112 ·^ COSMOPOLITAN
READ
the daughter of very wealthy investors
from Oxford. She was badly bullied
throughout her teens and this
impacted her confidence hugely.
At university she started taking drugs
to combat how shy she felt around
new people – but would wake up in
fields not knowing how she got there.
Incredibly bright, and determined
to still get a good education, she’d
then go back to her halls, change and
head straight to lectures. She had to
drop out after her first year. Her drug
dependence is now so high it looks
like she’s going to need 24-hour
live-in care, which is quite unusual
for someone her age.
I’m also increasingly dealing with
addictions to exercise, social media
and shopping. Laura, 33, checked
her phone and tablet constantly – I’m
talking almost 22 hours every day.
When I told her that we had to take
her iPad away for a while, she began
sobbing hysterically, screaming
obscenities at me. Then there is Anna,
a 26-year-old singer and model, who
was going to the gym six times a day
and walking miles in between. She
had body dysmorphia and detested
the idea of anyone seeing her naked
so would rise at 5am to do a spin class,
come home to shower, then walk
back to the gym for another class.
Most of these addictions live
alongside the more noticeable and
well-known ones – I could be seeing
a client for alcoholism and find that
their houses are filled with designer
clothes and shoes, most with the tags
still on, while Net-A-Porter deliveries
continue to arrive.
The first stage of any detox
programme is, of course, stopping
whatever it is that you are addicted to.
But we don’t enforce complete cold
turkey: the body reacts severely to a
rapid-detox, and it can be incredibly
dangerous. Cutting out a substance
that someone has developed a
reliance on causes the chemical
processes in the brain to become
disrupted: alcohol, opiates and
benzodiazepines (drugs
like Xanax or Valium)
interfere with the
receptors in our brain- and complete and
sudden abstinence could
lead to potentially fatal
seizures. For a medical
detox, our clients would
be put on medication,
including antidepressants,
anti-anxiety and anti-
tremor drugs, and we’d slowly get
the alcohol out of their system over
a period of a week or two.
But, even when done safely, alcohol
and drug withdrawal is horrible to
watch. Patients have been curled
up in balls screaming, had
hallucinations, been throwing up
constantly and violently shaking.
But a detox alone isn’t enough.
Which is why I constantly check up
on clients, at times of the day when
they won’t expect me. I head to
businesswoman Ellen’s* house: she
was working 90 hours a week and
drinking to cope – and
sure enough I find her
lying in bed, clutching
a bottle of vodka. It’s
not up to me to wrestle
it out of her hands, that
won’t help; as soon as
I leave she’d just go
back for more. Instead
I ask what she hopes
drinking will achieve,
and remind her of
the past progress we’ve made. She
hands me the bottle.LEARNING TO LIVE AGAIN
I spend the afternoon standing outside
a corner shop in leafy Wimbledon,
with 26-year-old Kate* crying on
my shoulder. This is part of her
rehabilitation back into society, and I’d
accompanied her to buy a pint of milk
at the place she used to buy alcohol.
It’s one of the final stages of the
process: we have to help break
associations with places so our clients
can cope without one of our nurses“Patients have
been curled
up in balls
screaming”