Dying to Survive: Updated 10-year anniversary edition

By Rachael Keogh

Rachael Keogh was catapulted into the public consciousness when a shocking image of her needle-ravaged arms – skin burnt from injecting heroin into her wasted veins – made front pages around the country. Desperate for help, she made a public appeal to secure one of just 27 detox beds in Ireland so that she could reclaim her life from the drugs that had consumed it. What followed was an extraordinary story of grit and determination as she embarked on her recovery journey.
Dying to Survive is Rachael's classic, bestselling addiction memoir, now with a new introduction reflecting on her struggles with relapse and what has changed about the drugs culture in Ireland.
'The best book by far about the drugs explosion in Dublin' Irish Independent
'This book should be on the school curriculum' Evening Echo
'This is an incredible story, told completely straight – no sensationalism, no self-pity and plenty of wicked humour thrown in. Gripping, extraordinary and so shocking you have to keep reminding yourself that this really happens – this is one all teenagers and parents should read.' Evening Echo
'Through sheer grit and determination, Rachael pulled herself out of the hell she was living in … what an achievement. She is an inspiration.' Alison O'Reilly, Mail on Sunday

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gill Books
• Release date: Apr 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9780717151615

Rachael Keogh

Rachael Keogh is now a 39-year-old Dubliner, the mother of one son, an interior design student, writer, playwright and scriptwriter, activist and artist.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION 2019

It has been ten years since I wrote my book Dying to Survive. I believe if you are given the opportunity to share your story on something as life-threatening as addiction, with that comes a certain responsibility to tell the truth.

In my first introduction, I said that ‘I wrote this book to understand why I became an addict and to close this chapter in my life once and for all’. I laugh now at my own naivety. Little did I know that with a history like mine, not only was the real story just beginning, it never actually ends.

That has been one of the nastiest pills I have ever had to swallow. Addiction never goes away. Not in my case anyway. When I first became drug-free in 2006, I was so afraid of dying and losing my arms that I would have walked through brick walls to break free from drugs. I was so driven by an unconscious hurt and rage that when the media gave me a platform, I wanted to highlight the lack of drugs services in Ireland for drug users and their families so that I could shine a light on how society and our government viewed and treated the likes of us.

I had walked in those shoes. I felt like scum, but I knew that I wasn’t. I was treated like scum and looked down on by people because I was on drugs and had rotten arms. I had experienced addiction so intimately that I knew I was up against something much bigger than myself, and that I certainly wasn’t doing what I was doing by choice. Having encountered red tape everywhere I turned for help, I honestly suspected a sinister element regarding how addiction is perceived and treated, but I tried very hard not to point the finger at anyone. After all, I was the one in question, not anyone else.

In all of this I tried to put my recovery first. I embraced motherhood; I went to meetings; I worked a twelve-step programme. I got a job and went back to college and tried to focus on myself, my son and live my life, but I was still thawing out from years of abuse.

It took me around eight years to connect with any kind of real emotion. Everything I wrote about in my book – my relationship with my mother, the rejection I felt, my dad being an addict, all of the things I did to feed my habit – hit me all at once.

And then there’s the question that everyone asks: ‘Did you relapse?’

Well, the answer is yes, I did. I’m ashamed to say it but I don’t believe that the shame is my own. It’s an old socially driven idea in my head that I feel I should be ashamed, especially after getting so much help and support.

‘How on earth could you relapse, Rachael?’

‘You were doing so well.’

‘How could you! You have everything going for you and so much potential.’

This is how I imagine you, the reader, responding if you don’t understand addiction. The frustration and annoyance of it, believe me I know! I have already had that response from people close to me. The bewilderment and bafflement of addiction, which I am sure many families of drug users are very familiar with.

I relapsed for three months and, once again, I barely made it back. My friend Alison O’Reilly said to me at the time, ‘Rachael, if you relapsed after eight years of being drug-free, does that mean you could relapse again?’

It kills me to say it and it feels like glass in my mouth, but the answer is yes, I could.

No one wants to hear it, but unfortunately it is the very nature of addiction. The soul-crushing repetitive state of going around in circles, laced with a certain amount of amnesia about how bad it was the last time. Any knowledge of why I do what I do is of no use to me in that moment of relapse, because the old cliché that the relapse happens well before the first drug is consumed is so true. The drug is the solution, and there is the familiar relief from the savage state of mind that someone like me can experience when the drugs are removed from the picture in recovery.

I honestly did not want to get clean again. Not again! It was devastating for everyone involved. The guilt of it. I knew that to get clean again meant feeling everything, because the wolf was already at the door.

My mother and I had a huge fight, which my aunt Jacqueline had recommended we have a very long time ago. And Jacqueline was right. It needed to happen. We are now closer than ever before. My mother is my best friend and, being a mother myself, which has been my driving force in recovery, has opened my eyes to how difficult it must have been for her and my whole family. My relationship with my mother has been one of the most healing aspects of my recovery and was badly needed for us both, but it took a lot of work and time. When I gained a new perspective towards my mother and let down my walls, my mother could then be my mother. I do not blame her in any way. I see that I became very sick from my drug use and to suit myself I unintentionally milked the fact that my mother wasn’t there. I hadn’t healed from how I felt when she had to leave me in my grandmother’s when I was young, but I have now. We have now!

My father also became drug-free, and the last time I saw him he apologised wholeheartedly for not being able to be there. His eyes were clear and he was happy, his last words being that he ‘could hear the birds singing for the first time in years’. He passed away not long after that and I am so grateful to have had that moment with him. I now understand him completely.

I understand what he was up against.

There were many times throughout recovery that I thought I wasn’t going to make it, and at times it felt harder than all of my addiction put together, which proves to me that the drugs were a symptom of something much deeper. Something that I don’t claim to understand and I don’t believe anyone really does. Some people call it trauma, others call it attachment. I call it both of those things as well as being a biological/psychosocial issue combined with an enormous sensitivity to certain drugs and alcohol. I continue to address all of these issues in my life and I have certainly learned to manage really well. Though I have had to very reluctantly accept that it will never really leave me.

I have used drugs since I was really young and in many ways I became conditioned to think in a very particular way. That is the real challenge in recovery: changing your way of thinking and behaving through whatever recovery formula works best for you. For me it is the twelve-step programme combined with various other spiritual and practical tools. The longer I stay drug-free, the more I need to be reminded of what I am suffering with, because addiction is the only illness I know of that tells you that you don’t have an illness. Hence the fact that the addict is always the last person to know that they are an addict.

This blinding aspect of addiction and the sheer lack of perspective – particularly after achieving a long-term drug-free period – knowing that if I use drugs even once I could actually die or lose my child and family, and to take that drug regardless of the consequences, indicates to me that addiction is indeed a powerful entity and cements my belief that it is a real illness.

I also believe that there is a difference between people like me and people who have a drug dependency. People with drug dependencies might look and behave like I did while in active addiction, but with the right support they can become drug-free and not experience all of the issues that I have in recovery. I do not believe that they are addicts in the same sense that I am or that they have an illness. I feel strongly about this because it is important not to categorise people. I do, however, believe that we need and deserve the same support and opportunity to discover for ourselves what we need in order to recover as best we can and integrate back into society.

I have lots of friends in recovery and we are the last ones standing. I am always struck by how talented, resourceful and creative a lot of my friends who have achieved a drug-free status are. We made it out together with very little help from our government. So many people have died that it sometimes haunts me. A generation of people wiped out from addiction: sons, daughters, brothers and sisters, mainly working class, innocent to what lay ahead.

After ten years of trying to challenge society’s perception of addiction and highlighting the gaps in drugs services – through telling my own story, through theatre, through my art, through documentaries and through campaigning for the decriminalisation of drug use since 2013 – I have come to the conclusion that my suspicion that there is a sinister element at play in how we deal with the problem of addiction is correct. I believe that there has been a wilful ignorance on behalf of our government to really address the problem, with the solution being right under their nose. Solutions that have been pointed out on record by various politicians since the 1970s and have been questionably ignored: that addiction should be dealt with by the healthcare system rather than the criminal justice system.

I was dealt with by the criminal justice system and, looking back now, I believe that I was pushed by the state into a terrifying situation in Mountjoy Prison where I was exposed by older women to dirty needles and hits of heroin into my neck and groin. I was at risk of contracting HIV and I contracted hepatitis C, which thankfully is no longer detectable in my body. I was also bullied by other inmates. I was fifteen years old. Prior to imprisonment I had been turned away from a methadone clinic where I sought help, and was told that I was too young to be recognised as a drug user. Yet I was old enough to be imprisoned for petty drug-related charges.

Imprisonment was never a deterrent; I spent ten years of my life in and out of Mountjoy, driven by my addiction. I know that I chose to take that first drug and that I made many mistakes for which I have paid a heavy price, but I also feel let down by our government. The trauma of prison has never fully gone away. If my family had money, I would never have gone to prison. To me the punishment far outweighed the crime.

Most of the women I wrote about in this book, who were imprisoned with me for possession of drugs charges, never found a way out. Many have died because the effects of prison severely hamper your life, and the real issue of addiction is never fully addressed in prison. In fact, drugs are readily available to buy.

The fact that it is mainly working-class people who are most affected by drugs and usually imprisoned as a result has made me question the structural inequalities of our society, which are set up by our government. I believe that poverty breeds stress and trauma, stress and trauma breed addiction, and addiction breeds crime. We are essentially criminalising the poor, not addicts. And being poor is not a choice when you grow up in an area that has little to no amenities, poor education, poor-quality housing and very little opportunity to be socially mobilised.

I want to know why it is that our government seem to cut us adrift and allow us to sedate ourselves? How come we still only have thirty detox beds to an estimated 20,000 drug users in Ireland? Why is methadone our main solution to becoming drug-free? Why has so little changed in the last ten years and who exactly is profiting here?

I personally see it as a form of class genocide. Strong words, I know, but too many people have died for me to hold back now. If I had grown up in Portugal, a country that has cut their addiction problem in half and that seeks drug users out on the streets to offer them help, maybe my life would be different and some of my friends might still be alive.

I believe that an addict can only be helped so much though, and then the rest is up to them. Admitting relapse is a personal risk for me, but I do so in the hope of making people aware that addiction is not a choice. It is an illness and should be treated as one. I hope that by telling my story I can reassure any addict that relapse is sometimes part of the journey, and it takes a ton of compassion for yourself to get back up and keep trying. Connecting with the part of ourselves we are so afraid of – our own shadows – is not as scary as we might think. In fact, with the right perspective it is a wonderful adventure and sometimes a place full of treasures. I travelled the world and searched everywhere for answers only to learn that the answers were inside of me the whole time. If only I had the courage to just slow down and listen.

I do now!

I love my life and, no matter what, I appreciate every moment of it and all the lessons I have learned from my past. The moments of bliss, clarity and absolute relief in knowing how blessed I am to have survived that particular war, of watching my son grow up into a kind-hearted, super bright and beautiful young boy who I am so proud of, and who is the very reason I am where I am today. Senán forces me to be my very best. He is my absolute everything. The relief I feel in knowing that the buck can stop with me and that my family can sleep at night without worrying if I am dead or alive. The moments of uncovering new skills and certain goals, such as surviving my twenties! The freedom I often experience and being able to laugh at it all in hindsight. Those are the precious gifts that fighting my addiction and becoming drug-free have given me, gifts worth more to me than gold.

Rachael Keogh

March 2019

INTRODUCTION 2009

My name is Rachael. I’m smartly dressed, a college student and the mother of a gorgeous baby boy. I have everything I want in life: work I like, the support of my family and friends, my son. I’m a normal twenty-nine-year-old, but I’m also a recovering heroin addict.

For fourteen years, beginning at the tender age of eleven, I put every drug I could think of inside my body: starting at teenage raves with hash and ‘E’, moving on to other pills such as Napps and benzodiazepines, then to smoking heroin and then to injecting it. To fund my drug addiction I did everything imaginable: I broke into houses, shop-lifted and stole from my own family, and I did other things of which I’m so ashamed I have difficulty even thinking about them now.

It would be easy to say that I took drugs because everyone else did. After all, I grew up in Ballymun when drug addiction was rife in the high-rise blocks. Many of my friends took drugs: some only occasionally, others became full-blown addicts like me, spiralling downwards into crime, ill-health and worse. But really, I took drugs to hide my anger at the family I felt had abandoned me and at the emptiness I felt inside, which only drugs seemed to fill. This anger took me to some dark places: to drug squats, to shared needles, to every garda station in the city, in and out of court, and to Mountjoy prison; it took me to nasty people who did me no good and to a side of life no-one should have to experience. My attempts to run from my past took me far away from Ireland and urged me to take solace in whatever I could find to fill the void, even God and prayer.

I sincerely tried to stop taking drugs: I went to detox after detox, had several stints in rehab, none of which managed to break the hold which drugs had over me. It was only when I came to terms with the pain and hurt I’d been running from for so long and accepted just how far I was willing to go to avoid it, that I could even begin to think about my addiction and what it meant to me. And even then I had to be literally at death’s door, very little time left to live, my arms mutilated, my lungs clogged with residual heroin, my fingers clubbed from the poor circulation caused by drug use, and with hepatitis C. Only then did I decide that enough was enough.

And then, my prayers were answered. I found a source of comfort and support in Narcotics Anonymous and in their daily meetings, where I met others just like me or who had travelled the road before me, who accepted me and didn’t judge me. I found a rehabilitation centre where, in a gentle and non-judgmental environment, I learned to conquer my demons. I learned to find hope in small things, in the mundanity of everyday life, in the little routines which I had shunned for so long. I came to realise that it wasn’t the drugs that were holding me back in a life I had come to hate—it was me, and only I could change things.

I used to wonder how on earth people could cope with life without drugs and now I know. Life has given me so much since I stopped taking heroin. I stuck with the rehab and remained clean far longer than the six months which I had managed before. I managed to repair my relationship with my family, to build bridges with those I had hurt so badly and who had hurt me in turn. I learned to forgive myself for the past, to love myself. And life seemed to answer me by offering me new friends, new opportunities and the gift of a beautiful baby boy.

Whilst I was at my worst, the media offered me a lifeline and I found myself and my story splashed over the front pages and on the television. I became notorious, as the ‘girl with the arms’. Sure, I told them my story for a reason: because I wanted to get clean and could think of no other way, and because I wanted to show just how bad services are for drug users in this country. The reason I have written this book is the same in some ways—I hope that in reading my story, those who know drug users, their family and friends, who despair of ever seeing them recover, will know that there is hope and that the powerlessness they feel about their loved one’s addiction is normal. Addicts choose to take that first drug, and only the addict him or herself can walk away. But I have also written my story for other reasons: to understand why I became an addict, to forgive myself and my family and to close this chapter in my life, once and for all. To move on, with my son, to a future I thought I’d never see.

Rachael Keogh

13 March 2009

Chapter 1 mages

    THE BEGINNING OF THE END

JULY 2006

It was a race against the clock, as I could already feel the sickness kicking in. Although I was sweating, what felt like a layer of frost was starting to form down my back. I couldn’t allow myself to think about the sickness, though. All I could think about was getting the money and getting the gear.

‘Are the shops not open late tonight?’ I asked my friend Neil, as we dragged ourselves up South William Street.

‘No, they only stay open late on Thursdays,’ Neil replied, a look of desperation on his face.

Things weren’t looking good; every shop we passed had its shutters down and appeared to be closed. Then, just as we were about to give up and start to think of plan B or C, we noticed that the Bag Shop was open. I took a deep breath as I entered the shop, preparing to engage in a game of cat and mouse with the staff and security guards. I knew that in order to make a few quid, we would have to fleece the place. Our gear cost two hundred euro for an eighth—this would yield us sixteen bags of heroin, each containing one hit. Yet, all the stuff here was so cheap, each handbag ranging from twenty to sixty euro: we couldn’t get anything less than six hundred euro worth of stuff, as we sold everything in bulk for a third of its price. And that was before we even thought about cigarettes and food.

To my surprise, though, it was as if me and Neil were invisible. With the staff getting ready to close the shop for the weekend, no-one even batted an eye. We left the shop with the stolen bags, sighing with relief—we’d have just enough to get us through the night.

We were roughly about ten minutes away from the flat that we were staying in, when suddenly I heard footsteps from behind and then I felt a hand on my shoulder. ‘Sorry, can I stop you there for a minute?’

I turned around, only to be greeted by two coppers dressed in casual-looking plain clothes. My heart sank. I knew we were fucked. ‘Well, my friend, how’s things with you?’ the garda addressed Neil. ‘Still doing a bit of shop-lifting, are we? What have you got in the bags there?’

For a split second I contemplated doing a runner, but I knew that my body was too sick to carry me, so I reluctantly opened the bags that contained the stolen goods. ‘Ah, would you look what we have here, just as I thought,’ said the garda in a heavy Dublin accent. Before I knew it, myself and Neil were being carted off in the Paddy wagon, up to Pearse Street garda station, to be charged with larceny and possession of stolen goods.

Neil tried to make a case for me. ‘Would ye not let her go?’ he pleaded with the garda. ‘She didn’t even know that there was robbed stuff in the bag.’

‘Sure we know that’s not true, Neil,’ the garda replied. ‘We’ve been following you for ages. We’ll have you in and out in no time.’ But I knew in my heart that I was going nowhere fast. I had a couple of bench warrants that they were bound to find. Which meant that I would be kept in custody for the weekend and to make matters worse, it was a long weekend at that. I didn’t know how I would survive it.

On arrival at the garda station my personal details were taken and registered, name, address, height etc, the usual details. I was used to the procedure by now—I’d been through it often enough. Then I was led to this dingy little cell that smelled of urine and disinfectant and the huge metal door slammed closed behind me. I put my head in my hands and cursed myself for getting into this situation again. But all I could do now was wait.

For the next few hours I slipped into my own little world, one where I was unreachable. I could no longer feel the freezing cold slab of concrete underneath me, or the aching pains in my legs and my stomach as my last fix of heroin left my body. I was reliving the time I first met my friend Neil. It had been four years earlier, in the renowned Rutland Centre, a rehabilitation centre for people with all types of addictions—to drugs, alcohol, sex, food or gambling. I had successfully completed my six weeks of intense group therapy in the Ruts and every so often I would revisit to attend a Narcotics Anonymous meeting, held on the premises every week.

‘My name is Neil and I’m an addict,’ I heard this boy shout from across a room that was jam-packed with recovering drug users. His

Reviews for Dying to Survive

[amandacb_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

"Dying to Survive" is a memoir written by former drug addict Rachael. It tells a truly disturbing tale of a girl who grows up rather abandoned and kicked from family member to family member. Instead of using her circumstances to become stronger, Rachael turns to drugs and makes choices that destroy her body and her soul. She attends numerous rehabs only to relapse again, which frustrates not only her family but herself. Only the birth of her son is her salvation.