Number One on the Bestseller list

Just heard the great news that Dying to Survive is Number One on the Irish Bestseller list! It's amazing!! Only a few weeks ago I posted that the book was at number two. I didn't think it would climb to the number one spot.

Thanks again to everyone who helped with the book: From the publisher Gill & Macmillan to all of you out there who actually bought the book.

Many thanks xxx

Family photo

This is a pic of me and my Mam. Lots of water under the bridge and it's good to have come out the other end.

Still selling

The news about Dying to Survive is really good. It's still selling well and the publishers are very happy with its progress.

Thanks to everyone who has bought the book:)

One day at a time...

The fear of failure is always there, but with each passing day spent clean and sober the worry that I will go back to the old ways recedes. Looking back at an old documentary reminds me of falling off the wagon.

At one stage in the documentary, I break down when remembering a previous failure to get clean - a four-year stretch at one stage.

"I genuinely wanted to, but I just wasn't ready for it. I have to learn to my love myself and do the right thing by me now, but it's very painful.

"This is why I was afraid to give up the drugs because I knew all this stuff would come up and every time I got clean before, I never connected with all this stuff. I could talk the talk but it was always only on a head level."

That was two years ago, a lifetime.

I like this post!

From my Facebook page:

Jennifer Egan Hi Rachael, in the middle of reading the book now...congrats on it!i bought the last copy on the shelf in easons in the square on monday....hope it gets to number one:)

May 9 at 1:44am · Comment

Sold out!

Just heard that Gill & Macmillan has sold the entire first print run of Dying to Survive! They're printing more books as I write!!

All in the family

I suppose a lot of drug addicts blame their families for their addiction. I've tried to get across in the book that this isn't the case with me.

As John Spain in the Irish Independent says:

"The description of her descent into this hell over several chapters is a unique insight into what life was like for many kids in Ballymun at the time. The towers were known as 'The Devil's Playground', with gangs of feral kids in abandoned flats shooting up.

But her book is also a revealing insight into the mind of the addict. You realise that her family was not as uncaring as she thinks.

They made endless attempts to help her, even as she turned their lives into a nightmare -- lying, robbing, bringing her grandparents to the edge of a complete breakdown.

The extraordinary efforts by the extended family to help her included bringing her abroad three times for treatment. But she frustrated all efforts, relapsing again and again in a messy cycle of detox and overdose that went on for years and must have been heartbreaking for those around her.

And all the time she blamed her internal hurt and despair on being abandoned by her mother. All the time She saw the world through the skewed, self- centred, self-pitying vision of the junkie.

The reality is that her mother was not perfect, but it was not all her fault and she was there for Rachael in the end. It is to Rachael's credit that she shows this clearly in the book."

Little rich kid?

It's funny how people pick up things completely the wrong way. I've heard from a friend there is one of those online forums where they are discussing my book. Apparently after a few posts describing the life I led and my battle to stay off drugs, one poster wrote: "Well, she comes from a rich family..."

Unbelievable! Us and all the other families on the famous Ballymun millionaire's row!!

The beginning of the end

July 2006. That was the beginning of the end for me and drugs. I was arrested fir shoplifting and knew a weekend in the cells lay ahead. Worse, a weekend without drugs. 

For the next few hours I couldn't feel anything as the last fix of heroin left my body. 

Eventually a garda arrived to tell me eight bench warrants were outstanding against me. I would appear in court the following Tuesday. I couldn't get any methadone so braced myself for the longest few days of my life.

Redemption story

There was a great review of Dying to Survive in the Irish Independent last week. The paper's book editor, John Spain, said: 

"This is the best book by far about the drugs explosion in Dublin, about the inadequacy of treatment facilities and about the mindset of a young junkie"

I'm over the moon with the review, there seems to be a real momentum building with the book, what with all the radio interviews, Sky News doing a report and now this glowing review.

Another part of the review says:

"It's only by managing to come out the other end, by becoming "the girl with the arms", that Rachael Keogh has managed to stay around to write it. Many of her peers were not so lucky.

After the media frenzy generated by her picture and TV appearance, Rachael was back in court on an outstanding warrant for shoplifting and back in prison. By then there was widespread awareness of her plight., no doubt helped by the media coverage of her case.

It took months, but eventually she got a place first in the Cuan Dara detox unit in Cherry Orchard Hospital and then in Keltoi, the recovery facility in the Phoenix Park. She was clean and on her way... and full of gratitude for those all the people who helped her, whom she names.

She is still clean. She is now in college studying psychotherapy. Her arms still bear the scars ... but they have healed. The arms that saved her."

You can read the full review here.

A big thank you

Just wanted to say a big thanks to everyone who helped getting Dying to Survive published. It took a lot of effort but was well worth it in the end.

Thanks again! 

Number two on bestseller list!!

Wow, just found out that Dying to Survive is Number Two on the Irish Bestseller list for non-fiction books. I can't believe it, all that hard work writing the book seems to have paid off.

Thanks to everyone who has gone out and bought a copy!

What the book means to me

Here are a few reasons why I wrote Dying to Survive

1) To move on, with my son, to a future I thought I would never see

2) To understand why I became an addict

3) To forgive myself and my family

4) To close this chapter on my life 

How I kicked the habit

People always ask me how I managed to get off drugs. Like many other drug users I found comfort and support in Narcotics Anonymous. It was at the daily meetings where I met others just like me or who had travelled the road before me, and who didn't judge me.

I also found a rehabilitation  centre where, in a gentle and non-judgemental environment, I learned to conquer my demons . I learned to find hope in small things, in the mundanity of everyday life, in the little routines I had shunned for so long. I came to realise it wasn't the drugs that were holding me back in a life I had come to hate - it was me, and only I could change things.

I used to wonder how on earth people could cope with life without drugs and now I know. Life has given me so much more since I stopped taking heroin. I stuck with the rehab and remained clean far longer than the six months which I had managed before. 

More later....

More publicity

Last week Sky News cameras followed me around Dublin as the book was launched. Its website has a page about me here

It also has a short news video with an interview here

There are some comments from Sky News viewers:

• ""I find this statement by Rachael Keogh rather perplexing..... My priority even now is still to stay clean." This MUST be her EVERY DAY priority, for the rest of her life!! ""

  Thats a very harsh thing 2 say , cuz that priority SURE BEATS wanting to find drugs as an every day priority, i truley respect and honor those who go clean cuz it dose take courige and a sharp mind...not to bad for an addict. cheers shorts.

  Posted By :salahREPORT THIS

• Completely pointless. She wouldn't have paid any attention to such a book when she was an addict.

  Posted By :MarkREPORT THIS

• Rachel is trying to open peoples minds to the actual horror of a drug addiction, hopefully this book will save the lives of some people that choose that path. Drugs are now available and accessable more then ever and no ones family or friends are untouchable.

  Well done rachel for getting clean, I am looking foward to Reading your book and I hope you have the strength to enjoy a healthy lifestyle with your child.

Sunday World

Big four-page spread in the Sunday World yesterday. It's great publicity for the book and the sort of exposure most new authors don't get.

It was, of course, the full tabloid treatment with big headlines, loads of pictures and as scandalising as they could make it. 

The headline spread across the first two pages read: "I could spend over 13 hours desperately trying to get the heroin into me. I sadistically found this ritual pleasurable."

The headline for pages three and four was: "My mum tore my cardigan off and swore at me... take a look at your f**king arms Rachael. Look at them."

Salvation of a smack addict

The book is out there, just waiting to read the first reviews. I hope they go gently on me!

There's another documentary available online, may after my son was born. You can watch it here.

Going public

The book launch, Gerry Ryan, all the other interviews that go with a book launch. Of course, this isn't the first time I've had to talk to the media.

Back in 2006 my mum took pictures of my rotting arms and sent them to a few journalists.

Alison O'Reilly from Sky made a documentary, this is what she wrote a year later in 2007:

She was dying from heroin addiction when I interviewed her in July 2006. The 27 year old from Ballymun in Dublin had been caught up in the grips of drug abuse for 14 years and she didn't have the strength to fight her demons anymore.

Rachael and her family knew it was only a matter of time before her body gave up. She told me she was better off dead.

Her arms were destroyed from injecting. The veins in her body had collapsed and she was now injecting into capillaries which weren't strong enough to handle the heroin, so the citric acid had burned huge holes in her arms.

Her mother Lynda released shocking pictures of the open wounds in the hope Rachael would be hospitalised.

We both got on from the start and I decided to investigate drug treatment facilities in Dublin and try to understand why Rachael wasn't getting the proper treatment she needed.

There are approximately 13,000 drug addicts in Dublin alone and only 20 detox beds. The first step when trying to get off drugs is a stabilisation or methadone programme.

Everyday Rachael works on a 12 step programme.

"Imagine feeling like you are wrapped up in cotton wool. You feel so safe, like no one can hurt you. That's what it's like when you take heroin, it's so overwhelming it's very hard to stop, it takes away all your cares".

Rachael put so much pressure on herself to get clean.  She never stopped trying going from the methadone clinic and then to see her counsellor.

She remained positive through sheer grit and determination but she often broke down when she found it difficult to cope.

Last month Judge Cormac Dunne acquitted Rachael on eight counts of shoplifting and said she was a "role model" for all acutely addicted persons.  She didn't receive probation or a conviction, and he congratulated Rachael on her efforts to rehabilitate herself.

The girl with the arms...

What a day!

It started with an hour-long interview on the Gerry Ryan show and finished with my book launch later in the evening. 

The interview with Gerry went really well. I don't suppose too many people get an hour of his show to promote their book, so hopefully that's an indication of the interest there is in Dying to Survive.

Gerry called me the 'girl with the arms', which, I suppose, is how a lot of people remember me from the Sky News documentaries. "It looks like you've been savaged by a wild animal" was his own way of putting things. I just explained that I would have to leave it another while before I got any work done on them, as the doctors said you have to be clean a few years before work can begin.

So, as I said, we spoke for an hour. Everything was covered, from starting out with drink and hash through acid and then heroin. Gerry couldn't believe I took acid every day for a year. "You're brain must have been fried!"

The official launch of the book took place in Hughes & Hughes in St Stephens Green Shopping Centre later that evening. There were loads of people there. Faces from my past and present. Fr Peter McVerry was the guest speaker and he said some lovely things. He mentioned he doesn't have much time to read books but he started reading mine Sunday night and couldn't put it down! He finished it the same night.

I said a few words also. I was a bit nervous but just spoke about why I wrote the book and what it means to me. As I've mentioned before, the journey from there to here is amazing. In my speech I said that three years ago I was hooked on drugs and getting barred from my local shopping centre. I nearly died.

Now I'm clean and a published author. It took me 16 months to write the book and I had to live like a hermit to get it finished but I wanted to show people there is hope. 

I finished by thanking all the people that have helped me, particularly my family, who never gave up hope either.

I should have a few pics from the launch up on the site soon. That's all for now. Make sure you watch out for a new documentary about me on Sky News over the Bank Holiday weekend.

And another thing.... Eason's have made Dying to Survive its Book of the Month for May. 

Can you believe it?