Frances Black, Singer

For me it’s the shame and stigma that is attached to addiction in this country is actually the thing that stunts the growth of people recovering. Addiction thrives on secrecy and Ireland is still a secret society. I don’t think that’s changed in the recent past, and I think the issue of addiction is absolutely huge. You might get more people aware of it, because of the celebrity rehab culture, where celebrities are talking very openly about their experience. This might lead to a little more discussion about addiction issues, but not much.

It’s very hard to know, also, with that rehab culture, about how genuine it is. I would say most people are looking for something, and addiction plays a huge role in their lives and it’s not for me to judge. I still think in this country the shame and stigma attached to addiction stop people from asking for help. The first step in addiction is awareness and then asking for help, saying, ‘Where can I go to sort this out?

I have a huge passion about addiction and addiction in Ireland, to such an extent that I set up a foundation called the RISE foundation, which stands for ‘recovery in a safe environment’. Our first project is for family members. In my experience of talking openly about it in an interview or on the radio, I would be inundated with people from families looking for help. So that is why I decided to set up the foundation.

The person in addiction is in a complete haze, and not really present. So the question is, how do you get them to really want to change? In a way, you can educate the family members about how to handle someone in their family who has addiction. For me, that’s the first step.

I wouldn’t have considered myself an alcoholic. I do know now, but at the time I wouldn’t. My drinking wasn’t spirits. So my idea of an alcoholic, which would be most people’s idea of an alcoholic, was someone sitting in the pub all day or the wino out on the street, or someone who had to have a drink first thing in the morning. That wasn’t the way it was for me. My drinking would start with wine about six in the evening and I could have maybe a bottle and a half of wine a night. At the weekend I might go out and drink pints. To me, though, that wasn’t alcoholism—I mightn’t even have a bottle and a half every night. It might be four nights a week.

My attitude would have been, I’m sitting at home and not hurting anybody or not out in a pub making a show of myself. Whereas in reality, I would have been falling into bed most nights and the effect that would have had on my life was huge. For a start, I would have had a hangover next morning and be grumpy and narky and preoccupied. I wasn’t present. I wasn’t present to my family. I was getting through the day but dying for six o’ clock when I was making the dinner and having my glass of wine. I’d be really looking forward to it and sometimes it could start earlier.

Nobody had any idea. Everyone was shocked when I said I needed to go for help. My husband knew something wasn’t quite right as he wasn’t a drinker. I do believe there are different stages of alcoholism and I might have been at the middle stage or even before that. People might find that hard to take because if they acknowledge you have a problem, then they have to look at their own drinking and say, ‘What does that make me?!’

Or you would get the type of response—‘Jaysus, she was no worse than any of the rest of us!’

What changed my life is that I read an article by a journalist. I think it was in the Irish Times, some time back in the 1980s. Her pattern was like me except she was into the gin and tonics and then would go and do a day’s work. She would come home and have a bottle of wine with dinner and then a little more gin and tonic and go to bed.

She couldn’t understand why she couldn’t stop and eventually went for help. That was a bit like me. I tried to stop and couldn’t and I couldn’t understand that. After two weeks of being off it, I nearly lost my mind. I started to sneak it, and these were all things that made me rethink.

When I read the article there was a number at the end, so I thought I’d go and have a chat with them and get assessed. I was completely convinced they would say to me, ‘You just need to cut down on your drink.’ But then I went to the counsellor, I sat down and was really honest. I would have had blackouts and so on at that time. She said to me, really casually and non-judgmental, ‘There is no doubt in my mind that you are an alcoholic and you need to come here.’

It was an outpatient treatment centre and it was for three nights a week, so it was a huge eye-opener for me. When I stopped drinking the career took off. But I was always dabbling in prescription tablets, so really there would be times I was worse than others but I never thought it was a problem. Because it was prescription drugs the doctor gave them to me, so it was all right. It was only in later years, when I had to give up the tablets also, that I realised you could swap over addictions. So I ended up in a treatment centre later on and it was more for the tablets. I would actually say, for me, my primary addiction was prescription tablets because it was harder for me to come off them. It was easy for me to come off the drink. And I still get a longing for the tablets.

They were better than alcohol in many ways because you could function and still have a conversation with people and they wouldn’t know. But the side effects destroy your life and the consequences are horrendous. They were a lot worse for me than alcohol and the ups and downs can make you very suicidal.

I wouldn’t have had a career if I was drinking. I really do feel my career took off the minute I stopped drinking. Before I went for treatment I had been asked to join a band and I had to go and tell them, ‘I have to go for this treatment.’ They said they would wait for me and when I came off treatment I joined the band and it went from there. The hardest thing I ever had to do was to walk on stage without a drink.

There is this Irish thing that we can drink and it brings out the creative side within. I don’t agree with that, personally. I’m not saying it doesn’t work for some people. But I’d love to see those people without drink and see what comes out if they did the right amount of work on themselves and did all the spiritual and soul stuff.

For me I hadn’t done much stage work beforehand, and I had great support because it was with my family and there was a great support. It was scary walking on stage, though, as it would be for anybody. I knew I wanted to do it so that’s what kept my legs walking on the stage. The fact that I could stop drinking gave me great courage—if I could do that I could do anything.

I think it’s scary in this country as we are drowned in addiction. I’m petrified as to the consequences of what is going on, really. That is why I really want to try and do something to look at the shame and stigma attached to addiction. I get up on stage every night and tell my story. I don’t have any shame around the fact I’m in recovery; it’s not a big deal for me, it’s just a disease, and I’m working through it.

So I feel more people need to talk about it, not about the fact that they go into rehab—they need to talk about what it was like and what it felt like. And yes, I will speak openly about it if I feel it can help one person in this country.

If I am successful in setting up a treatment centre it will be an education treatment centre for families about addiction. This is so that anybody who wants to learn about addiction can come and learn that this is what addiction is. It’d about telling people, there is a format that can work and this is how you need to look at it.

The research I have done shows that the cost to the taxpayer of one child in untreated addiction is £800,000 in one addict’s lifetime, whether it is alcohol or drugs. So if the government could prevent one child going down that road they will save themselves that money. If they gave someone £1 million to set up a treatment centre they’re going to save on things like A&E. I mean fifty-five per cent of people who go into A&E over a weekend is alcohol- or addiction-related.

If you look at Ireland and the way the whole thought process is around alcohol and the minimising of it as a problem. I was doing a conference in Kerry with lots of government representatives and addiction counsellors, and all they were talking about was they were going to come down heavy on drugs. I actually said, hang on a second, addiction is not just drugs, it’s alcohol, it’s things like prescription tablets and gambling. Yet all you hear is, ‘We’re going to go down heavy on drug dealers.’

For me, socially, being sober, you are a little more isolated and I do feel isolated. I don’t tend to hang around pubs that long. But I have a great life. I have a lovely husband who doesn’t drink. I don’t think it would work if he was in the pub every night. We go out for meals, we go walking. We go to plays and do all the things that people in other countries do! If you go to New York or San Francisco that’s what people do. They don’t really go to pubs to hang out. I love going away. I’ve been in San Francisco and a lot of it is around food and dinner. You might invite people over and they’d have wine, but they might have a bottle of wine and they’d all have a half glass each and some of them mightn’t even finish the glass. I’d be amazed at that! They’d be having sips of water and some of them would be more interested in the water. They go to restaurants or go out to [a] theatre. It’s just sad for me there’s not that many people in Ireland who do that. And that’s the reality. So when everyone goes to the pub I get bored and last maybe three quarters of an hour.

Weddings I don’t mind because I dance but I wouldn’t stay late; I go and have the meal and have a chat but there’s a point where it might get a little late and I go. I always have a room in the hotel just in case we need to escape!

I think any country that has been colonised, where your land and home has been taken off you, that type of trauma carries through generations. I went back to college to become an addiction counsellor and one of my assignments was trauma and addiction in post-conflict Northern Ireland. Everybody in the North has been touched by the conflict, as we know, and traumatised by it. What happens in that situation is that the trauma is carried onto another generation, even through the peace process, and manifests itself in a rise in addiction and problem drinkers. This generation is now carrying that trauma. I do feel there is this thing in Ireland where you don’t show your emotions and feelings. Secrecy is a huge thing in this country, which was a defence, in that you didn’t want anybody to know your business. People are afraid to show their emotions in this country.

If you have twelve in a group receiving treatment, the studies show only about three will make it. So it’s scary, and I think, if society was different, that statistics might be higher. It’s really hard for a young man to come out of treatment and all his mates are getting pissed every night. This is my experience and I work in the Rutland Centre in Dublin every weekend and do a lot of work around relapse prevention. Everything is lovely for the five weeks people are in treatment and they have great support and a good environment. When they go back into their own environment, in many cases they’re on their own. And it’s not easy, but that’s the country we live in.