 Paul Cullen celebrates a successful six months. It doesn't seem that long ago that a frightened little man, depressed and despondent, and lost in a bewildering minefield of his own making, stepped over the doorstep of St Anne's house and into the welcoming arms of T.H.O.M.A.S.. I finished my twelve week program in December, just before Christmas. I would have been spending Christmas day on my own, but for Margaret, one of the volunteers who worked with me on the RECONCILE program. She and her family took me into their house over Christmas. I honestly can't remember a more memorable and emotional time. I was clean of all drugs for the first time ever in ten long years and with a family who showed they genuinely cared about me. I t's not easy though. I had to decide whether I was going to drink socially, but I didn't feel comfortable doing it. I'd feel low and get into my head about why I was doing it. So I stopped doing it, and that's okay. It works for me. Just dealing with day to day happenings, problems, incidents or differences of opinions seems never ending, and it brings up all kinds of emotions. I find trying to identify these feelings really difficult. The only way for me to do it is to first, accept that I have these emotions, and to talk about them, openly and honestly. I do that at Narcotic Anonymous (NA) meetings which I attend twice weekly, a lady who is probably my closest confident, though she probably doesn't how important her friendship has been to me, and any number of staff and volunteers from T.H.O.M.A.S whose patience with me has been unparalleled… Because I've made mistakes, and I'll continue to make them sometimes because that's part of being human. That's okay with me though, because sometimes, I get it right too. Like now, I'm moving on, going to college twice a week. I also work as a volunteer in the drop in. T.H.O.M.A.S are also training me to use computers, and with 'IN YOUR FACE' I get the opportunity to go into schools and talk to teenagers about where drugs took me…. |
