Dun Laoghaire Rathdown Outreach Project

An interview with a Day Programme participant:

How long have you been here?
“I’ve been here now for exactly two years and five months.”

What’s it like?
“Well…. it’s like, for me, personally, it’s what I make of it. DROP is whatever I want to make of it. The support that is provided is, I think, very, very good, but now if you are coming in with the attitude of “I don’t want this to work for me and I’m going to rebel against everything” then it is not going to work so well.

But for me, I’ve always wanted it to work, I’ve always had a positive outlook, and it’s given me the best chance to get the best out of what is here.
There is obviously some things that I didn’t like, but then I have found that it’s just me being narrow minded. Like, Parenting classes, I thought “well, that won’t be any help to me because I’ve got no children”, but it has helped me, it’s helped me with my relationship with my mother.
Sometimes I forget how good the support is. I go back into my old way of thinking there is no-one out there that wants to support me. If you’re missing from here for a couple of days, then when you get back there is always that sense of concern there and people looking out for you, asking you how are things. But there will be challenge too. Usually with your key worker, then you have  a chat to see what is going on and it’s maybe the first chance you get to have a chat to voice what is going on for you, and you can look at your options, the direct questions are asked, there is no beating around the bush, because if you’re not here then maybe it is because you don’t want to be here, and that needs to be said to you. But you are made to feel that it is looked at in a caring sense, and also in a very real sense. Even where there is a warning or a disciplinary procedure, if you haven’t been in, and you’re thinking “why are you doing this to me? You’re supposed to be helping me,” but that is what happens in the real world. I think it is important.

If you’re being too mollycoddled, too cotton-woolled on the Programme, then there’d be chaos. It needs the rules, it has to be like the real world, it is always said that it is for your own best interests, it has to be like what life is about, you can’t be living in a dream world, you know. 

For me personally it has been a development. I have really grown since coming here, I have learnt so much. Now I can look back and it’s amazing to see how much I have grown as a person since being here.
I though people just saw me as an idiot in the corner I didn’t realise anyone heard what I said, and now I see it is important
I thought “I am just a drug addict”.
But I have realised what talents I have that I didn’t see before because, and I have been able to find that out though staff, and through the other participants. And that is the key thing – the other participants – because they can tell you what is going on for you. 
I have learnt to be more assertive, to use my voice, not to be afraid of what I say, or to think that what I want to say doesn’t mean anything.

I can forget sometimes, how much work I have done here, I can forget that.
Time goes past so fast it can go out of your head but when I look at the time I have been here, in each section, and see what has changed in me, for me, it is huge. Like the times when I have had a relapse and people have been willing to help me and tell me that there is someone there willing to help you, because they can see that there is something there worth … then you realise there is support and they are willing to help you. 
It is a powerful thing for me, it really is.

Sometimes you learn about stuff in DROP and you don’t register it, and then you could be back feeling really down in yourself, and you forget the support is there, and it’s just not going in, what’s being said….. but, although it doesn’t register immediately, later you realise that it has an impact, even at the times when you feel it isn’t working.
And sometimes it is the times that you come back that you realise that what you have learned hasn’t left you, you’re not ever going back to square one.
Anytime you start going backwards again, it’s smaller steps back each time, because of the knowledge you’re getting.  

It wouldn’t have been like this before. In other places I would have only stuck it four months. So to stick it out and be coming into the third year I feel is a big huge achievement and I am getting the fruition from it – all sorts of things, coming from  what I’ve learnt from here: holidays, going to the gym, doing hill walking, getting stable, getting off my methadone, that is all from here.
There were groups I didn’t agree with at the time, and I might not have agreed with it then, but now I will voice it, if I disagree with it now I can voice it, and I see that people listen to it. And as more participants come in and you’s are learning from us – from us as participants. People are not allowed to be affected now, participants, which is better. I think the place has really changed and it will keep on changing and it’s a different place from when I came here first and it will be different again and that’s a good thing,

Your best interests are always being looked after; Even though there is times you feel that they are going on at you, in the end you always know that it’s in your best interests.
If you’re in denial or having one of those days then you feel like you’re being pressurised, but later you can see what they were doing and it is the right thing.
You can get to relax, to be too relaxed, like when you are sort of floating and then you need that push. You can get to “leave me alone, you’re supposed to help me” and then you see they are helping you but they’re pushing you. That’s how they’re helping you. Getting this now, it happens much faster now; I might be immediately getting on the defensive and then I can see straight away that what they are doing is helpful to me.
And once you have that awareness there is no going back, it’s like the wheel of change. And sometimes I curse having that awareness, why can’t I just go back to before I came here and just be ignorant about what I am doing and not have to think about all these things?

But I can’t go back now to the old me. I know something about myself now, I know more, the awareness has really gone up, and that has been from here, the work that I have done in here, and the support that I have got, and that is from the heart, you know, genuinely from the heart.”

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