Stephen Croke shares his inspiring story of recovery from a 20-year battle with alcohol and drug addiction, ultimately reuniting with his sons and finding stability.
A Kilkenny man has opened up about how he completely turned his life around after being addicted to alcohol and drugs for over two decades. Stephen Croke, from Callan, was able to get clean after 20 years and was even reunited with his two sons after experiencing years of homelessness. Speaking to RSVP, Stephen explains that addiction took hold of him in his early teens. Everything else faded away, jobs, family. My parents and I became estranged.
Stephen ended up couch surfing, moving from place to place, and he was even sleeping in a tent by the river in Kilkenny at one point. I was angry and selfish, hurting everyone around me. Things only got worse for Stephen as he grew older. He was frequently thrown out of places and found himself in trouble with the law. I just needed a plan to get through the day, as long as I had drink and drugs, he says. When you are addicted, it’s hard to get out of it. It takes over your whole life. When Stephen was 22, he got in contact with the Good Shepherd Centre in Kilkenny, a charity which provides support and emergency accommodation to homeless people. I called down there, and it became a part of my life for the next 16 years, in and out, before I finally got on track. Stephen first tried getting addiction treatment when he was 24, and he went in and out of various treatment centres over the next 20 years. I always wanted to get clean because there was something better inside me. I knew that wasn’t the way I was supposed to be. When you are addicted, you are just barely existing. Some days you’d wake up and wish for death. It was tough. When you are in that cycle, you live to survive. It was all I knew all my life until I got sobe
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