Redemption story - girl with the arms
Books Editor John Spain on the tragic and ultimately uplifting life of the Dublin woman whose picture shocked the nation
Golden girl: Rachael as she is today
The picture on the cover of Rachael Keogh's book is truly shocking. But then it's meant to be. That picture of the rotting sores in her arms saved her life ... and she is now hoping that the image will help save other junkies as well.
Published this week, Rachael's book is a real life horror story of growing up in Ballymun, of being on the booze at 11, hash at 12, Es at 13, heroin at 14, in prison at 15, a prostitute at 16. Ten years later, 26, and a hopeless junkie, she was at death's door with arms so bad that doctors were warning that they they might have to be amputated.
That was in 2006. But the main picture of Rachael you see here, a beautiful young woman, was taken this year. She is now 29, a college student, a mother of a baby boy, happy, healthy, optimistic about the future.
So although this story is horrific in places, fundamentally it is a story of redemption. It is the story of how one remarkable young woman went through hell and then somehow found her way back. It is a story told with dignity because even at her lowest point, degraded by what she had to do to get drugs, Rachael always retained a sense of her own worth as a human being. And that is what saved her.
The way back began when, as she puts it herself, she became "the girl with the arms". Her mother was beside herself with worry. Rachael was down to seven stone, constantly overdosing and in and out of casualty. It was clear time was running out yet her mother could not get her long-term treatment.
In desperation she contacted the Irish Independent and this paper ran a story about Rachael with the shocking picture of her arms exposed. At that point she became "the girl with the arms" and in the frenzy that followed, Rachael appeared on Sky News.
When asked by the reporter, Rachael rolled up her sleeves and explained the damage that shooting up had done, how her veins were blocked and the heroin had burned her flesh. The blackness was necrosis, the medical term for dead flesh caused when tissue is starved of blood, and which can end up as gangrene and require amputation.
"The doctors told me that if I continue to use, they will have to amputate both my arms," Rachael told the reporter and even though she was determined not to cry, the tears flowed. But she could not stop using not without help, and none was available.
The TV appearance played an important part in saving her. But before the book gets to that part, it goes through the years of addiction.
It begins with the family background in Ballymun. Her mother was one of five children. She was only 15 when Rachael was born and so Rachael was raised mainly by her grandparents in a house where drink and violence created problems. Her grandfather, she recalls, had "hands like big shovels", was moody and unpredictable.
Her own father was a young junkie, who her grandparents would not let into the house. When her mother eventually went to live with him, the violence continued. One of Rachael's first memories is of an incident when her father pushed her mother's head inside the oven when the grill was on. "I could see that the bars on the inside were scorching red ... her high-pitched screams paralysed me," she says.
But the main problem for Rachael was that when her mother got a new boyfriend, she abandoned Rachael (who was then seven). Rachael's granny was working fulltime so by the time Rachael was approaching her teens she was alone most of the day.
She was free to mitch from school and hang out around the drug-infested towers.
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.
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. 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.
Dying to Survive by Rachael Keogh, Gill & Macmillan, €12.99
