Dr. Brian Pennie

And he says, right, you need to go to detox.

So I needed to do a benzo detox to get them out of my system before I could do an opiate detox.

That's the way many of the places work.

But there wasn't a benzo detox facility available for up to three months.

And I ended up doing a benzo detox at home on my own.

I would never advise anyone to do that.

So cold turkey from benzos and alcohol.

I was still taking methadone.

And I ended up having a very violent seizure that I bit my tongue, splitting it down the middle.

I ended up in hospital thinking I was brain damaged.

But I had a moment in Blanchardtown Hospital in Dublin where I thought I was brain damaged and I was in, I was a shell of a human being.

Like I was so broken in every which way.

And I remember sitting in the hospital not being able to make sense of my environment and thinking, oh my God, that's brain damage.

And I had this sort of,

narrative going on in the moment saying, I can't do this anymore.

And I go back to that moment, I was so scrambled from the addiction, the withdrawals and the seizure that I don't know exactly what I was thinking.

I don't know whether it was suicidal, but it was like, I can't do this anymore.

I had no more fight.

And I remember lying back down on the trolley.

I was in a room on my own, middle of the night, waiting to be overwhelmed by panic and fear and everything that was happening.