JUST eight years ago Alice Mannix was addicted to cocaine, tablets, and alcohol, her hair was infested with insects, and her only son was placed into foster care.
“I weighed five and half stone, I had fleas in my hair, I was destroyed as a human being,” the 43-year-old Limerick woman explained.
After seeking out local addiction support services, she found a roadmap to recovery and is today thriving.
Eight years drug-free and sober, Alice, now reunited with her son, moved into her “forever home” with the support of an umbrella of local services that include Coolmine, Novas, Anna Liffey, Cuain Mhuire, Bruree, and the Mid West Drugs and Alcohol Task Force.
Hitting rock bottom left her with two options: “Get busy living or get busy dying.”
“I was addicted to alcohol, tablets, cocaine, whatever I could get my hands on really. I would have drank it out of a wellie, but I just had enough, mentally, emotionally, and physically,” she said.
However her road to Damascus has “not been easy” and, if it were not for her determination to get her son back, she may not be around to tell the tale.
“I’m a lone parent, I have one boy, he’s 19 now, and I needed to get into recovery, I needed to get clean, I needed to get him back from foster care. The supports in Limerick helped me do that,” she said.
Alice’s story is not rare and more and more women seek supports, despite efforts by Gardaí and drug support services, the tide of drugs continues to wreak havoc and death.
Support for women
“Lots of people are without housing, lots of people are sleeping rough, and there is a crack cocaine epidemic in Limerick,” explained Julie McKenna, of Novas, a charity supporting people through homelessness and addiction.
“That leads to lots of complications around people’s mental health, their physical health, and maintaining accommodation, so it is quite difficult.”
Coolmine, which supports mothers through addiction, reported that it saw a 26 per cent increase in women accessing its services in the Mid West in 2023.
Women seeking support to tackle alcohol dependency (41 per cent) was the main treatment provided to women in the region, followed by cocaine (22 per cent) and heroin (21 per cent).
Last year Coolmine also directly supported 44 women and 20 children at its mother and child residential facility in Westbourne House.
This service, which traditionally operates at capacity, allows women access to addiction supports without being separated from their offspring. Residents are also provided full-time childcare service for children under five.
Coolmine team leader Aoife Marshall said the service would also help “a lot of women who would have an addiction to prescribed medication, including benzodiazepines/opioids”, providing one-to-one support and counselling.
Funded through a mixture of government aid, donations, and fundraisers, Coolmine held an abseiling event this past Friday (September 27) at Thomond Park to help maintain its supports.
Emphasising the challenge ahead, the Mid West Drugs and Alcohol Taskforce in its 2024-2027 strategic plan offered that, while drug dealing and drug debt violence was “accelerating” and “fueling fear” in communities, local services were struggling with “no increase in funding” in their core budgets.
Meanwhile, for Alice and her son, “our lives have completely changed”, and, while old demons are sometimes triggered, the support Alice has received has taught her how to take on life’s challenges head on.
“I still get the feelings, the emotions, high anxiety, but I have learned how to use the tools and the supports – which are people, places, and things – to be able to cope with it,” she shared.
“No one else can do it for you, in this game you have to do it for yourself.”
