“I spent twelve-hour shifts keeping people alive, then went home and did lines until the sun came up.”
I was a nurse. Still am, thank God. Coke started as a way to stay awake after nights. Then it was a way to feel anything at all.
The shame was unreal. I'd be advising patients about their drinking with a gram in my locker. I was terrified of the Nursing Board finding out, so I told nobody.
It was a colleague who saw it.
It was a colleague who saw it. She didn't report me. She sat me down in the canteen and said, I know, and I'm not going anywhere. I broke down in front of the vending machine.
I went to Aiséirí. I took leave, I did the programme, and I went through the proper process with work. It was the hardest, most humbling thing I've ever done. I'm back on the wards now, two years clean. When I see someone come in off the back of a session, I know exactly what's behind their eyes.
What helped Gráinne
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