Finding Balance After Addiction

Brian Pennie talks about his journey as a long-term heroin addict, coming clean, and turning negatives into positives.

Try everything once’. There’s probably been a wealth of self-improvement articles published under that title. Articles championing adventure, courage, ambition and fearlessness. But, for Brian Pennie, that quote led him down a dangerous path of drug and substance abuse. Drug addiction can rob its victims of their jobs, relationships, homes and lives: that won’t come as a surprise to anyone, and probably wouldn’t make for inspirational reading. But, what’s remarkable about Brian’s story is his recovery, and the evolution, peace, growth and opportunities he’s found hidden within it. Now, twenty years since his addiction took hold, and eight years since he got clean, Brian is working as a university lecturer in neuroscience, and he has just published a book about his experiences: Bonus Time. Although impressive, the titles and the accolades aren’t what this article is about, as Brian explains, “My life isn’t about the academic stuff, it’s about showing people that change truly is possible.”

Brian is an open book, and he speaks about his experience of addiction and recovery with such authenticity and honesty. It’s as if those experiences didn’t happen to him, but are an extension of him. Getting clean after addiction is so often discussed as a ‘clean slate’ or a ‘new chapter,’ perhaps in a bid to wipe that ‘past life’ from memory, but with Brian, it’s not like that. He wears his history of addiction like a scout badge. It’s not as if he is proud of his addiction, I’m sure there is a part of him that wishes things had been different… but they weren’t. Brian exudes such an awareness of how those experiences, those vices, those struggles, led him to where he is today. He knows that the balance he has found today is intrinsically connected to the chaotic unbalance that preceded it. More still, perhaps Brian wouldn’t have found such balance had he not experienced such trauma and hardships.

Imagery by Richie Stokes

For Brian, it’s impossible to discuss his drug addiction without discussing the anxiety that stalked him for as long as he can remember, long before the drugs. “I say I didn’t have an addiction problem, I had an anxiety problem that I medicated with heroin,” explains Brian. Brian links his anxiety to the illnesses he suffered with when he was a young child. “I came out of my mother’s womb with a condition known as intestinal malrotation, which in layman’s terms literally means twisted gut.” Misdiagnosed several times just weeks after birth, Brian quickly lost half of his birth weight. “It was only in 1985 that the medical practice realised that infants should be given general anaesthetic,” he explains. “They didn’t think infants experienced pain like normal human beings. I basically went under the knife without general anaesthetic when I was just an infant. I literally cried for the first year of my life.”

Although infants of this age are unable to store recountable memories, Brian is sure it is this “that set the tone for me to be a very anxious person and compulsive worrier as a kid.” He continues, “I was classically conditioned to fear the world for the first year of my life. I associated everything with pain and bodily sensations. I was afraid of my heartbeat, afraid of my pulse, afraid of my breath.

“My parents were a loving family, but they were alcoholics. Some of my earliest memories as a young kid were waiting behind the netted curtains three or four times a week for my mum and dad to come home from the pub, screaming at each other. It was only when they went to sleep that I could start to relax.”

Brian’s turbulent, anxiety-ridden childhood, coupled with a teenage obsession with Jim Morrison and The Doors, led him towards a reckless, daring young-adulthood that saw him ‘try everything’. “We used to take acid, blow petrol, smoke hash, drink alcohol,” Brian explains. “We were all about expanding the mind, or so we thought. That’s what spurred us to try heroin - once. And then I became an addict for eighteen years.

“I was a very functional addict for a long time, keeping a job and maintaining the facade that I was okay. People on the outside didn’t know how bad it was. It was only in the last few years that it really fell apart. I lost my job, my health, my mind and every important relationship in my life, owing thousands to lenders and drug dealers.”

But it was only in his bleakest, darkest moment that Brian surrendered. Two days into an incredibly risky selfmanaged detox, Brian woke up on his living room floor, surrounded by blood having bitten through his tongue during a grand-mal convulsive seizure. A few hours later, he woke up in hospital. “I was physically and mentally broken,” Brian explains. “I tried to get up off the trolley I’d been put on but couldn’t do it. I turned my gaze to a red fire extinguisher nearby, but I couldn’t seem to understand what I was seeing. It was like my verbal world didn’t make sense anymore. And that’s when I thought, “Ah man, you’re fucked. It’s brain damage”. I waited for the panic and anxiety to overwhelm me again, but it didn’t. I realised that I just couldn’t do this anymore.”

Earlier, Brian told me that, in the early days of his addiction, heroin “was like a soft warm blanket wrapped around his soul that took him away from his demons and anxiety.” But it seems that, in this moment of bleakness, Brian realised that a blanket isn’t too far removed from a shroud. Heroin was covering his anxiety, but it wasn’t comforting it, it was suffocating it, smothering it: it was distracting from it, but it certainly wasn’t getting rid of it.

“This sense of peace then washed over me,” Brian explains. “I stopped fighting reality. A feeling of acceptance and contentment, totally alien to me, pervaded my mind. I finally stopped fighting my anxiety. I genuinely believe that it was that moment that enabled me to change my life.”

‘Enabled me to change my life’. Even with all the hardships, the trauma and darkness, I think that’s the key phrase. It wasn’t the seizure that changed Brian’s life, it wasn’t the time spent in hospital: Brian changed his own life. “We are what we think,” explains Brian. “We are the stories we tell ourselves. If you change your self-talk, you change your life.” In an industry littered with conversations about fate, divine intervention and serendipity, Pennie’s championing of autonomy is welcome - necessary even.

It seems that, if you want to find balance, or better still, maintain balance, then that behaviour starts with you. Brian believes “lots of lessons came from addiction”, but at the root of it all is acceptance. It seems fairly reasonable to me. If you want to find balance then you need to recognise and accept what you need to balance. Brian agrees, “you need to feel your feelings. In my experience, I was afraid to feel what I actually felt: so afraid that, not only did I fail to tell other people, but I failed to tell myself. My book isn’t about addiction, it’s about self-deception. I was a black belt in self-deception, and I could cross any boundary by telling myself a lie and believing it.

“It’s important to be true to yourself,” continues Pennie. “be true to your wonderfully weird self. You’ll attract what you need and repel what you don’t. If you’re putting a mask on and trying to be someone you’re not, you’ll attract the wrong people. Not everybody will like you - that’s a fact of life, but if you’re true to your authentic self, you’ll attract what you need and repel what you don’t. If people reject you, that’s great, it simply means they weren’t meant to be in your life in the first place.”

“I’ve become the observer, not the sufferer. I’ve stopped fighting anxiety. Fight anxiety, and you’ll always lose.

In the interest of being transparent, I found Brian’s story a little intimidating. Brian as a person is certainly not intimidating, quite the opposite actually: he is bubbly and smiley and has a melodic Irish accent that I could listen to all day. But, as a middle class, privileged twenty-three-yearold, his story is overwhelming. I almost feel inferior in his presence, like the balance that he’s found outweighs my own because he’s been through what he’s been through. But now, as Brian discusses the lessons he has learned through his recovery, his insight is so applicable: I feel so encompassed and accepted, so at home in the gaps he leaves between his words.

Brian is humble and grounded, too. He recognises that he can’t necessarily cure his mental health issues, but he can redirect them; balance them. “I still get anxious,” Brian explains. “But I have a healthy relationship with anxiety. I observe it, see it, and say ‘there you are’ - and then I let it pass, and it goes. I just see it as something that’s a part of life, and I watch it come and go. I become the observer, not the sufferer. I’ve stopped fighting anxiety. Fight anxiety, and you’ll always lose.”

He has a similar approach to his addiction. He reasons that he can’t rid himself of addictive tendencies, but he can redirect them towards things that are less damaging and dangerous. Now, he satisfies those addictions by focusing on learning, being healthy, and exercising, but his self-awareness is what helps to keep these ‘healthy’ addictions in place. “That’s where balance comes in”, muses Brian. “I’d like to think that I have the self-awareness to recognize when my body needs to slow down, when I’m working 16 hours a day and I simply need to switch off and rest. Balance between that drive and passion and looking after myself properly is crucial to my long-term success.”

Brian seems to know every inch of himself, but I still feel like I am chatting to a snapshot, a freeze-frame of an Olympic sprinter in motion. The next freeze-frame is sure to look different to the last. “Right now, I value boldness- putting myself on the line and embracing failure,” Brian smiles. “I probably won’t value this as much when I’m 90 years of age, however. Then, I will likely focus more on connection and compassion. Some days, you might be pro-career, and other days your mental health might need more attention. Finding balance between these two areas is key.” Brian’s experiences, although traumatic, have made him acutely aware of how malleable and mobile humans are, mentally, and emotionally.

“Adversity helps you grow if you lean into it in the right way,” Brian tells me. And perhaps that’s what balance is all about, not serenity or perfection, but a gnarly, tumultuous and, crucially, ongoing process.