Carmha praised for helping addicts

The Nenagh-based charity that helps addicts get off drugs has been praised for its vital role by the Cathaoirleach of Nenagh Municipal District Councillor Séamie Morris who said the work it is doing is so life-changing that it is getting national media attention.

The work of Carmha (Connection and Recovery in Mental Health & Addiction) recently featured on RTÉ and in other national media such as The Irish Times.

Speaking at the May meeting of the Nenagh Municipal District Council, Cllr Morris lauded one of the founders of Carmha, Donie Ryan, an addiction counsellor and psychotherapist, and Yvonne Moroney, a volunteer with the charity, for the role they play in helping addicts.

Cllr Morris said Donie Ryan was one of the most inspiring people he ever met. “There are 40 to 50 people walking around Nenagh now alive because of the work of Carmha,” he told his fellow councillors. “Everyone who is an addict in the town knows Donie Ryan; we are talking about a couple of hundred people that Donie Ryan has helped back to life.”

One of those who has benefited greatly from the services provided by Carmha is Yvonne Moroney who turned to drug abuse after suffering painful flashbacks as a result of sexual abuse she was subjected to from age six to 14.

NATIONAL MEDIA

She recently featured on RTÉ radio and the Irish Times, and in a brave interview told the newspaper how the abuse triggered anxiety, facial tics and hearing voices.

“I couldn’t tell anyone, because back in those days you couldn’t. I was the youngest of nine,” said Yvonne, aged 48, who comes from a highly respected family who were well known for their sporting prowess over many years with the local athletics club, Nenagh Olympic.

While still a teenager Yvonne became her mother’s carer after her mother, Ann, was diagnosed with breast cancer. Following her death in 1992, and much later of a sibling, Lorna, Yvonne says her life “spiralled out of control on drink and drugs. I started taking Mam’s prescription medication. I knew what she took to relax.”

She became quickly hooked on “benzos [benzodiazepines], Xanax, Valium and sleeping tablets” and graduated to “street drugs” during her first pregnancy. Soon, she was addicted to “speed”, had lost six stone and was in a psychiatric unit.

Yvonne’s story in The Irish Times tells how she got badly injured in a stabbing, and had to have surgery to remove a liver tumour. She nursed her father, Eddie, in his final days, and gave birth to three children while addicted to a slew of drugs, including cocaine. “I felt like my life was over,” she told the newspaper.

Several attempts to detox failed because “I could never get away from the memories in my head”, says Moroney, who admits her violent behaviour fuelled by her drug-taking made her feared in Nenagh.

“The town was afraid of me and now everyone is saluting me, so I suppose I have gained a lot of respect, and I have helped a lot of people,” she said.

“Everybody knew me in town as a street fighter, I would have been arrested a lot and locked up, I was a nightmare. I was angry, I hated everybody, and people would cross the road to get away from me, without knowing me.”

Several stays in psychiatric units followed, but “more medication only made me worse”, she says, before she applauds the help she received from Carmha.

PEER SUPPORT WORKER

Now Yvonne is qualifying as a peer support worker and is helping others. “While the whole town knows me for who I was, they now know me for who I really am now.

“The town was afraid of me and now everyone is saluting me, so I suppose I have gained a lot of respect, and I have helped a lot of people,” says Yvonne, who concedes that the road to recovery was “horrific”.

“Myself and my children have a future now, I work here, I help people see they have a chance. I know I will never go backwards, I don’t have another recovery in me.”

Donie Ryan, who has spent 25 years helping addicts, said nearly every year, the crisis has got worse. “In pretty much every large town, small town and village, there’s drugs available in all of them. They all have their own dealers, the network is there.

“There is hardly a place around in any of the villages in North Tipp that we haven’t heard of that people aren’t using drugs and dealing drugs,” he adds. Even young farmers are buying and using cocaine, he was quoted as saying in the national newspaper.

He said the help on offer from the State is “nuts”. He advocates that addiction and mental health must be treated “in parallel”, while society must move away from judging people who have “been cornered” by drugs, drink or gambling.

“If you have a drug problem and you show up at mental health, you’re told, ‘We will work with you, but you have to go to addiction services’, so you have to leave mental health and go to addiction services.

“Go to addiction services and you are told you have a mental health issue and we don’t do mental health, so you’re being ping-ponged all over the place,” said Donie, who set up Carmha in 2019 along with consultant psychiatrist Marie Oppeboen.

The charity is “responding to unmet needs in a rural community by offering services” to those who are hurtling towards the brink or coming back from it.

People share their stories with fellow addicts, while addiction and mental health issues are treated together at the same time, in the same place, said Donie.

He added: “We don’t judge, so if somebody comes up the street and they are off their head or come into us really intoxicated, we’ll still talk to them, and we find they will come back.

“Anybody can end up in trouble, people are struggling with different things, but the key thing is, they are actually people, and the drug dealers are people, and the people who are drinking wine at home on the couch are people. People are buying boxes and boxes of codeine-based drugs. They can ‘chemist-shop’ all day long, going from pharmacy to pharmacy, and no one is any the wiser.”

And the problem is not just in the town of Nenagh. Across the Mid West there have been reports of increasing numbers of people becoming addicted to over-the-counter codeine tablets, as well as benzodiazepines/prescription drugs.