Rachel Forde

You know, as I just explained there, my childhood was a very, very normal childhood.

In some instances, people would say it was nearly a privileged childhood.

You know, like I came from a large family, Brenda, and we didn't want for anything as such.

You know, we always had foreign holidays.

I always had meals at home, which is a huge privilege for any child, you know.

I always had meals at home.

I always had clothes.

Now they may have been handed in from my older sisters, but I still had clothes, you know.

I didn't want for anything.

I think that I was born with this disease of addiction.

A chemical imbalance.

And I feel like I thought drink and other substances were my remedy.

I don't think they did.

You know, I don't think so because even as we go on to speak about later years, even when I was in

the depths of addiction when I had a very tight grasp on me nobody knew right you were going to hide I was I was like what you what you'd call maybe the high functioning addict you know even today like I could meet people today and they're like how are you girl and you know and I give them a little bit of my story and they're like you were in treatment yeah what do you know or people would say they heard that I had gone away to go to treatment and they're like

Rachel, but you don't even really go out, you know?

And I suppose as I stated at the start there, isolation was detrimental for me, you know?

And I did a lot of damage on my own.

I suppose when I was like in my early teens and probably to my mid-twenties, where I was drinking alcoholically and definitely abusing substances, I had a little bit of control.

I did.