Staying Alive

Brendan Magee acknowledges he’s lucky to be alive and in good health after kicking a drug addiction that lasted a staggering 26 years. “I came out of years of drug abuse with nothing,” he says, and he’s not just talking about money. “No hepatitis,” he adds. “No Aids. A miracle. Unbelievable.”

The 40-year-old Dubliner’s story offers a harrowing insight into the underbelly of drug culture in this country. Brendan had experimented with different drugs. But things moved to a different level when he stated using heroin. Eventually he spent 10 years living on the streets. During this time, Brendan, as he puts it himself, was “ducking and diving” – variously selling drugs, stealing, breaking into houses and begging to feed his habit.
Two-and-half-years ago, Brendan went cold turkey. He has since become a counsellor himself, with an inner-city based project, where he is now looked upon as a role model by others still battling their addictions. Brendan doesn’t have a “pity me” mentally. Far from it – he is a very positive and articulate man. He hopes that, by telling his story in Hot Press, he’ll highlight the desperate need for government funding to facilitate those addicts seeking detox. He also wants to encourage others not to repeat the same mistakes that he made. It’s a story that’s well worth hearing.

PEER PRESSURE
Brendan grew up in Howth, one of seven brothers and one sister. At least five of his brothers had drug or alcohol-related problems. He believes it was an unstable home life resulted the children using drugs or alcohol as a form of escapism. “My father was an alcoholic. My mother, bless her, did the best she could. She had eight kids and a couple of miscarriages in between us, so she was pregnant for years,” he explains. “A lot of my family are in recovery now. We’re very lucky. My sister was never involved and I have one brother who is a social worker – but the others all got involved, whether it was with drugs or drink.
“I would have started sniffing glue at a young age. I moved onto the hash at age twelve. It was just a progression. I remember trying everything, including heroin at a young age, but I was in fear of it. But I always wanted to be one of the lads. I suppose it was peer pressure.”
Eventually, Brendan’s mother decided she could no longer deal with having a heroin addict living under her roof and threw him out. He was homeless. “When I was in the house with my poor mother she was like a prisoner, in the sense that she didn’t know if she’d come down in the morning and her TV would be gone. I never stole from her, but she didn’t know that, so she wouldn’t have been comfortable in herself,” he recalls. “I remember the woman going to the toilet with her handbag. I used to say to her, ‘Ah, Ma! Come on, you know I wouldn’t touch you’, and she’d laugh it off – but really she didn’t know, did she? She would have felt uncomfortable and that would have been just because I was sitting in the house. Not nice. Not nice for her, like. For me, I was blind at the time. I kind of laughed it off.”

DIRTY SCUMBAG
At first, Brendan would shoplift and break into houses to feed his habit. Eventually he became a living embodiment of the desperation depicted so eloquently and accurately in Adam and Paul.
“I always had the fear of running out of money; that fear of being sick, of not having money to get the drugs, and being backed into a corner to where I would have to do kamikaze – rob something on the spot. A spur of the moment madness. I’d jump over a counter. I always made sure that I had money, no matter what.
“It came to a stage where I wouldn’t rob or nothing. I just begged, which we call ‘tapping’, because I was making enough money to cover my habit. And then what happens is you lose your balls to rob. You lose the bottle. It’s very hard to get back into it once you’ve stopped. When you start robbing for your drugs, it becomes just (clicks fingers) second nature, but when you stopped doing it your heart would be pounding taking even a packet of sweets.”
Brendan considered ‘tapping’ a job. He talks about having to “put in the hours” to make enough to feed his addiction. On a good day Brendan could make up to €200 on his patch of the Ha’penny Bridge, which he says is one of the best locations in Dublin for collecting. Today two or three people can be found begging on the bridge. Brendan would never have tolerated sharing it.
“It was my spot and that was it. I would have fought you on the bridge for it. That’s the way it was. There was too much money to be made. It’s a very good spot because of the traffic on it, and because of its location on a Friday or a Saturday night when the people passing by are drunk,” he states. “It’s kind of good when somebody calls you ‘a dirty scumbag’, or whatever, because there’s always a couple of girls come behind that person. They’ll take your side: ‘The cheek of you. Leave him alone. Fuck off! Blah blah blah’. And they’d put a few quid – usually a note – in your hand when they heard someone doing that.
“On a good Saturday night, putting in the hours – and I would put in the hours – I could make up to two hundred a day. I was very cute. I was living in a squat at one time and used to have me drugs parked away. I used to buy it in weights and then go into town to ‘tap’, to make up the money that I’d spent on them drugs. The drugs would be sitting at home, waiting for me to come back.”
GETTING OLDER
Brendan recalls being attacked once on the Ha’penny Bridge. “I was sitting begging, and this gang of like rugby players came across singing, and one of them made a run for me. I don’t know how I seen it, but with the corner of my eye I just caught his boot coming and I turned my head a slight bit to the right to get out of the way. If I’d kept my head straight he would have caught me full force right underneath my chin. And this fellow was a big, big fella. His legs were like tree trunks. I got up and attacked the guy, I was so shocked. But all of his mates were shocked at what he’d just done. He was drunk, but that’s no excuse…”
Brendan had another dicey experience when he was attacked by another drug addict.
“The character I was on the streets was I didn’t give people any shit, but I didn’t take any. A lot of people kind of knew that and left me alone. But once I had a fella bite my nose to try and get drugs out of my mouth. I had a couple of bags in my mouth but I spat one out to the side and once he seen that he let go. He was just holding my nose; he wasn’t trying to bite it off. He’s a very dangerous fella actually. Again, I was lucky.”
Eventually, Brendan gave up begging and resorted to dealing heroin to feed his habit.
“I was getting sick of begging and I got the chance to get a bit of weight and I went back selling. I got caught, and so I got two years. Thank God! It was a blessing in disguise. When I went into prison I just realised, ‘You’re getting older, mate, and you really have to do something here’. So, I cleaned myself up. It was very difficult. I watched people in prison cutting each other up for silly amounts of heroin. You could give a guy a couple of 20 bags of heroin and he’d cut someone to pieces for you, for it. If you wanted a fellow hit in prison – give him a blade across the face, like – you’d just give someone strung-out a couple of bags of heroin and they’d do it for yah.
“I went cold turkey. I was determined. I just kicked the door out. I was in Mountjoy, so I put in for a transfer. I tried to get down to Cork prison – down the country where there wouldn’t be as much heroin. So, I did. I went down to the jail. There was still a bit of heroin there but I didn’t take it. I decided that I was finished. I worked with the welfare service in the prison to get into a treatment centre.”

CHANGED OUTLOOK
After serving 18 months of a prison sentence, Brendan sought treatment at the Merchant Quay’s Treatment Centre.
“I started to look at why I used drugs and what I was running from. I found out that I used drugs to suppress emotions. I couldn’t face up to things. I didn’t want to be responsible. I wanted to run and hide. I didn’t want to deal with stuff. Then I realised that I had to grow up fast, like. I had to do whatever it took to stay clean and become a productive and responsible member of society. My whole outlook changed. I started treating myself better. I stopped abusing myself. I started to see that I was a valuable human being.”
Brendan has a philosophy of taking each day as it comes; he realises that there’s a genuine danger of him returning to his old ways.
“The thought crosses your mind, but what you do is you don’t forget the consequences. For me, as an addict, I can’t have that one beer or that one joint or that one bag of gear – I would want more and more and more,” he concludes.
Brendan has already shown great willpower and determination staying away from drugs. He has rebuilt his life and is now employed as part of a drugs after-care programme with Casadh, an organisation that supports recovering addicts. He is even planning to return to education this coming September.
Without a doubt, Brendan’s story is an inspirational one and not just for recovering drug addicts. We all have a lot to learn from him.