself and was finally part of society. But something still wasn’t right. I was an emotional wreck and I quickly realised that I was incapable of looking after myself, let alone Alzheimer’s patients. Life without drugs seemed unbearable. Now that I no longer had drugs to muffle the pain, I had no control over my mind and my emotions. Memories of my past seemed to overwhelm me and I was convinced that anyone with whom I came into contact knew that I had been a drug addict. They knew exactly what I was thinking and how I was feeling, I knew. I was completely transparent and defenceless. I desperately tried to combat my negative thoughts with prayer, but the more I forced myself to feel better, the quicker I slipped into a state of depression. I was having a nervous breakdown. My doctor prescribed me anti-depressants, which seemed to give me some stability for a couple of months, but then came the extreme mood swings and panic attacks. After six months of living in the country I became phobic about leaving the house. If people saw the state I was in, they would have had me committed.

  Big Mick tried everything in his power to help me: bringing me for acupuncture, counselling, art therapy and visits to Lough Derg, where I ran around barefoot with my rosary beads in a frenzied attempt to wash away my negative thoughts. But nothing seemed to work. Staying clean seemed more difficult than using drugs. I couldn’t live my life like this. I was fucked up on drugs and off them. At least when I was using drugs I was oblivious to my defects, I thought to myself.

  And then the idea took hold. Maybe now that I was living a quiet life in the country with Mick, the odd turn-on of heroin would be ok. No-one would have to know. Instead of going to work, I could sneak up to Dublin, score some gear and be back before Mick had any suspicions. I eventually came to the conclusion that I just had to use. I had no choice any more. Sure I was going to use heroin at some stage anyway, so I may as well stop tormenting myself and just do it now.

  The journey to Dublin was torture. I had two long hours to battle with my own mind. Use drugs, don’t use drugs. Don’t think about it, just do it, my thoughts were spinning around in my head. My heart was in my mouth when I scored the heroin. I knew the dealer and I was happy when she invited me into her flat to have a turn-on. I couldn’t wait any longer to get the stuff into me. Once in the dealer’s flat, I slipped back into the old me; that old familiar feeling of copping out of life and not caring any more was back in full swing. I don’t remember much after that.

  When I woke up, I was on a stretcher surrounded by children and worried onlookers. I was being wheeled into an ambulance. Then I saw Big Mick. How did he get here? I thought, but then everything went blank again.

  When I eventually came around I realised that I had overdosed. The children had found me lying on the stairs in the block in Ballymun where I had gone to score. The dealer must have got a fright when I overdosed, dragged me out of her flat and left me there to die. When I hadn’t come home from work, Mick knew exactly where I had gone. He drove to Dublin straight away. And when he saw the ambulance he knew that it was for me.

  Once I recovered from my overdose, the weeks that followed saw me sneaking back and forward to Dublin and having sly turnons in Big Mick’s house. But there was no fooling Big Mick. He could tell a mile off that I was back using drugs. He was heartbroken. But there was worse in store. Exposure to my addiction was simply too much for Mick. One day he came home from work and I knew. He walked through the front door with his eyes glossy and pinned to the back of his head. Ah no, was I seeing things? I thought. ‘Please don’t tell me that you’ve used,’ I asked him, already knowing the answer. ‘Oh my god, I don’t believe this,’ was all I could say.

  I was disgusted with myself. Now Big Mick was back using after a full ten years being clean
and it was all my fault. What did I expect when I was using right under his nose? I felt sick to my stomach when I looked at him. I loved Big Mick. I needed Big Mick. And he couldn’t fall apart on me now.

  Deep down I knew that getting involved romantically with Big Mick wasn’t right. At times I had even admitted this to him. He had become something of a crutch for me. I was totally dependent on him for everything and I was responsible for dragging him down. We both fell apart. Big Mick drank every day and drugged himself into oblivion: the only time we left the house was to travel to Dublin to score some heroin.

  Then one morning I found Big Mick lying on the floor in a heap. He was withering away. A shell of the man that he used to be. With a knife in his hand and surrounded by empty bottles of spirits, he was threatening to kill himself. After wrestling the knife from his hand, I had no choice but to call our neighbour for help. That morning was a very sad sight to see. Big Mick was admitted to a mental hospital.

  _____

  The weeks that followed were the darkest of my life. Mick was gone and I was left alone in his house. Everything that I looked at reminded me of him and the damage that I had done. Big Mick had told me not to blame myself for his relapse. He said that he was big and hairy enough to make his own decisions and that it had been a long time coming anyway. But I didn’t believe him.

  I tried to soothe my own guilt by praying. But using drugs and praying just didn’t mix. It was a recipe for disaster. My mind was consumed with negativity: as far as I was concerned God had left me alone, only to be replaced by demons. They were there, I was convinced of it. I couldn’t see them, but I could hear them and I could feel their presence. They were following me everywhere I went and watching every movement I made. I was paralysed with fear. I spent most of my time in bed with the covers pulled over my head. ‘You’re not going mad, you’re not going mad,’ I told myself over and over again. But I was. Suicide was beginning to look very appealing. All that was left for me to do now was to join Big Mick in the nut-house. And that is what I did. I voluntarily signed myself into a mental institution.