‘Nothing bad happened to me to make me into an addict,’ I said. So very hopefully.

‘One big mistake addicts and alcoholics often make is to search for a why,’ she replied, quick as a flash. ‘Demanding childhood traumas and broken homes.

‘As far as I’m concerned,’ she ploughed ahead, ‘the main reason people take drugs is that they hate reality and they hate themselves. We already know you hate yourself, we’ve looked at your low self-esteem in depth. And it’s obvious from the state you were in when you wrote that note, how much you couldn’t bear reality.’

I couldn’t think of anything to say. I didn’t want it to be that simple.

‘So, starting off from that basic position,’ she said briskly, ‘you take drugs and behave badly, right?’

‘S’pose,’ I mumbled.

‘You come to, feeling wretched and guilty, your self-loathing and fear of the reality you’ve created magnified. And how do you deal with that? By taking more drugs. Equals more bad behaviour, more self-loathing, a bigger mess to face and, naturally, more drug-using. A downward spiral.

‘But you could have stopped at any time,’ she said, cutting into my thoughts of how unavoidable, how inevitable it all was. ‘You could have taken control of your life, for example, by apologizing to the people you’d upset. Then you would have stopped contributing further to the pit of things you hate about yourself. And by forcing yourself to live through a little bit of reality, you’ll see it’s not something you need to run from. You can stop and reverse the process at any stage. You’re doing it now.

‘Call off the search for a “why”, Rachel,’ she finished on. ‘You don’t need it.’

So I was a bloody addict.

Brilliant!

There was no joy in it. No relief. It was as awful as finding out I was a serial killer.

I stumbled through the weekend and most of the next week in a state of shock. Barely able to talk to people as the words chanted in my head, You are an addict, na na na naaa naaaah! You are an add…

It was the very last thing I wanted to be, it was the worst disaster that could ever befall me.

I knew from watching the other people in my group – particularly Neil, because I’d followed him almost from his beginning – that there were distinct phases they went through until they came to terms with their addiction. First there was denial, then horrified realization, then seething anger and finally, if they were lucky, acceptance.

I’d had the denial and the horrified realization but, when undiluted, poisonous fury arrived, I wasn’t in any way prepared for it. Josephine, of course, just took the attitude ‘Ah, Mr Anger, we’ve been expecting you,’ as I went ballistic in group. I was so boilingly angry at the misfortune of being an addict that I briefly forgot about the anger I harboured for Luke.

‘I’m too young to be an addict!’ I screamed at Josephine. ‘Why has it happened to me and to no one else I know?’

‘Why not?’ Josephine asked mildly.

‘But, but, for fuck’s…’ I spluttered, insane with anger.

‘Why are some people born blind? Why are some people crippled?’ she asked. ‘It’s all random. And you were born with the propensity to become an addict. So what? It could be miles worse.’

‘No, it couldn’t!’ I yelled, crying tears of burning rage.

‘What’s the problem?’ she asked, again with that infuriating mildness. ‘So you can’t use drugs anymore? It’s not like it’s a necessity, millions of people never touch them and they live fulfilled, happy lives…’

‘You mean I can’t ever take anything ever again?’ I demanded.

‘That’s right,’ she confirmed. ‘You should know by now that once you start, you can’t stop. You’ve exposed yourself to narcotics so often that you’ve permanently upset the chemical balance in your brain. Once you ingest narcotics, your brain reacts by becoming depressed, thus setting up a craving for more drugs, more depression, more drugs, etc. You’re physically as well as psychologically addicted.

‘And the physical addiction is irreversible,’ she added casually.

‘I don’t believe you,’ I breathed in horror.

A freshly baked batch of fury arrived, straight out of the oven. I remembered how before Clarence left, he’d been told he couldn’t ever drink again, and how that had made perfect sense to me. But that was about him. I was different. I had only admitted to being an addict because I thought I could be fixed.

‘You can be fixed,’ Josephine said, and my face lit up with hope. Until the bitch added, ‘You just can’t take drugs anymore.’

‘If I’d known that, I’d never have owned up to anything,’ I screeched at her.

‘You would have,’ she said calmly. ‘You had no choice, this was inevitable.’

I flicked through a series of ‘If only’ scenarios. If only I hadn’t listened to Nola. If only Anna hadn’t said what she’d said. If only Luke hadn’t come. If only Jeanie hadn’t been so like me. If only, if only, if only… Frantically, I searched, trying to find the place where I’d crossed the line from not thinking I was an addict to thinking that perhaps I might be. I wanted to return to that particular point and reverse history.

‘You’re a chronic addict,’ Josephine said. ‘This realization was unavoidable. God knows you ducked it long enough, but it was always going to get you in the end.

‘Your anger is perfectly normal, by the way,’ she added. A last-ditch attempt to avoid facing the truth.’

‘AAAAAaaarrrrrgggghhh,’ I heard myself screech.

‘That’s right, work through that anger,’ she encouraged mildly, making me scream again. ‘Get it all out, better out than in. Then you’ll have much more acceptance.’

I put my face in my hands and in a muffled voice I exhorted her to go and fuck herself.

‘Anyway,’ she pointed out, ignoring my request, ‘you were miserable living that hopeless, drugged-up life. Without drugs you have a future, you can do anything you set your mind to. And think of how good you’ll feel when you wake up in the morning and can remember what you did the night before. And who you went home with. If you went home with anyone at all.’