Addicts in lockdown hell

“The lockdown can be soul destroying for someone who is addicted. Addiction never takes a holiday.”

The words of recovering gambling and alcohol addict Con Hurley who says that addiction meetings have “saved my life” on many occasions and that the Covid-19 lockdown has made life very difficult for recovering addicts.

Mr Hurley, who has been clean of alcohol and gambling since 2002, told the Cork Independent that he is taking it “a day at a time” and that he could still throw it all away in a “split second of madness”.

“Most days I wouldn't think of a drink or a gamble, but some days I would. It’s very difficult for the people trying to stay away. With job losses and people working less hours, everyone is struggling,” said Mr Hurley.

He added: “I always say to my wife that I have to put my meetings and my recovery above her. When she asked me why, I told her, ‘because if I don't have the meetings, I won't have you, and I won't have my children’.”

Mr Hurley, who graduated from University of Limerick in 2017 with a diploma in drugs and alcohol addiction studies, said that meetings are crucial for recovery, but that the lockdown made it very difficult for some people to attend. He said: “Because of Covid-19 you're only allowed half a dozen people in a meeting at a time. Then you have people like myself with underlying conditions, and we cannot take the chance of getting sick by going to the meetings.”

According to Mr Hurley, many meetings were either cancelled or moved online during the lockdown, which presented a number of new challenges.

“The people I really feel sorry for are the ones who don't know how to use apps and things like Zoom. People who don't have knowledge of technology,” he said.

Mick Devine, who is the Clinical Director at addiction treatment organisation, Tabor Group, said that he and his colleagues have been very busy since restarting services in June.

“We can keep addiction at bay, or manage it, by having good structure and routine in our lives,” Mr Devine told the Cork Independent.

He continued: “If that structure starts to collapse, then the addiction tends to be more difficult to manage. If we have a lot of free time, we can get idle or lazy and lower our standards of what we expect from ourselves. And then before we know it, we're on a downward spiral.”

Mr Devine said that certain circumstances, such as a crisis, can cause an addiction to accelerate in severity and that the lockdown has caused many people to realise that they can’t ignore their addiction anymore.

“You have to be very vigilant around an addiction. You have to prioritise it and take responsibility for it. It doesn't just go away. It doesn't get ‘cured’,” he concluded.

Anyone with concerns surrounding addiction can contact Tabor Group on 021-4887110. To speak with someone in Cork regarding Alcoholics Anonymous call 085-8470880.