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Chapter 1: What led Rachel Forde to struggle with addiction?
You may have seen the headlines some time ago about Cork woman, Rachel Ford, who was caught with more than 26,000 euros worth of cocaine in a makeup bag after a Garda raid on her home. What those headlines couldn't tell was the story behind it.
The addiction, the painkiller dependency that spiraled out of control, the psychosis, the sleepless nights, the fear, the shame, and the impact it had on her family and her children. This week on the podcast, Rachel joins me to tell the full story behind one of the darkest periods of her life.
From taking up to 90 strong painkillers a day to experiencing drug-induced psychosis to the moment Gertie raided her home, Rachel speaks openly and honestly about her battle with addiction and the long road that followed. But this isn't a story about drugs. It's a story about recovery, redemption,
and second chances today rachel is rebuilding her life helping others in recovery and proving that no matter how far you've fallen there's always way back this is a powerful conversation about hitting rock bottom finding hope and making a comeback if this story resonates with you please leave a comment and hit that subscribe button it really helps
And as always, this episode is proudly sponsored by ADHD Now, the online clinic transforming ADHD assessment and care across Ireland. If you are seeking an ADHD assessment or support, visit adhdnow.com today. This is The Comeback with Rachel Ford. Rachel, delighted to see you again after all these years. I know.
After, I always start to podcast if I know the person, I've met the person with how I know the person. And I think it was, I must have been five years ago now, you're first on air here on Red FM. Maybe six, I'd say.
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Chapter 2: How did Rachel's addiction impact her family and personal life?
Is it six? Yeah, I'd say so. And then you were working in a salon. Yeah. That I would be attending. Always so lovely, Rachel. And I had no idea that you'd been going through so much. Same as many other people. Nobody knows what anyone is going through. No. No. And you've been through, through the mill, like stuff that has happened to you. And I'm so delighted to see you doing so well. Thank you.
You have completely turned your life around.
Full 360.
Like full 360. And when I asked you on the podcast first, you were kind of like, me, why would you want me to come on? Wasn't you were?
Yeah, I very, like, I suppose loads of self-doubt. Yeah.
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Chapter 3: What was the turning point during Rachel's battle with addiction?
You know, like, why me? Like, why, why would I be good enough for a podcast?
Yeah.
There's no one who's not good enough in my podcast. Everyone has a story. But your story, you're going to help so many people. And I'm so delighted for you. You recently celebrated three years sobriety.
I did.
And we'll get to that. But there's been a lot going on since that. But for how I start all of my podcasts, Rachel Ford, can you tell me where you grew up and what was it like?
Yes.
I had a very, very normal life. Very normal life. I went to school.
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Chapter 4: How did Rachel experience psychosis as a result of her addiction?
I went to primary school. I went to secondary school. My dad worked. My mum was at home with us. Well, she did work on and off, but then when she had my youngest sibling, she kind of gave up work. We had a nice life. You know, we always had foreign holidays. We never really wanted for much.
I spent an awful lot of my childhood with my beautiful grandmother every single weekend and whenever I could in between. So, like I said, I am one of five. So there's four girls in Mumbai. I fell pregnant on my first son and I had another baby. I was a very young mom. But I got, like, you know, I got on with it. Yeah. I always worked.
I kind of started hairdressing when I was about 14 or 15, I suppose. And I loved it. I did. But I could never settle, Brenda.
Yeah, okay.
Do you know, I always had itchy feet and I always had the sense of, not belonging, you know, feeling different to everybody and everything. You know, I didn't have to be a person. It was a place, you know, a place, a feeling, an emotion. I just always felt typically less than, with different, I suppose, is one of the main feelings that I felt.
And I didn't know that that's how I felt for a very long time. I just knew that I was unsettled, if you could say that. You know, I could never... I could never settle with anything except by myself. I thought I thrived in isolation. Looking back now, isolation was detrimental for me. Yeah. Absolutely detrimental for me.
Especially what was going to happen years down the line. We know isolation is the worst thing in the world when it comes to addiction.
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Chapter 5: What role did isolation play in Rachel's addiction journey?
Tell me, at what age did you try your first drink or drug?
Oh, I was about 12 or 13. I'm going to say 12 was when I first picked up a drink. Do you remember where it was? I do. The IDA in Dublin Hill. I do. A two litre of cider. Me and my friend, we went stop for stop on the two litre of Linden Village. And I absolutely hated the taste of it. Right. And I'd say from my first drink to my very, very last drink up until today, it made me vomit.
drink always because I drank alcoholically from the get go you know I didn't know that then but like in hindsight I know that now I hated the taste of alcohol I never ever liked it really but I absolutely loved what it did for me Can you remember when you were 12 that night drinking the Linden Village with your friend a bit of a release or kind of a huge release like I remember you know when you get that little bit of a feeling going this is it
This is it. This is what I've been missing. I could talk to people. I could laugh at people. I thought I was funny. 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.
And then when you were in school as a teenager, was it a case like many of us would have gone out the weekends, gone to the disco, drank? Yeah. Like normally, like all your other friends. Or were you kind of, did you ever find yourself drinking more than your friends or drinking faster?
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.
Just sniffing them.
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.
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Chapter 6: How did Rachel find the strength to seek help and recovery?
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.
A chemical imbalance. And I feel like I thought drink and other substances were my remedy.
Yeah.
And you know what the thing is, and you'll hear people, and even on Neil's show, and they go back sometimes kind of saying, oh, there has to be trauma. For some people, there's no trauma. Like for some people, there's no trauma. And that's okay too. Like as you were saying, you were born with it. I don't like to speak about myself too much on the podcast. I'm the exact same.
I had a wonderful childhood, most amazing family. There was nothing there. It was just, it's just there. I was born with it. Yeah. And like you looking back, I'm just kind of like, it's there. Chemical imbalance. Yeah. Not everyone has had to have a really, really difficult upbringing and it just happened, yeah.
And was it a case, did your parents, were they noticing your behaviour was different if you were sniffing the cans and drinking?
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
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Chapter 7: What challenges did Rachel face during her recovery process?
Yeah. Then it turned into, I can't get my sleepers and my painkillers without getting the bag of cocaine. Drink kind of came in and out of the equation. I probably got drink to make myself look a little bit sociable. Yes. Yeah. Do you know, and the few friends I did have, if I was going to them... or they were coming to me, that would also be short-lived.
You know, I'd make up an excuse as to why I had to go away or they had to leave my house or, you know, because I wanted to use...
by myself first of all to be not judged I suppose from the amount of drugs that I was using and second of all so I didn't have to share Brenda if I'm being completely honest you know and psychosis came into my life and I kind of knew it was psychosis but I tried to convince myself that I was depressed and I had anxiety
I had a few things go on in my 20s that I suppose every person does, you know, like bad relationships, breakups, you know, things like this that I would blame the depression on. You know, I was a single mom of two kids. Now I had outstanding support from my family with my children. But, you know, it's the pity part. You know, the poor me. I wish I could do this. I wish I could do that.
And the only person standing in front of Rachel was Rachel. And then, Rachel, for people who don't know what psychosis is, can you describe it? Yeah, I suppose psychosis is a huge umbrella. But what I was suffering from, thankfully, was drug induced psychosis. Yeah. And I'm saying thankfully there, Brenda, because it can stop. So I used to see things. I used to hear things that were not there.
Yeah. But if you told me when I'm in the psychosis state that they're not there, it would make me very angry. First of all, because I couldn't understand why you can't see what's going on in front of me. Like I, as we spoke there at the start of the podcast that there was a rat infestation in my block of houses. But I used to see the rats in my house. But they weren't there.
Okay, they're in the walls, but you see them.
Yeah, they were not there. I took my kids out of bed at four o'clock one morning, took them out of bed because there was hundreds of rats running down, running around downstairs. They were not, Brenda. They were not. And then your kids, were they like, mom, there's nothing there? Yeah. And I used to be like, thank God I can't see them now.
Yeah, I remember going over to my very close friend of mine, a neighbour of mine, beating down her door, three or four o'clock in the morning, you know, oh, you'll have to leave us in, you know, they're after getting into the house, the rats are after getting into the house. And she was like, oh my God, what? So she runs over and she's like, Rachel, there's nothing there.
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Chapter 8: What message does Rachel have for those struggling with addiction?
all prescription medication that like that, that needs to be highlighted, I suppose. Yeah. These are all legal drugs. So I suppose when I did eventually make the decision to start my life out, like a lot of people would know what methadone is, Brenda, you know, and it's an opiate substitute. That's what it is. It blocks the receptors in your brain from looking for the opiate.
And I thought that was for heroin addicts, you know. I, that's what I believed it to be. And I was on methadone. I needed assistance. I was on very hard drugs. Very, very hard drugs at the end of my use. Stuff that I said I would never, ever, ever take. And it was the codeine was the worst.
Had you done, did you smoke heroin? Yeah. Crack? Yeah. And the codeine was the worst? Yeah. One million percent. Why do you think the codeine was the worst over them? The psychological effects.
that coding leaves in your brain. One million percent. The physical withdrawal from coding is absolutely vile. It's absolutely vile. And I knew I could not do it on my own. And when it came, when push came to shove and I needed to get into a treatment center and I needed to be there yesterday, I knew I could not detox in the community, as what it's called. I knew I'd use again.
I looked for help and thankfully the help is there. And I was able to go on a methadone detox program. And that allows me into treatment while I'm on a substitute and I can detox in a safe environment then. You know, there is no risk of me relapsing or using in a treatment center. Whereas I knew if I was doing it at home, sure, I didn't even have to leave my house.
Do you know what I'd be using again?
Yeah.
So, yeah.
As I said to you as well, just as a by the way, and I had said this on the phone to you, I shared a room with a girl in treatment and she was withdrawing from codeine. And I, honest to God, there's a bond the two of us had because I was coming off the benzos, she was coming off the codeine. And we were by far the worst out of that whole treatment centre. Oh, one million percent, yeah.
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