Divorced, addicted and convinced his life was stuttering to an early end, 38‑year‑old Co Armagh father-of-three Christy Nugent lay face down on a floor, stripped of his clothes and senses after another cocaine binge.
Today, he says that image – captured in a photo he would prefer to forget – was the moment everything changed.
It offered Christy some much-needed clarity on his life. The embarrassment alone was enough to shake him to his core.
“At that point it was a real fight for me to stay alive,” admitted Christy, who now prides himself on a level of daily introspection.
The eldest of five, Christy was born in the village of Darkley, where boredom was filled with fun – and, more often than not, mischief. An idle mind is the devil’s workshop and a working-class mill village was a perfect playground for mischief.
Addiction was many years away, but the seeds were sown from a very early age.
Christy’s admissions are both candid and shocking: sexual abuse from an early age, alcohol abuse normalised as a pre-teen, drugs, a marriage breakdown, a loss of licence to drink driving and, most importantly, a loss of self.
“I never really met cocaine until I got divorced,” he says. “I spent a couple years on cocaine, maybe up to three times a week. Whenever I was in the middle of all that, I thought things were fine. I was saying to myself ‘the kids are grand, I’m still paying maintenance, everyone’s good, but I had no purpose, no drive’. As long as they’re good, I’m good, sort of thing and I didn’t give a f*** about me.”
The good times, as fleeting as they were with the substances, masked so much, but when the sobering mornings came, they exposed the scars of the past. That photo of Christy strung out on cocaine, naked on the ground, jolted the then 36-year-old to take a long, hard look at himself in the mirror. He didn’t like what was staring back at him.
“That was probably my rock bottom. And that photo was my wake-up call,” he said.
It didn’t take an intervention from others either.
“People had long just washed their hands of me and said, ‘ah sure that’s just Christy, a mad man’. To me, when I look back at that point, I see a boy, a boy that never grew up. I think there’s a lot of that in society today, and many are using these substances to cope in life. That was me.
“I was always reliant on alcohol, I was drinking from the age of 12 – and when that happens, you’ve no chance.”
“When I look back, I always drank alcohol and it always left me feeling this emptiness inside. When I hit that 18 mark I just always knew there was an emptiness, always knew there was something in there and questioned why I felt the way I did. I was running to alcohol and this carried on right through to when I got married at 26 years of age.
“When people talk about evolving; I had the dream house, these three beautiful young children, wife with a high-flying career, but at the end of the day, I had nothing because I wasn’t connected inside. I was still using alcohol and using gambling as connections – that is what I was connected to.
“To me, I have more now than ever – and that’s very little. On the surface it looked like I had everything back then.”
While things felt wrong inside, Christy was spending most of his week – the working portion – out on a building site. The money may have been good but the environment, he says, felt almost like Ground Zero for his issues.
“My training ground was going to work in a van,” said Christy. “There was six or seven of us, all heading up the road to go to work to get out the tools and start doing physical work. Every one of us all had the same problems. We all had addictions. We all had an alcohol dependency, we all had drama, and we all had these coping mechanisms. There were tablets being passed around the van like no tomorrow.”
But when it came time for Christy to start taking accountability and doing something about his addiction, he soon realised that downing tools – quite literally – was the only way he’d be able to shake himself free.
“When I began the process of working on myself I was seriously shunned at each opportunity,” he admits. “Who does this bugger think he is? What does he think he’s doing? I was getting raised eyebrows from the men around me. I was getting all these projections, it wasn’t a nice environment.”
Christy doesn’t blame anyone for that, saying it is a symptom of a wider issue.
Using an analogy, he adds: “If you throw four millionaires into a circle and you join that circle, you become the fifth millionaire. You throw four or five guys in a van together with all these problems – the cocaine, alcohol, tablets, weed – then you’re going to become the next addict.
“I was trying to fight these people off for maybe four, five, six weeks when I started trying to do something for me, but I was just a bigger fool than any of them. It was a constant fight, a constant battle. I’m recognising now that me being in the middle of all that was actually my training ground for addiction.”
And when he realised that, Christy “went all in”. No more bricklaying.
“First to go was the cocaine, then the alcohol and then the gambling,” he said. “It took that photograph of me naked for the cocaine to go. With the alcohol, it actually took me to losing my licence before I actually woke up to that. There’s an awful draw to the cocaine, and it was very hard to let go of. So, if you’re already drinking alcohol anyway, the alcohol is like opening the door for cocaine use.
“There is a serious high to cocaine but it was taking me to the height of my shame.”
To understand why those substances took such a grip, you have to go back to his childhood.
Christy confided that he was sexually abused as a young boy – by an older female – from the age of six to his early teenage years. This occurred away from the family home.
“This really affected my life and I didn’t know it at the time,” he says.
Did he understand what was going on at the time?
“There was pleasure in it for me, and with what was going on in my household and the difficulties being experienced there, I was probably escaping my reality.
“This was an escapism that I was running to for sure. So while there was pleasure in it I probably didn’t really understand what was happening…there were weird feelings about the whole thing. Looking back, I was so young, I didn’t understand it but it was pretty grim.”
Christy looks back at growing up in Darkley. It was at the tail end of the conflict that saw soldiers walk the streets and engage with children. It was never confrontational but there was a certain backdrop and children were allowed to roam the streets freely.
“Children are more protected now than they were back when I was younger,” he recalls. “Everybody goes through something, but when I look back at those days, I’m glad I’m here now. As much as people look back at the good old days, I’m not sure how much that rings true. I grew up way before I should have – but I didn’t really grow up at all!”
Fast forward and by Christmas Eve 2019, Christy’s life was already fraying at the edges. Drunk behind the wheel that night, he crashed into a tree and broke his back.
“I was drinking that night and I was drunk. I went over a hedge and into a tree. That was at the start of my marriage breaking down,” he recalls.
Looking back, he wonders if part of him wanted to go over that hedge.
“I smashed two bottom lumbars in my back and I was in a back brace to keep myself all held together. I had to just sort of re-learn everything at one stage. That led into 2020 and, believe it or not, I was back on scaffold and building at the start of February. I was standing there building like a robot, I could hardly move.
“My mentality then was ‘Christy, you’ve made your bed, now you’re going to lie in it’ but truth be told, it was no attitude to have, and only the pandemic came in the middle of March – because I knew I couldn’t go on anymore. COVID came in and saved my life.
“I was destroyed on the outside and deep down I was destroyed on the inside.”
After that, his marriage broke down and Christy jumped between a number of “meaningless” relationships.
Christy also lost a cousin to addiction which “just left a big question mark for me”.
“That really scared me,” he says. “I thought to myself ‘something has to change here, something is not right’, but it took me a long time to figure it out.”
It would be almost five years before the penny really dropped.
Christy is determined to end the cycle of self-sabotage and, with the trowel safely stowed away and alcohol and drugs a thing of the past, a new path has opened up for him; one where he hopes his experiences can help others going through similar.
He has recently completed a Level Two counselling course and plans to continue training towards a career in counselling. He says he now feels “called” to help others in crisis – using the power of social media and one-to-one support to reach those who are struggling.
What started as him “getting things off his chest” on TikTok has become a lifeline for some people.
“A lot of people reaching out and asking about what I’m doing,” he explained. “People asking ‘why do I feel this way, why do I feel that way’.”
Christy’s new path comes after that dramatic break with his old life on the building sites.
“I was a bricklayer and I feel I’ve served my time as a bricklayer. This pathway I’m on now, this is the type of work that is meant for me.
“I’m 38 years of age, and divorced. I’ve been through all the trials and tribulations. I’ve had to rebuild again. I treat myself as a vessel and I’m putting love and care into that vessel. I just want to give that back out to people in need because I believe there is a mental health epidemic.”
He says the pace and pressures of modern life are pushing more and more people to the edge.
“People are going a million miles an hour in this fast world; we’re all trying to balance so much. We’re all running from Point A to Point B. People need a bit of nurturing and me time because if your cup is empty or only half full, then you can’t give back to anyone else.”
Opening up publicly about addiction, abuse and his shame has brought admiration from many – and criticism from some. Christy says he has learned to accept both.
“You’re going to have your lovers, you’re going to have your haters, you’re going to have people who admire you, you’re going to have people who say he’s a gobs***e.
“It doesn’t matter who or what people say, it’s about how you feel inside and what do you want to do.”
While Christy’s days are now filled with reflection, he’s asked if he looks back upon his past with regret, or whether or not he blames anyone..
For him, the answer to that question is summed up in three words: “forgiveness – not blame”.
“Oh no, this is a path of forgiveness. Now, I’m probably still on the road to forgiveness but I’m on the road at least,” he said.
“I’m probably reaching the stage where I don’t blame anybody, I don’t shout, I don’t go around accusing. People know everything that I’ve come through and now I’m fit to give back to people – that’s what I’m trying to do now.
“I still have my dark days, I’m not a finished product, I’m still working on myself. I believe we’re never finished. We keep evolving. I might be going through something today and that’s having an effect tomorrow, but when you go into that well of gold inside you, you get stronger from it, and that’s the reason why I keep diving in.”
Christy says he will meet his abuser again some day and “I will hug her but it’ll happen when it’s ready to happen”.
He holds no ill feelings against his abuser, he understands hurt people hurt others and hopes they too find solace and peace in their life. He hopes for reconciliation in a world where there is too much hate.
And just like himself, he sees hope and that others are now finding the courage to confront their past.
“People are ready for change,” he says. “People are sick of using the substances to cope. It has been full circle for me, because it’s taken me this amount of time to turn around and realise I was doing everything because of those past traumas.
“People might laugh but I’m sitting here now a healed version, a stronger version of what I was. I was going around empty. I did go through my worst times, but what’s in front of me are my best times.”
Today, his life is quieter, more routine – and, he says, more meaningful as a result.
“I’m running, I’m going to the gym. There’s no cravings anymore. It took a while for the cocaine cravings to go but they have gone. I have more time, more time for my children and I have time to help others now.
“My social circle has changed, I’m a bit of a lone wolf now. I don’t go into pubs anymore. Along this path I was outcast but I’m happy now and I’m at peace. I go to the leisure centre, wellness suites and [I’m] looking after myself both physically and mentally. This is a way of life now.”
For a man who once lay convinced his life was ending, the promise of ‘my best times lie ahead’ may be the clearest sign yet of just how far he has come.
You can reach Christy on social media here: TikTok @christy.nugent
You can also reach out through Messenger on Facebook. Or you can email christynugent@gmail.com
If you are affected by any of these issues:
Lifeline: 0808 808 8000 (24/7 freephone helpline)
Samaritans: 116 123 or samaritans.org
Further information on local addiction and mental health services can be found via your GP or the Public Health Agency.
