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Amy Winehouse was found dead last Saturday after a high-profile struggle with drink and drug abuse. Here, former user Brendan Magee reveals how it feels to wrestle with addiction – and why even a family’s best intentions cannot make an addict stay clean.
WHEN A HIGH-PROFILE tragedy happens, the media make a fortune out of it.
It’s big news, it sells papers and pulls in viewers. Public train wrecks are great for business. The constant coverage of Amy Winehouse’s struggle with addiction was a sick form of entertainment. But for families living with alcoholism and addiction it isn’t entertaining. I know my own family was devastated by alcoholism and addiction, seriously destroyed. A lot of families in both Ireland and the UK are facing the same problems.
Photos of a public meltdown don’t tell you anything about the pressures and problems that drive a person into addiction. A lack of acceptance at home drove me. I felt a great sense of loss from a young age. My grandmother reared me until I was three, and when I was taken from that environment and placed in the family home with an alcoholic father, I really felt it. I hated that feeling and I tried to escape into anything and everything. When I found drugs, I thought I’d found a comfort. I didn’t realise how devastating it would be, so I just went for it. I progressed from simple things like cigarettes and cider through the whole lot – from Tipp-Ex, glue and hash to speed, coke and eventually heroin.
When you’re using, you’re not thinking straight. You are consumed with finding ways and means of getting more drugs. The obsession and that compulsion to use is just really heavy. The physical damage can be huge. You don’t eat, so you lose a lot of weight and have no energy. When you use needles you can get abscesses and all sorts of illnesses and infections as well as the big ones, Hep C and HIV (which I was spared thanks to clean needles from Merchants Quay). It’s just devastating.
Psychologically it’s hell. The self loathing is really amplified. You hate yourself and you turn everything inward. It’s a vicious circle. The physical addiction is terrible and the mental obsession and the compulsion to use is so strong, really strong. You feel worthless, thinking you’ll never get out of it and you use more drugs to suppress that hopeless feeling. You just keep pushing stuff down when it comes up, pushing it down and covering it up with more drink and more drugs.
Families try to step in, but they get pushed away. You can bring a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. You can only show them the way, then it’s up to them to do the walking. It’s important that families don’t blame themselves. And don’t forget the other children in the family – because the addict becomes the focus of attention even though it’s negative. The rest of the family needs to be loved and nurtured. They need help dealing with the stress and conflict that addiction creates in the family.
When you finally enter rehab it’s tough. The emotional pain you have to deal with can feel overwhelming. It’s commendable when anyone goes into rehab and stays and sticks with it. It’s really hard. The emotions you have been pushing down with drink and drugs begin to surface. You can start feeling like a ball of shame and guilt and you want to run from that feeling, back to the drugs and drinking. Some people do run and the cycle of self-hatred starts all over again. But many people, like myself, stay and do the hard work it takes to rebuild our self-worth and self-respect. You have to forgive yourself for the mistakes you’ve made, for the damage you have done to yourself and others. Making amends to your family and rebuilding relationships is all part of the on-going process of recovery.
But many young people aren’t even given the chance for recovery from addiction. I think there should be more focus in Ireland on people getting off drugs, and not just on giving them methadone maintenance. I think the focus should be on rehab beds and detox units that help young people move out of addiction. There are an estimated 20,000 heroin users in Ireland and we have a shortage of 104 detox beds and 252 rehab beds. You can’t break free from addiction if there’s no place to go for help.
Brendan Magee will graduate in 2012 with a Social Science degree from UCD and is an addiction counsellor working toward his IAAAC accreditation. He completed his drug-free rehab at Merchants Quay Ireland.
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Good on you Brendan, great to hear a good news story, keep up the great work.
Great article thanks. I totally agree when the author says ” there should be more focus in Ireland on people getting off drugs, and not just on giving them methadone maintenance.” It is a big mistake to focus on methadone maintenance and not recovery.
Well done Brendan. I wish u well for the future. Regarding methadone, something needs to be done about the proliferation of clinics in the city centre – the area around Middle Abbey St in particular, often resembles a scene from a b-rated zombie movie.
Great article. Alcohol is the elephant in the room though; it dwarfs the other drugs put together, it is the easiest and most socially acceptable to obtain and it is socially pervasive. Yet we pretend it’s different to the other drugs in the damage it does when looking at drug policy, a paradox which helps no one. It is so hard during a young adult’s formative years to develop socially and eschew alcohol as we’re busy pushing the drug into each other’s faces. The herd has a low self-image when it isn’t bladdered it seems, which is temporarily mitigated but never resolved by alcohol.
That is a wonderful article and hopefully anyone messing around with drugs or alcohol will realise how it escalates. @ pen name I can see what you mean, any excuse will do, and it is not for a ‘high’ it’s to try and feel normal – I’ve never used drugs but have seen what they do and I know the awful devastation of addiction. That was an inspiring article – and thank God for the likes of Sr. Consillio and her good work, because if it was left to the State ….!!!!!
Fair play Brendan, great piece! Addiction is an illness.. Like Cancer and heart disease.. Your article really captures the pain of addiction. Awareness and sympathy banishes shame and promotes rehabilitation.
Thanks for sharing your story Brendan, I hope this opens peoples minds a bit more about addiction to drugs and alcohol instead of judging people,i.e f Amy Winehouse. Alcohol and Drugs are the sympton not the cause, addiction is a disease, I hope people understand that a bit better now.
Thanks you for your well written article Brendan. You conveyed the loneliness and self-hatred that is amplified by the addiction and the need to bury those feelings of shame and self-loathing very well. I hope that some of the people who have been writing hateful and indifferent messages over the net in the last few days will understand addiction a bit better after reading your article. Any recovering addict feels ‘There go I but for the grace of God’ when they hear of a person who just couldn’t hold on and keep to the path as they know that feeling but have been lucky enough to hold on just that bit longer – its an awful sorrow and waste of a life! People that say it’s their own fault, they brought it on themselves, etc. are just ignorant.
Great article, Brendan. Congratulations on becoming sober and what you are doing with your life.
For my part I’ve been there are have been sober for over 20 years. The yearning never goes away. I am grateful that my bloody mindedness helps me to resist the urge to drink (my poison). This is a day-by-day fight. At least I can at last bear to be around drink (my wife enjoys the occasional glass of something, and I don’t discourage her as she is strong, is the one in control and doesn’t exceed her limits.
My history of abuse began as a teenager. Seduced by the nice, warm and liberating feeling of cider or mild ale, occasionally getting smashed on bad red wine or cheap sherry. As I grew older, but not wiser, my tolerance and consumption increased in equal measures. My first job was for an international brewing conglomerate (where part of the pay was in beer – we were ‘paid’ a tin of lager a day – and lunch in the management dining room included a free ‘open’ bar). The next job had an employees bar – evenings only – with subsidised drinks.
I found that planning all my leisure activities included a ‘where’s the pub?’ element – even when cycling, sailing or going to Buddhist meetings (another reason why I’m dry).
It had to end. There were two ways: up and down, For me there was no happy medium. I had to kill the demon or it would kill me.
Finally my breakthrough came when I was put on a drug regime that needed regular blood tests to ascertain whether the drugs were having effect. On the recommended maximum after only a few months, the serum level in mid December 1989 was tested as below the therapeutic level. I was drinking heavily at that time – a couple of bottles of wine and up to a bottle of scotch or gin (in fact, I’d probably have drunk antifreeze I was so wired). It came to 28th December and I woke up to the fact that I had only hazy memories of Christmas and some blackout areas where I couldn’t remember at all) and I decided that enough was enough. I would try and give up for a month, just to see how I felt. I did the month, then continued for a second and then three and I decided that I didn’t need to drink at all. I celebrated by giving away my ‘cellar’ of beers, wines and spirits. My serum level by this time had shot up from below therapeutic to toxic (and my tablets were decreased to a sensible level where, absent one further decrease after a further 10 years, they have remained ever since.)
Do I sympathise with the plight of Amy Winehouse? Yes of course I do. Her pain was too easily assuaged by intoxicants which became the norm, instead of the relief. Sad to say that her notoriety as a user and abuser in no small way worked against her. Her pain would be caused by the withdrawal of the prop that was meant to support her.
Did it kill her? The jury is still out on that one. Was her fame simply the spur to a life of abuse? In this she joins a select band of geniuses that have been taken away by their talent and by their helplessness: Jimi Hendrix, Dylan Thomas, Janis Joplin, the list is long, depressingly long. Now it seems as though another talent has been extinguished by a human frailty.
I have little doubt that she won’t be the last to meet a premature end.
Great article. Brendan has made it very real.
I don’t agree with Dave, above. Brendan has explained very clearly his reasons for using drugs and eventually becoming addicted.
I lived with an alcoholic family member for 17 years, so I understand Dave’s feeling that the addict is a burden. However, my family member chose not to take the courageous route of facing up to his underlying problems and caused tremendous damage to those around him until his death.
Not alone has Brendan dealt with his problems, but he is now reaching out to others to help them overcome theirs.
No-one chooses to become an addict, but they do chose to remain one (or not).
I hope Brendan keeps writing.
XXX
+1
With personal experience of family members with drug and alcohol addition , I fully agree with your comments.
Excellent article Brendan.
Users always have an excuse, and it’s never ‘to get high’.
Brill article but let me be the devils advocate.. There is absolutely no excuse anymore for anyone to take drugs knowing that they may become addicted.. There has been more media coverage world wide in the past ten years than ever, so, you take any opiate or any other addictive drug I have no sympathy and your only a burden. Tough but true
For many substances, it only takes one weak moment to activate an addiction. Do you think no child of yours will ever have such a weak moment? Do you think there’s no pressure on children from peers, or even dealers, to “try” a hit, “for free”? Your comments are ill-considered and naive at best, and I genuinely hope you never have cause to regret them.
All you red thumbs are obviously the do gooders , if ya take drugs “f*** ya, that’s what. Think.
If you read what I said you will see my point is not about addicts in the past, I am talking about the present and the future, I dont care about circumstances , we have all had it rough in some fashion.. To clarify, if someone , for instance, started to take illegal , addictive drugs TODAY I have absolutely zero sympathy for them
I stand by my previous response.
Brendan your a wonderful example to others in how you can change your life around. Well done on all fronts, giving up the drugs and going to college, you must be sooo proud of yourself. Robert well done too, any addiction is difficult to kick but alcohol is probably the worst in that it’s is everywhere and it’s part of social life in Ireland.
Great piece Brendan, and well written too Robert. Stories like yours show that rehab CAN work.
Thanks for sharing your stories.
Great piece Brendan. I agree that methadone maintenance programmes are a poor substitute for detox and rehab but the latter is so expensive that it’s hard to imagine any money will be found. It’s also hard to get big donors to give money to something like this as they often don’t feel comfortable highlighting the issue. Is there not a lot more heroin addicts, I thought it was something like 10,000.
Hi Lisa, the 20,000 addicts mentioned in the piece are just the number registered, when one takes into account the amount of addicts who never present themselves to services that number increases. People with a middle class back-round tend not to present (especially Cocaine addicts) as there can be a stigma attached with it.
Regards
Brendan
brendan im proud of you pal was there with you in those early days and know first hand what you went through.so happy to be reading this article in usa of all places and admire and respect you.keep up the good work
Nowhere in this article do you mention the CHOICES that you made that led to your addiction, you chose to go down that road just as you chose to go to rehab. All too often addiction, in all its forms, is used as a cop-out.
Too often we start to see people as just an addict, be it a “druggie” or “alco” or whatever else unhelpful terms we come up with. The person behind the chaotic exterior gets lost to the outside world, and sometimes even to themselves. Hearing stories like this article and related comments helps us all to better understand the slippery slope in and tough climb out of addiction. Accusations and condemnations have no place in this discussion. If we look at how anyone becomes an addict, it’s a foolish person who thinks they could never have a moment in their lives where they might have taken that road. Like the bane of concealment of mental distress that plagues this country, esp rural areas, it’s high time we all started to discuss addiction proactively, both drug and alcohol, as something that affects everyone of us, in all walks of society, not just on the margins. I think all of us should at this stage realise that “There, but for…., go we”.
Good stuff bren
Great article. Thanks for the info, very helpful. BTW, if anyone needs to fill out a â1963 DD 689, [Mar 1963]â, I found a blank form here: “http://www.glwach.amedd.army.mil” and also here “form Sick“
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