Just Say No?

Ever felt what’s the point? It’s the same old, same old. Is your life caught up with addicition? Drugs, drink, binge eating? Here is an extract from the book No Deals, which follows the life of a former drug addict, Jackie Burke. It took him years to admit to his addiction, but when he did, his life turned around.

Prologue
I’m looking for a good night’s sleep. God? Don’t talk to me about God! If God’s there, he’s deaf. I’ve no time for God. It’s four o’clock in the morning, and I wake up with this prayer coming out of my mouth: “Father, Father, please, please don’t let me die like this.” What’s going on? I try to get out of bed, sit down, but my legs buckle beneath me and I hit the floor.
It’s called barbiturate poisoning. It starts down at your feet; it lifts up through your whole body as it travels towards your heart. It can kill you in a matter of hours. I know what I need to do here; I need to get into the Lagan Valley Hospital, get a saline drip into me, and get my whole system cleaned out. I need to do it pretty quickly. I know this because I’ve taken overdoses in the past, some of them deliberate. I know the problem, and I know the solution.
But I know something else. There is someone in that room with me, and He’s more real to me than you are now reading this.
I crawl into the living room, get up and lie down on the sofa. Pages of my memory are turning and He’s saying: “Jackie, you’ve tried everything else, would you not try me? Jackie, you’ve done that now, would you not come to me?”
The first thing I have to tell you about myself is what I am not. I am not one of those boys who you’ve seen on Oprah, Ricki Lake or Jeremy Kyle. I didn’t take drugs because my mum didn’t like me. I didn’t take drugs because my dad beat me. I didn’t even take drugs because my auntie fancied me! I didn’t take drugs for any of these reasons. I took drugs because it was all an adventure and an experiment that got out of control. At least, that’s why I thought I took drugs.
Why is it that only we humans take drink and drugs? You don’t see lions going down the street drunk or monkeys swaying from the trees smoking dope. So why do we human beings have this need to get drunk and stoned? I think we do it to make ourselves feel happier. But why are we unhappy to begin with?
Well, they put me in prison on four occasions; they thought they could scare me off drugs. It didn’t work. They put me in psychiatric hospitals on seven occasions; they were going to cure me of my drug habit. Didn’t work.
Why didn’t it work? Why couldn’t the police and the prison officers scare me off drugs? Why couldn’t the doctors, the psychiatrists and the psychologists cure me of them? I think they were missing one vital point: why was I taking drink and drugs in the first place? What was the real reason behind it?
This is the only way I can explain it. Imagine yourself sitting at home. It’s half past eleven at night, you are in your living room reading this. There’s one difference: you are on your own. Your husband, wife, children, mum, dad, your brothers, or sisters, whoever you happen to live with, they have all been called away on some urgent business. They couldn’t bring you with them, so you get this book out to pass the time. Remember, you’ve no friends around to keep your image up for you. You know that image. It is the one you show people, the one that says, “This is who I am.” But you know inside it is not really the whole story. It’s just you in the empty house.
You go to bed. Nothing is disturbing you. You start to relax and fall asleep. But in the early hours of the morning, for no reason at all, you suddenly wake up. In that moment, just for a split second, you feel a bit frightened. You don’t know why, but a thought, a feeling, it’s hard to describe, just comes into your head. It’s only there and it’s gone, and the thought is this: Is this it, is this all there is? You begin to think: I’ll go to school, get a certificate, get a job, find somebody I love, get married, have a couple of kids, and then I die? And while I’m doing all this, everybody around me, they are all going to do die too? My mum and dad, my brothers, my sisters, my friends? This house is going to be empty one day? There won’t ever be a memory of me and my family having lived here? Is that the whole story – the whole purpose of life?
I’m sure you might not have had that exact experience, but having spoken to 25,000 teenagers last year alone, I can assure you, no one has walked up to me after my talk, looked me in the eyes and said: “Jackie, I’ve never had a moment like that – that for no reason I simply felt that small.” Do you see your image of yourself? It’s not worth that. You are that small size in a big universe that is revolving around you. Do you see that when a thought like that hits you, it can make you feel very empty inside? That emptiness: that is the real reason why we take drink and drugs.

Jackie Speaks to School and College Students each year.

I tried to drown my emptiness out through alcohol. I tried to bury my loneliness with pills. I tried to inject my insecurity away. But not even heroin, the strongest drug on God’s green earth, can keep that emptiness down. Do you know why? That emptiness is God-shaped, and only God can fill it. I didn’t find that out for a long time.

DARE TO DISCUSS:
Do I believe my emptiness can be filled by God? Why?

DARE TO DISCUSS:
“Just Say No!” How long will it take before the message gets through

No Deals is printed by
Poolbeg Press Ltd.,
123 Grange Hill,
Baldoyle,
Dulbin 13.
E-mail poolbeg@poolbeg.com.

Jackie can be contacted at
hilary877@msn.com

No Deals is available in all good bookshops.

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