Welcome to The Sin Eater

Steven was about to read his diary out, it was the first morning of group and Patrick had asked him, well told him to go first.

Steven shifted in his seat, he didn’t want to be here, he was a championship boxer that had a lost his title in his last fight over 3 months ago and had hit a wall with the power of one of his right hooks.

His manager had sent him here to dry out and sort his shit out after his cocaine and drinking binges had been exposed in a national newspaper by a friend, a so-called friend that had recorded him in Stevens own kitchen sniffing a line that would not have been out of place in a Scarface movie.

It had all come out over a month ago and Steven was lucky to get a place at hope house.

Hope house was a recovery facility in Greece run by Patrick O’Neil, it had been running for just over 5 years and had the best success rate for getting people cleaned up, and keeping them clean.

Hope house was one of a kind facility and as it was in Greece it was not under any regulation or under the eye of the usual suspects that operated in the UK, it was not a well-known facility and tended to have clients that needed privacy, there had been many famous people go through hope house but as it was a well-kept secret and a bit out the way it was the preferred place of recovery for those that needed space and time to recover out of the eyes of the media.

By no means did that mean that it was an easy ride, it worked with addicts however it saw the addiction, the substance to be a symptom of the problem.

It ran two runs of 3 month therapy a year and in between it ran retreats for those that had attended before as a sort of top up.

It was staffed by Patrick, Kostas his medical support and Sonia who basically kept house, there were others that worked on the property such as Kiro the gardener and his son that would help him.  

The property sat in the hills looking over the fishing town of Methoni in Greece, it was about a 3-hour drive from Athens, it was now the roads had been built however when Patrick had first landed here it had taken him over 5 hours on a bus to get to Methoni, this is where he had met Kostas on this bus ride that had been life changing for them both.

Patrick was 46 now but looked well for his age considering the life he had lead as a heroine and crack addict for over 10 years leading to him spending over 3 years in prison.

This is where he had first encountered talking therapy but it hadn’t been a good experience but had given him the drive to become a therapist and not be someone that treated an addict like a dirty no good scum bag which was exactly how he was made to feel when he had had those few sessions with the prison drug worker , fortunately there had been another visiting therapist that he had seen when Mr Marks had been off  , she showed him the other side of therapy and how addiction was a disease usually brought about through some trauma , this is what drove Patrick to become one of the best addiction therapists unofficially of course but anyone that had worked with Patrick or knew how he worked with addicts held him as one of the best therapists.

Patrick didn’t mess about, addiction took no prisoners and had held him by the throat for many years, he knew how hard it was to fight this affliction that was still seen as a moral deficiency, even he at times saw it as the disease of selfishness.

His addiction had taken him to places that still made him feel sick to the stomach, he had stolen from his own mother, father, anyone that he could and that was just the material part of it, in truth he had stolen much more on his journey of destruction, carnage and at times poor evil pursuit of oblivion.

So now he found himself 20 years clean and sober working with 6 damaged addicts every 6 months delving into their past and finding the reason for them either wanting to hide behind the drug, self-medicating a mental condition or trying to commit slow chemical suicide.

He knew how that had felt, with every needle he had had stuck into his arm he had craved not to wake from this one, he had known many that had gone that way, people he had loved in his own twisted drug addled way.

He had brought people back from going over, that’s what they those addicts that had been his dysfunctional family on the streets of Birmingham called overdosing, but it wasn’t ever really an overdose, they never had enough to do that it was more of the fact of what they had used together such as alcohol and heroine and the reaction of both substances that fucked with the repertory system causing them to go over and die if not caught I time.

Addiction was more than a junkie wanting to get off their heads, addiction held you in its palm and played with you, addiction hated you and dined on the suffering of you and those around you.

It wanted every shred of dignity that you ever possessed, it challenged you and you think that your bigger than it, it won’t get me but it does and then it can be your best friend when your only way out of the pain is to go to that other place, that place where you can’t be found, that dark hole where your embroiled in that warm separation from your self.

Once its visited with you it never leaves whatever you do , you have to live by that strict code of total abstinence , no drinking  , no pills no nothing because as soon as you do you open the door to its seductive call , come with me , you can do it once , you will be fine it’s been years and sometimes it does but eventually it gets you , it lets you think it’s gone but all the time it’s there doing press ups getting stronger waiting for you to just make that one mistake and then it’s back in full force with all that you have built at its disposal and then its cancerous callous path of destruction starts and ends quickly.

“ Steven “ Patrick repeated , Steven looked up and with a sort of smirk in his Manchester accent said “ this seems stupid “ Patrick quickly quipped back “ stupid is sniffing a line the size of a road line in front of a so called friend and then when finding out that he outed you giving him a shattered jaw that’s gonna cost you about 100 grand , that’s stupid my friend now read the fucking diary or leave “