Closing the front door behind me, I exhaled with relief. It was the evening of Boxing Day and after two full days of festivities with my mum and siblings, I was desperate.
The tensions and extended close proximity of a family Christmas can make many of us grateful for a bit of solitude before the new year arrives. However, that wasn’t why I was craving some alone time.
I was desperate to get away so I could snort a few lines of cocaine.
Walking to a friend’s home nearby, I could almost feel the sensation of the drug going up my nose, the distinctive taste in my mouth and the all-consuming feeling of release I was craving.
You’re probably already shocked by this revelation. But to make things worse, I was pushing my two-year-old son Marshall in his pram.
I put him to sleep in his travel cot in my friend’s spare room, cosy in his little Christmas pyjamas, and expertly chopped lines of cocaine, partying into the small hours with a group of friends and fellow users.
The festive period is a good time of year for cocaine users, says Sarah Ibrahim
Sarah tried to convince herself that she wasn’t an addict
It’s a disturbing scene, horrifying even. But so deep was I in cocaine addiction at that time, I saw nothing wrong with this sort of reckless, irresponsible behaviour.
While the run-up to Christmas, with its endless parties and socialising, really is the most wonderful time of the year for cocaine addicts – who can excuse their drug use under the guise of ‘festive fun’ – Christmas Day itself can be hell.
Cooped up with family, unable to use without suspicion, I was exhausted from trying to pretend I was functioning normally – not to mention mask my permanently runny nose. So I told myself I deserved a Boxing Day binge.
As shocking as it sounds, away from the wholesome family photos on social media, there are so many women like me – including fellow mothers – spiralling further into addiction, aided and abetted by the season of excess.
Even if we white-knuckle it through Christmas Day itself, Boxing Day – when there are fewer prying eyes and less pressure on drug-using mums to cook and ensure the day runs like clockwork – is an addict’s dream day.
My last Boxing Day binge was in 2020, one of two I spent as a single mother addicted to cocaine, not counting the other nine years of drug use before my child was born. All in all I was a heavy user for 11 years.
Now 43, I’ve been clean for four and a half years. But still every December, when the decorations appear in shops and carols play on the radio, I am reminded of those festive seasons lost to drug abuse.
While I’m grateful I managed to recover, there will always be a sadness that I’ll never get those years back.
My journey into drug use started as a teenager, when I dabbled with marijuana, speed and ecstasy.
In my 20s, I partied hard every weekend, before rolling into my job in admin on a Monday morning on a crushing come down.
I was in my mid-20s when I started using cocaine. It made me happy, confident and carefree. The boost to my self-belief meant I kept coming back for more. And more. Soon, I was using during the day, as well as on nights-long benders.
Even after enrolling at university in London as a mature student, to study for a tourism management degree, I was sniffing coke daily and blew my entire student loan in three weeks on the drug.
I was oblivious to the downsides; my appearance – pale with huge bags under my eyes – my erratic moods and my increasing unreliability and selfishness. I’d miss family events because I’d been up all night taking coke at a house party and was too wired to go home.
Not for a moment did I see myself as an addict though. I continued to believe I was in control.
Family members had their suspicions – they weren’t blind – but I simply refused to engage if anyone tried to talk to me about it. I was an adult; it was none of their business. Working as a PA in the City after finishing my degree, everyone would live it up in the run-up to Christmas.
I wasn’t alone in disappearing to the loos at the bar for a line or two, although I knew for others it was a one off at a party, not a year-round habit like I had.
The comedown from a cocaine binge can be a tell-tale sign to other family members
That said, I used more cocaine in December than any other month, spending hundreds of pounds and racking up debt. I’d watch loved ones open gifts I’d bought them and think how many grams of coke I could have bought instead.
One year, I cancelled going to my mum’s at the last minute, as I couldn’t hide the fact I was on a comedown from a pre-Christmas binge and would have just been watching the clock until I could leave. Mum was devastated. Instead, I spent the festive period at a fellow user’s house, where we partied for days instead of spending quality time with those that loved us.
Another flashpoint is New Year’s Eve. With no obligation to be with family, another couple of days off work, and the whole social narrative revolving around cutting loose, it was party time. It was the norm for me to be up for three nights in a row: New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day, then calling in sick to work on January 2 because I couldn’t face reality yet.
Then in early 2018, when I was 36, I discovered I was pregnant. It wasn’t planned and I was terrified.
My immediate reaction was to have a termination. By then, the only way I knew how to cope with difficult emotions was to numb it with cocaine. So that’s what I did. At five weeks pregnant, I binged on cocaine for several days.
Just saying those words now fills me with shame. Thankfully my son’s health was unaffected by this terrible act. When I sobered up, though, I realised I couldn’t abort this baby. Deep down, I wasn’t the sort of person who could choose a drug over a life.
My pregnancy gave me the motivation and willpower to go cold turkey and I felt so excited about the future.
Marshall was born in late 2018 and that Christmas, my first as a mum and first sober for a decade, was incredibly special.
Sarah thinks she spent about £150,000 on cocaine in 13 years
Filling a little stocking for him, dressing him in a Christmas baby-gro and feeling completely present and happy; it was magical. I felt no desire to use, to go out and party. I was perfectly content in a cocoon of love with him and believed cocaine was in my past.
However, the decorations had barely been taken down when drugs managed to worm their way back into my life.
When Marshall was three months old, a friend offered me a line and I accepted. I’ve asked myself so many times why I didn’t say no, and leave. But foolishly, after a year being clean, I believed I could treat it as a one-off.
As 2019 went on, my use escalated from a line here and there with friends to using alone at night when Marshall was asleep.
That Christmas, when Marshall was one, is a blur. The combination of the natural exhaustion of motherhood, coupled with the creeping return of my addiction, was toxic.
I was shattered, grumpy and struggling to provide financially for my son and satisfy my expensive addiction.
I went through the motions –there were gifts, we visited Santa – but my mind was only half on him, half on when I could have a line, though I made sure I was never out of control around Marshall.
I used throughout 2020, the stress of the pandemic and isolating with a toddler while working from home only increasing my craving for the release cocaine gave me.
I vividly remember carefully wrapping the last gift from Santa on Christmas Eve 2020 and placing it under the tree, before inhaling a fat, white line of cocaine, immediately feeling my mind and body relax.
It certainly wasn’t the sort of wholesome, perfect Christmas I’d pictured for myself when I became a mum. I knew Marshall deserved better, but I couldn’t see a way out.
I’d paid for all Marshall’s presents and gifts for my family on credit cards that year because I was in debt from trying to juggle the cost of living as a single mum with my drug addiction.
I’d decided it was more important to keep what cash I had to pay my dealer and get through the festive season by racking up yet more debt.
I still had Christmas lunch with my family to get through, trying to conceal my runny nose and lethargy from them, or risking a secret line in the loo before the turkey was served. Instead of looking forward to all being together, I was dreading it.
It should have been a lovely family Christmas; at two years old, Marshall was beginning to understand about Santa and get so excited.
But I wished the time away and it was that Boxing Day when I tucked him up in a friend’s spare room while I partied downstairs. That would be my last Christmas as an addict.
In May 2021, I decided enough was enough. Cocaine was coming between me and being the mum I wanted to be. I wasn’t even enjoying the drug any more; there was no longer a feeling of escapism.
Having spent around £150,000 on it over 13 years, I was robbing Marshall of a better life.
A combination of sheer determination, clinical hypnotherapy and support from my family – who until then hadn’t been aware of the full extent of my addiction, despite their suspicions – helped me kick my habit.
By Christmas 2021, I was in a much better place, able to soak in Marshall’s joy and excitement in a way I hadn’t been able to the previous two years.
Perhaps you have your own suspicions that you’re spending Christmas with an addict.
Are they exhausted, irritable and argumentative, because they’re on a comedown?
Or have they used, and are twitchy and chattering relentlessly, stumbling over their words? And as soon as the dishwasher is loaded, when everyone else is happy to settle down to watch a movie or play a game, it’s clear they can’t wait to leave to ‘see friends’ or isolate themselves in a bedroom, to use secretly.
I’m so glad to have broken free of all this.
Yesterday when Marshall, now seven, woke filled with excitement on Christmas morning, it was to a rested, content mother who has her life together, not an addict with one eye on him and the other on her next hit.
Now, I love Boxing Day but for very different reasons. It’s a quiet, relaxing day, enjoying delicious leftovers, rather than one for being high on cocaine.
When people say ‘it’s the most wonderful time of the year’ I truly understand exactly what they mean. Because for my son and I, it really is.
Marshall’s name has been changed.
As told to EIMEAR O’HAGAN
