Quotes from Cathryn Kemp

I used to think a drug addict was someone who lived on the far edges of society. Wild-eyed, shaven-headed and living in a filthy squat. That was until I became one...

And I was – still am – in a state of permanent terror that the pancreatitis may return. I still have nightmares about hospital and it is two years since my last admission. Those nights in A&E haunt me, and will probably do so forever, with their brutality and pain. No wonder I took a bit more, then a bit more, until it all spiralled out of control. No wonder I tried to run from those damaging memories into the arms of mother opiate. Charlie

There is a reason why so many heroin addicts die of their affliction. And the reason is this: the withdrawal process. It is so desperate, so frightening and all-consuming that it is simply very often the only 'logical' choice of an addict to keep using, to keep clinging to the chains of their addiction, rather than go through this.

Part of the reason I got so thin is because my pancreas simply couldn't digest my food and so I couldn't absorb anything. It took three years to get this wonder medicine prescribed for me,

The strands of my soul which should weave together to create a life have shredded and ripped into fragments so tangled up that I have no hope of setting them free. I

I challenge anyone not to feel worn down after weeks and months of having to be grateful. When there is little enough left of your true self, somehow the gratitude feels like the last straw. Or

I feel a sense of betrayal by my body, most strongly when the attacks come, as they do, every week or so for the next few months. Each time, I am shocked that part of me wants to hurt me so badly. It feels personal. It is personal. And I feel let down by the very skin that contains me. My Judas. My disloyal body. Can

I notice how the relationships I did manage to cling to are starting to fade away. My friends have lives of their own and they move onwards, like a film reel before me.

we are all the shunned masses, part of the bands of outcasts of a society that worships self-control and despises addiction as a moral failing.