Rachel Forde

I obviously wasn't.

You know, I had a little bit of confidence.

But Brenda, I must emphasize that that feeling was very short lived.

But I constantly, I spent the next 20 years, I suppose, chasing that back.

I suppose it all started with drink.

But for me, it quickly escalated to other substances.

Not long after my first drink, I suppose I started with the slang, I suppose, buzzing off petrol.

and buzzing from deodorant and things like that.

That was probably my first incident with substance abuse.

And I loved that hype.

Deodorant cans were a big thing for me for a while.

And I actually had a conversation with my partner about it probably only two or three weeks ago.

We were in the car and I don't know how it came up, but I suppose with our children now at that age, like it was actually upsetting for the both of us.

We were like,

Like the kids are older than when I started.

If I even thought for a second that our kids at that age were in that much pain, Brenda, you know, that they had to go and find an outlet.

And I did.

I found an outlet in substances.

I suppose, like, I fully believe that I was born with this disease, you know, because up until...

Like up until later in my life, I had no real traumatic experience.