Rachel Forde

Do you know?

And nobody came and took my children.

And I think that's actually harder for me to accept that my children left to their own free will.

They couldn't do it anymore.

They could not put up with me anymore.

As soon as those drugs were discovered, cocaine kind of left the equation for me.

And a lot harder and a lot bigger quantity substances were needed.

Things I swore I would never, ever, ever take just became so normal for me so fast.

And the progression of my disease escalated a million miles an hour.

It was pure insanity.

I remember ringing my solicitor on a Tuesday afternoon, about one o'clock in the day, with a bottle of wine under one hand and a hardcore drug in my other hand, asking him like, but why can't I see the kids?

I don't understand why they think they have the power to tell me I can't see my, what am I doing?

Like picture that, you know, I could not see.

I could not see.

The blindness of the addiction.

I could not, and I genuinely could not see how it had all gone wrong or how wrong it had actually got.

So I suppose from when the kids went, there was a, we'd say a period of maybe six to eight weeks where I was off my fucking game.

I did a lot of things in that period that I am not proud of.

I very rarely woke up at home.

I either woke up in a cell or in St.