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<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cAnd then I asked for help.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those were the brave words of one Derry man as he reached a major turning point in his life after years of what he described as \u201cdrowning in alcohol\u201d.<\/p>\n
Christy, as he prefers to be known, spoke movingly to The Derry News about his experiences because he wanted \u201canyone reading this piece to hear: \u2018If I can do it, you can too\u2019\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I can drink 20 cans a day, hate myself, and believe life wasn\u2019t worth living, yet still find a way to start again, then so can you,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018You are not beyond help. You are not too far gone. You are not worthless\u2019. I thought all of those things about myself, and I was wrong,\u201d said Christy.<\/p>\n
In his darkest hour, Christy remembered thinking, \u2018Today I end my life\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s what I once believed,\u201d he said candidly. \u201cThose words lived inside me when I was at my lowest, when I was drowning in alcohol, hating myself, and living in crippling anxiety and depression for over 20 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought the only way out was to stop existing. What I didn\u2019t know then, and what I see clearly now is that those words weren\u2019t the end.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were the beginning of something else. They marked the moment I ended the life that was destroying me, and started the slow, messy, painful journey into something new.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor years I lived with self-hatred so deep it coloured everything I did. I didn\u2019t see a person in the mirror, just failure.<\/p>\n
\u201cI looked at my mistakes as proof that I was worthless. I convinced myself that the world would be better off without me.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat kind of thinking is dangerous because it leads you to find ways to quiet it, to dull it, to silence the voice. For me, that silence came in cans – 20 a day, sometimes more. At first it felt like relief. Alcohol made me forget the pain for a while. It numbed me, gave me the illusion of freedom. But it wasn\u2019t freedom, it was a self-made trap.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe truth is, alcohol stole from me. It stole my memory, my health, my dignity, and my hope. It made me believe I couldn\u2019t live without it, and it nearly convinced me that I didn\u2019t want to. I was existing but not living. I held down a job – which I eventually lost – but it took everything I had just to walk through the door.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn the outside I was functioning. On the inside I was falling apart,\u201d he recalled.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnxiety had me by the throat. Depression pinned me to the bed. Physical pain was constant. Every day felt like a battle I was losing.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then I asked for help. The hardest thing I have ever done was admitting I couldn\u2019t keep going like this, that I couldn\u2019t fix it on my own.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought asking for help made me weak, but I\u2019ve learned it\u2019s the bravest thing I\u2019ve ever done. I reached out, and to my genuine surprise, help was there. I wasn\u2019t judged. I wasn\u2019t dismissed. I was supported. And that changed everything, gradually.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reflecting on his recovery, Christy said it had not been easy. He revealed that he still struggles.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are mornings I wake up and feel like I can\u2019t do it. There are days when the anxiety screams louder than anything else. There are times when the thought of alcohol tempts me but I don\u2019t pick it up,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remind myself that one drink for me is never one drink. It\u2019s the start of a spiral that nearly killed me once, and I won\u2019t let it happen again.<\/p>\n
\u201cInstead, I keep choosing to begin again, one day at a time. It used to be five minutes at a time at the beginning!<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve learned that struggling doesn\u2019t mean failing. Weak moments don\u2019t make me worthless. Every day I get up, every day I face the world sober. Every day I fight the thoughts that tell me to quit. That\u2019s strength. That\u2019s courage. It doesn\u2019t look like much from the outside. It doesn\u2019t feel like a Hollywood victory. But it\u2019s real.\u201d<\/p>\n
Christy said he was even able to go on a sober holiday this summer \u201cthanks to positive words from Pearse M and others on Twitter\u201d which he added was \u201can amazing platform for kindness of strangers when I share now and then\u201d.<\/p>\n
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