Choose running: Overcoming addiction issues to train for the Dublin Marathon

Before their chance connection after eventually getting clean, the last imaginable thing Dara O’Connor and Gary Mills had in common was an interest in running. They could not have cared less.

Their lives had become utterly consumed by other things, mainly reckless drinking all day and blowing all their weekly earnings on cocaine almost every weekend. The alcohol and drug abuse led to bitter breakdowns in relationships, including of a once close-knit family.

In the year or so since reversing the course of their lives, which at one point seem destined to be short, running has become a vital part of their release and recovery. So much so that it has brought them both to the starting line of next Sunday’s Dublin Marathon.

When we met over a coffee, it became clear they had a few things in common from the outset. Both were from similar parts of south county Dublin before Mills moved to Tralee with his family at the age of five. Both got themselves into work early in life, earning decent money in the process.

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Which is also when they first got themselves into some trouble and subsequent despair, their alcohol and drug addictions slowly and then suddenly taking an increasingly desperate and debilitating hold on their lives. Those addictions came perilously close to destroying them both.

Like any story of drug addiction, theirs is complex and frightening. For O’Connor (41), the low point came when he moved to Australia and became addicted to crystal meth. After overdosing in 2013, he ended up in a coma for two weeks. His parents had travelled out to bring him home, unsure whether he would travel dead or alive.

For the best part of the next decade, he was in and out of rehab, trying to get clean, relapsing. By then cocaine was his drug of choice. At times he consumed €1,000 worth every weekend, sometimes using the drug all week.

Mills’s (31) is a similar story, by turns treacherous and bleak. For years the only running he did was in trying to escape his addictions, spending time in the US and Europe, only to descend into the same downward spiral. His cycle of rehab-relapse also continued until he, too, very nearly lost it all.

Only then did the acceptance of his likely fate convince him to go to the Coolmine Lodge drug rehab centre in Blanchardstown.

Mills entered Coolmine in July 2022. O’Connor started for the second time in September 2022. About this time last year, O’Connor noticed Mills heading out for an early morning run around the adjacent Millennium Park, not a common exercise in any men’s residency for drug and alcohol treatment.

With running, you mightn’t feel great at the time, but you’d feel great afterwards. With drugs, you feel great at the time, and feel terrible afterwards

—  Gary Mills

Mills effectively started running in Coolmine by complete accident. Before entering treatment on the Monday morning, he’d ordered himself a pair of casual runners online. But when they arrived, they were marginally too small. Pressed for time, he returned them to the shop, to be told the last remaining pair in his size were proper runners.

Within the first week in Coolmine, Mills looked down at these black runners and figured he may as well go running in them. That became part of his early morning ritual and he hasn’t stopped since.

O’Connor was only a week or so in Coolmine when he noticed Mills heading out for his run. At that point he was still restricted from leaving at all,,But he was impressed and inspired by Mills, considering his run another intervention of sorts, so he promised himself he’d start joining Mills as soon as he could. He hasn’t stopped since.

Throughout our conversation their stories shift repeatedly between their past and present lives, forever linked as they are. What further connects them is their clear and considered view on the increasing danger that recreational drug use presents to Irish society, particularly cocaine.

“Recreational drug use is the norm now, completely,” says Mills, who traces his problem back to the legal-high craze, around 2010.

My sister had packed my bags from the family home, so I was homeless. But it was absolutely the right decision. I thank her every day for doing that

—  Dara O'Connor

O’Connor can personally chart the change in cocaine use in this country, from when it might take a week to order to a matter of minutes. “Now, it’s as if everyone just thinks it’s okay to use, like they would weed,” he says. “It’s just become way too easy, people are downplaying how bad it’s got, and I don’t think we talk about it enough.”

Their addiction cost them both hugely in a financial sense. Running is an absolute bargain in comparison, even if Mills at one point opens his bag to reveal a new pair of Nike Vaporfly, costing a tidy €260, specially purchased for the Dublin Marathon.

“Sure that would be gone up your nose in one night,” he says, smiling for a second or two.

[ Running can offer self-determination, confidence and purpose - even if you’re Slow AF ]

Running is now their fix, their hit, their natural high – their lives back on healthy common ground. After just three months of running, Mills ran the Dublin Marathon last year in 3:41. He’s run four more since (including Seville, Prague and Stockholm) and at that start of this month he got his time down to 2:52 in Munich.

O’Connor is tackling the classic distance for the first time. “I’ll crawl over the line if I have to,” he says, promptly adding he will not be running anywhere near as fast as Mills.

Both have high praise for the treatment made available at Coolmine, as tough as it sometimes was.,Part of the power in their stories of recovery, and now the pure joy of running, lies in their own compelling telling of them.

[ How cocaine became Ireland’s biggest drug problem ]

Dara’s story

“I was very involved in sport up to my early 20s. I played Gaelic football with Ballyboden Wanderers, soccer with Whitechurch. And basketball, played underage for Dublin, won a few All-Ireland medals with the school, Coláiste Éanna.

“I always hated the running part of training. Couldn’t stand it, the laps in training. That’s part of the surprise here, that I love it so much now.

“Things just took a turn, alcohol first, then drugs, around the estate where I lived. With drink and drugs, it wasn’t really peer pressure, I was just very shy. I was okay playing sport, could come out of myself, but on the street, I found that hard. Alcohol made me brave.

“I left school at 15, it just wasn’t for me, and started working as a plasterer. Then the drugs just came into the scene as well. That’s when I first got addicted to cocaine. I’d try to quit, try rehab, could never finish any of the treatment programmes, I’d always be in and out.

“Cocaine was always around my estate, maybe not Dublin in general, in town like it is now. If I think back, I don’t know how many zeros worth of euro I spent. Any weekend, it could be €1,000, and you’d be looking for money for cigarettes on the Monday morning.

“So I went to Australia for six years, 2007 to 2013, to get away from it all. In my head I thought ‘leave Ireland, forget about it all’. That only made it worse, a much darker track.

“I could never see the damage I was doing to myself. A friend of mine had taken his own life, though I wouldn’t put it down to that. Living so far away, all the rules went out the window. Then for me, crystal meth was very, very addictive, 10 times more so than cocaine.

“After I got home, I didn’t touch that again, but I was still chasing that high and went hell for leather back into cocaine. In my mind, it was only coke, by then everyone was doing it, I could justify it in my own mind.

“I had no knowledge at all about recovery, I just thought ‘this was my life’. After my first rehab, at the Tallaght Rehabilitation Project, in 2014, I still thought I could keep half my old friends, my old job. You need to change everything, I just didn’t understand that.

“That was my first taste of recovery, maybe something clicked, but once back into my old area, looking for that validation, I picked up a drink again, and two weeks after that I was back on drugs again.

“My first stint in Coolmine was in 2018, and the only reason I went in was my sister had packed my bags from the family home, so I was homeless. But it was absolutely the right decision. I thank her every day for doing that.

[ Ireland is awash with cocaine, but how does it get into the country? ]

“I did 5½ months, but wasn’t honest with myself, or with them. I was already thinking of drugs. And I relapsed again, three weeks out, straight back into it. Back in 2007, you’d have to order coke a week before. These days you can ring someone, get coke in 10 minutes. From any one of 10 people.

“For me, personally, the thing about addiction is the depth of lies, dishonesty, with yourself, your family, the people you’re buying drugs off. I was relying on drugs for everything, every day, and if I couldn’t get it, I’d hide under the bed. That’s when things really broke down, in 2022.

“So in September 2022 I got back into Coolmine, and that’s the last time I took drink or a drug. Then I see this guy [Gary] going running in the morning. Now I was totally uneducated about running, and I was looking at him, exact same backgrounds here, drinking and drugs.

“That’s where it started, and I’d have to fight through it, at first, but I know what it’s like afterwards. I’ve been working with a running coach, Ian Fitzgerald, the last three months, got down to 1:42 in the Dublin Half Marathon.

“I’m back in college now, hoping to get into in PE teaching, another mad turn of events. But you have to completely change your life, if you need to turn it around, and running has been a massive part of that.”

Gary’s story

“I first went into Coolmine in July 2022, until last December. Like Dara, I had never run a step in my life. I’d played some basketball in school, as a kid, was terrible. At least that’s what I told myself, always discounted myself, ‘not good enough’.

“For me the drugs started with the legal-high craze, around 2010, with mephedrone powders, and just went on from that. But I was drinking in an alcoholic sense from an early age.

“When I first went over to the US, that’s where the drink and drug use really started getting progressively worse and worse. So I came back in 2015, was home a week, and the drinking lifestyle didn’t change at all.

“After that I moved to Belgium, thinking that might improve things, but I was more or less getting unemployable at that stage.

“Then I was home again in 2016, and went into the first residential treatment, in Tralee. The family asked me to go, my employers asked me to go, and they were all very supportive. The problem was I was going in for them. Not for myself.

“Since 2017, to last year, I’d be in and out of treatment every year. Then I’d come out, jump back into work, get a few weeks out of it, then same thing again, everything would fall flat.

“It really became dark in the last few years, when Covid hit. You’re after going from working in hospitality, to having no work at all, living in a one-bed in Tralee. Everything fell apart, the relationship with the family and to the point I couldn’t be employed.

“Coolmine last year was the first time I went in for myself. I was sick of being sick, sick of letting everyone down, building up trust, then just crushing it again. Family couldn’t depend on me for anything.

“When I started in July, I had these new runners with me and just figured I may as well go for a run. And a week or so later I just started running. And for me, with running, straight away it was the psychological effect.

“Even without drink, it was always a struggle for me to get up and feel confidence about doing anything. When I started running, it was like everything improved, mentally, physically.

“I’ve always been good on the networking side of things, got on to the Dublin race series. We’d very little money in Coolmine, the majority of your social welfare goes on your bed and board, basically. I’d explain my circumstances, that I was in Coolmine, just getting into running, and they’d all be very supportive. Everyone in the running community has been supportive in that way.

“After finishing the programme in December, I linked in with Kevin English, the running coach. He sets the plan, an email every week, I just follow that. Without a coach, and this probably goes back to that addictive personality, I’d be pushing myself too hard.

“But before I never had a hobby, or anything. People would ask me in treatment, ‘what do I like doing?’ and I didn’t have any answer. That’s also why I can justify every single penny I spend on running, when we would easily have spent 10 times that amount in one week on drugs.

“As someone said, with running, you mightn’t feel great at the time, but you’d feel great afterwards. With drugs, you feel great at the time, and feel terrible afterwards.

“It’s the whole lifestyle change, too. The discipline, diet, getting up early, getting the balance there, and feeling anything is possible now. For me all that is because of running.

“My hotel workplace now is very supportive too. I get the training done, either side of work, mostly on my own, and just stick to the plan. Consistency is the key, really. And you want to invest when you see all the benefits.

“At my graduation speech at Coolmine, earlier this month, I said I couldn’t even travel before without messing up. Running has helped with all that, the friendships, all the things I always thought were alien to me.

“Coolmine also recognised that running was a big help in my recovery, and I thank them for that. We even started up a little running group up there, Coolmine Warriors, a few of them are running Dublin next Sunday too.”