Julie O’Toole - Heroin: A True Story Of Drug Addiction, Hope, And Triumph

I often laugh at this picture of my First Holy Communion. I was so innocent then.

When I went to France on a drug treatment programme, I made sure I took plenty of hash with me. The organizers knew nothing about it, but I was too afraid to take heroin through customs.

We had to share the one bedroom between us when we lived in Laurences flats.

My parents didnt want me hanging around Sheriff Street when I was a teenager. but I did anyway, even though the place had become a slum.

Were still close as a family, and we can have a laugh when we all get together.

Weve had some good memories, like seeing Olivia playing for Ireland. Were her biggest fans.

When I was on heroin, I could never have imagined that today Id be clean, healthy, and helping others get through their addiction. I have a new life and Im looking forward to spending the rest of it with my loving family, and my husband, Gerard. Eighteen months ago my dream of having my own family came true with the birth of my son.

Acknowledgements

There are so many people I want to thank as there are many people who have helped me get to where I am today. I just want to
say thank you to them. They know who they are.

I would like to start with thanking God for giving me a second chance at life, because I know there were many times I should have died, and His hand was on me.

I would also like to thank Pastor Sonny and Julie Arguinzoni for their faithfulness in reaching drug addicts all over the world, as well as my own Pastors Andy and Marie Valdez who I love very much. I also want to thank Victory Outreach Dublin.

A big thanks to Jean Harrington for helping me to write this book and for meeting with me.

My family Debbie, Olivia, Anthony, Gary, Lindsay, Lee and Ryan who I love very much and who never gave up on me when everybody else did. Thank you to my Ma, who is the best mother in the world. I have never met a woman like her, she has so much love to give and she was always there for me when I was a drug addict, as she is still there for me now. Youre the best, Ma!

Thank you to my husband Gerard who I love with all my heart. He is my best friend.

Thank you all.

Chapter 1

If anyone had told me when I was a child that I would end up a heroin addict, I would have laughed at them. You see, sport was my thrill. Football was how I got a rush. I was one of the best footballers in my area better than all of the girls except for my sister Olivia, and certainly better than most of the blokes. Olivia and I would race home after school to change into our track suits so we could go down to the playground. I was always in goal and Olivia would lash the balls at me as fast as bullets. She was definitely the best footballer in the area, and we played football every single day as children. Shes now an international player on the Irish team.

I come from a working-class background, but I didnt have a bad start in life. I had a structured childhood with set times for everything. I sometimes look back and wonder why Ive led the life I have. I have to be honest and say I dont have many answers for you. I dont know where I lost myself but I know I did. I still wonder about the decisions I made, or if they were decisions at all. Was I even given choices about my life? Im still trying to figure that one out but I know one thing for sure. When I was young I never said to myself, I want to be a drug addict when I grow up.

Heroin wasnt something that I planned to do. The drug was something that crossed my path. I never went looking for it and I dont believe it came looking for me. My drug addiction was something that just happened. You have probably heard people say they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. I think I was one of those people.

I grew up in the heart of Dublins north inner city. My family lived on Sheriff Street. Most people have heard about Sheriff Street at some point in their lives. It has an awful reputation. When most people think about it, they think about drugs and criminals. They conjure up images of young boys joy riding and stealing. It is true to say that some of the people who have lived there had truly awful reputations. Some of them deserved them but some didnt. I have met most of the major gangsters from the area at some point but I didnt see them as criminals. They were just men from the community. I wouldnt give them a second thought.

The street itself runs from the side of Connolly Station all the way down to the docks. There are several roads leading off it where Dublin Corporation built flat complexes in the 1940s and 1950s. When people say they come from Sheriff Street, they probably mean one of the flat complexes or small council estates that lead off it.

These were the areas that succumbed to heroin, and they have never really recovered from it. Heroin arrived in Dublin in the early 1980s, and its been around ever since. I was only a child back then but I remember our community changing, though I wasnt sure how or why at the time.

We didnt always live in Saint Brigids Gardens. Our first home was on a small road off Sheriff Street called Saint Laurences Street. There were lanes leading down to the flats, and they were so close that if somebody was making dinner down the road you would smell it. They had little back gardens and people used to throw over tea bags and sugar to each other. It was a very close community around Sheriff Street, and everybody looked after each other. It was all right to go in and say to your neighbour, Give us a bit of sugar, or even if they werent there you could go in, take what you needed, and tell them later. There would never be a problem. It was like that. People trusted each other. In every door there was a key.

In the 1980s they knocked down Saint Laurences and built part of a community centre we used to call The Tarmac, so we had to move on. I didnt care about moving around; all I cared about was playing football, so when Ma said, Get your stuff, were moving, I just went. We moved to the Saint Brigids Gardens flat complex when I was around eight or nine years old.

Saint Brigids Gardens was one of the toughest parts of Sheriff Street. I can think of few places that had its reputation. The people were hard, the streets were hard and everyone knew everyone elses business. It was real inner city Dublin.

That was the way things were in the flats. I could tell you about my neighbours cousins and their cousins if I had the time. Many people in the inner city inter-marry amongst friends and neighbours and few ever move far away from the city.