Courtney McGrailSr Consilio, who has overseen the treatment of nearly 100,000 addiction sufferers over the last 50 years, talks to Casey Schmauder
Casey Schmauder
Sr Consilio has overseen the treatment of nearly 100,000 addiction sufferers over the last 50 years, she tells Casey Schmauder
Fifty years ago, when Sr Consilio used an old dairy to house those suffering from addiction, she could not have foreseen her centre, Cuan Mhuire, becoming Ireland’s largest provider of residential detox treatment.
“I didn’t really set out to start Cuan Mhuire, but it started around me” Sr Consilio says.
Growing up, she’d watched her mother praying the rosary every day and looking to Our Lady whenever she was in need. Naturally, Sr Consilio started to pray the same way. When her treatment facility was officially established, she would name it Cuan Mhuire, “An Cuan” means “the harbour” and “Mhuire” is in reference to Mother Mary.
Sr Consilio is a member of Sisters of Mercy, and as a young nun, she qualified as a nurse and midwife and worked in St. Vincent’s hospital.
She saw the pains of addiction working in the hospital and on the streets where she lived.
“I had come in contact with people on the road who were drinking wine, and I saw their lives were in shambles, with a bottle of wine in their pockets, going from county to county looking for a night’s lodging,” Sr Consilio says. “And I suppose I thought about their mothers and how broken they must be to have a son on the road like that, and I thought, someday, someplace, somehow, there must be a place these lads can call home.”
Sr Consilio used an old dairy for the lads to get off the street and find community. Soon the men were staying overnight, and as the numbers rose to thirty, she bought property to expand.
“I thought if they could go out in the morning and do a day’s work and come home at night to a fire and a meal and somebody to love them and care for them, that it might change their lives,” Sr Consilio says.
And change for Ireland is inarguably needed. Per capita, the Irish consume more alcohol than the majority of the world’s developed states, and the World Health Organization (WHO) assesses the prevalence of alcohol dependence in Ireland to be at 3.8%. The 18-24 and the 35-34 brackets are both above the national average.
The Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) also reports that as of 2011, the lifetime use of an illegal drug was at 27.2 %, and that adult drug-induced deaths in Ireland occur, on average, three times more than they do elsewhere in the EU.
And as for gambling, though it’s a newly recognised addiction, the IMO estimates that at any time, 1% of the adult population experiences gambling problems fitting the criteria of addiction.
Sr Consilio, too, sees that times have gotten tougher in terms of falling into and then wrestling with addiction. In the 1960’s, she says, though conditions were poor and the men were poor, they were grateful they had a place to stay. Today, though, she gets addiction sufferers who are ungrateful and feel entitled to more than they’re offered, and she has to teach them that that attitude will never allow recovery.
“It’s hard to encourage them to help out and be grateful for whatever because, without gratitude, there is no recovery,” Sr Consilio says. “Grateful people are happy people, so we have to encourage them to be grateful. They have to be grateful for the help they can give to each other, which is the main thing they can give to each other. It is the love that is given to each other and the ways they reach out to help each other in their group, and in their walking, and in their doing their household chores, or any of the therapeutic duties that they do, that’s where is the greatest healing.”
In her facilities, addiction sufferers would involve themselves in group therapy, counselling, meditation, meetings with AA and/or GA, video lectures and discussions, and family days to give support to the family members struggling with their loved one’s addiction.
Sr Consilio tried to provide all of these things to show the lost souls love, yet realized addiction was more complicated than that.
“Of course, it took me a long time to realize that the person they needed to love them, and by love I mean see what was best in them, was their own selves,” Sr Consilio says. “Somewhere along the line they must have felt rejected, and all rejection becomes self-rejection, and the pain of rejection is enormous, so to kill the pain, they drank the wine.”
European studies estimate that between one-third and one-half of addiction sufferers concurrently experience mental or psychiatric illness ranging from anxiety and depression to schizophrenia and personality disorders. Thus, as Sr Consilio points out, they turn to substance to ease mental or emotional pain.
For this reason, Sr Consilio runs a program that aims to treat not only the problems of addiction, but the underlying problems that led to the addiction in the first place, such as rejection or other internal unhappiness.
“Our heads are so limited and so troublesome. I want to draw people away from their heads to a deeper level where they could enjoy doing things that give them a sense of satisfaction and an opportunity to discover their inner giftedness,” Sr Consilio says.
Though she hasn’t all the programs and the facilities yet that she’d like to see to lead people to recovery and bring them “away from their heads,” she swears she and Cuan Mhuire have always been provided for in times of need.
She was able to move from a dairy into her first centre because she received a break where she would not have to pay for materials for a full year, so she could focus on affording the property.
“Even though we might be on our last legs for something, Our Lady never, never sees us short. She always gets someone to help us,” Sr Consilio says.
Her first centre was in Athy in County Kildare, but she has since expanded to have five treatment centres. The centre in Co Kildare now has 139 beds for those addicted to drugs and alcohol. A centre in Bruree, Co Limerick has 125 beds. There are 70 beds at the location in Coolarne, Co Galway. There’s an all-women facility in Farnanes, Co Cork, and there are 65 beds at Newry, Co Down.
Across the five sites, there are 600 people in treatment at any given time, and Cuan Mhuire has treated an estimated 75,000 since opening.
When someone enters of the centres, they must submit to Cuan Mhuire’s philosophy of total abstinence, meaning not a drop of liquor or any drug is allowed to be consumed in the process of treatment. The treatment program is typically twelve weeks, though Cuan Mhuire extends a patient’s time when it’s appropriate.
And just as Sr Consilio thought of the mothers of the boys she saw drinking wine on the roads, she thinks of the families today and makes every effort to support families with a member suffering from addiction.
Families are affected by addiction through worrying and anxiety, but family members can also be more likely to develop an addiction after living with someone who’s been through it. And children are disproportionately affected, too. Research from the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (ISPCC) says that nine % of children aged 12-18 has been negatively affected by a parent’s alcohol use.
Family days are held at every treatment facility, and families are invited to participate in the process of recovery at times Cuan Mhuire deems appropriate. Sr Consilio hopes her homes can be a place where families can come “when they are in distress” about a loved one in or needing rehab.
Others, however, do not have families to come home to after they complete their treatment, or seeing their old friends and family leads them to fall back into patterns they were in before.
Once someone leaves a centre, aftercare is provided for 2 years in the form of monthly meetings, however, Sr Consilio admits some are lost in this process.
“Our people are very fearful when they leave and when they go home. They’re afraid maybe to walk down the streets or to go looking for their welfare or to get a job or to be on their own going to meetings,” Sr Consilio says. “Cause these early stages are when they slip back because they can’t cope without the drug or the drink.”
The way to prevent that, according to Sr Consilio, is to have transition houses where people leaving treatment centres could ease into society alongside their peers for support.
“I believe if could get the transition houses up and going in every town in Ireland, there would be tremendous support for the people that go out, when they go out,” Sr Consilio says. “There would be a reduction in the people who got lost, and nobody need get lost, because then the others would be aware of the person who had slipped, and they’d be able to offer them help and hopefully get them back again. So you can pray that these places will turn up for us.”
The first transition house was built on Lower Gardiner Street in Dublin in the 1990’s, and now Cuan Mhuire also has transition houses in Limerick, Galway, and Co Monaghan.
Part of the reason transition houses are necessary is because 50 % of those entering treatment at Cuan Mhuire are homeless at the time of admission. That means, when it is time for them to enter society, they may not have homes to go to, and that is an added complication when they are already tasked with the mission of staying clean.
36 % of Irish homeless are addicted to drugs, according to the National Advisory Committee on Drugs and Alcohol. And drug and alcohol dependence are the second and third leading causes of homelessness, following family issues.
So, when not having a home to return to, people from Cuan Mhuire may find themselves with the same drug and alcohol addicted peers on the streets that they used to smoke or drink with before.
Though while Sr Consilio continues to pursue her young hope to have a transition house in every town, saying all she needs is “two beds and a toilet in every town,” she can celebrate that, for 50 years, she has been saving the lives of addicted persons in Ireland.
The 50th anniversary of her treatment centre in Athy is this year, and there will be celebrations from Monday, August 22 through Sunday, August 28.
On Monday the 22, there will be a golf classic. That Thursday, the 25, there will be a conference on “the changing face of addiction” chaired by Miriam O’Callaghan. Friday the 26 there will be an American tea party. And over the weekend, there will be a Saturday mass with Archbishop Eamon, a torchlight procession, a barn dance, a Sunday thanksgiving mass with Bishop Eamon Walsh, a luncheon, and a variety concert.
Proceeds from the celebration events will go toward expanding and supporting Cuan Mhuire.
Sr Consilio would like to start having engaging workshops for the residents of all of her rehabilitation centres because, she explains, they get stuck in their heads where anxiety and negativity take root.
“They have a problem living from their heads, worrying and stressed about the future and the past, all these things, whereas living is really about being attentive to the now. We never have now again, even this particular now. Now is the most important time we ever have, and it’s the only time we can live. Anything else is an illusion,” Sr Consilio says. “You can’t live tomorrow, and you can’t live yesterday. So I would love to have workshops where the therapy from doing the work would bring them away from their heads and enable them to discover their giftedness and discover the power within them, the power of god, that lives in all of us, deep down inside.”
As everyone around Cuan Mhuire is gearing up for the anniversary celebrations, people who were formerly rehabilitated there are returning and inspiring young recovers to continue to pursue sobriety and an end to their addictions.
“We’ve had the good fortune of a number of people coming to help us who themselves had problems but got through them, and I see the enormous effect they have, especially on our young people, and how they can bring them with them,” Sr Consilio says. “I’ve seen in the last week or two so many young people turn the corner and get a new zest for life working with these other people who have come in to help us.”
I asked her if she can relax and enjoy the celebrations, yet she says seeing all the good work being done only makes her want to go out and do more work and treat more people.
“That’s what’s egging me on more than ever getting these workshops going! Because we can’t waste time thinking about what’s going wrong. We have to all the time be putting together things that can go right.”