‘All I could think about was getting cocaine’: Mothers share their addiction stories

Anna was driving to buy cocaine when she fell asleep at the wheel after taking a sleeping tablet and nearly crashed into a tree. Even after waking, she says, her only focus remained getting the drug.

“When I came to, all I was fixated on was still getting cocaine. That’s all I could think about. Nothing else mattered,” she recalls. Her dealer collected her after the incident, brought her home and supplied the cocaine. No one else was involved, and her partner arranged for the car to be towed away.

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When I came to, all I was fixated on was still getting cocaine. That’s all I could think about. Nothing else mattered

For a time, Anna maintained a job while caring for her children. She entered residential treatment after the crash, but left after a week because she was not ready. Her addiction worsened, and the father of her two sons took the children away. She calls that the lowest point of her life.

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It got so bad that the boys’ dad took the kids

Anna then began working with Dublin’s Chrysalis Community Drug Project and completed a four-week residential rehabilitation programme. She spent the first two weeks crying and feeling ashamed about how much she believed she had let her children down. She says she hopes to reach three years sober in November, and her sons now live with her full-time again.

Anna traces her addiction to a longer period of upheaval. She had relied on alcohol during a physically abusive relationship in her teens and early 20s, later stopped drinking, married and had two sons. After her mother died of cancer while she was seven months pregnant, and her marriage ended, she began drinking again and eventually turned to cocaine. She is now sharing her story so other mothers know recovery is possible.

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I spent the first two weeks in treatment just crying, shameful, just absolutely hating myself for how much I felt I let my kids down