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50 Voices

50 Voices captures the authentic voice of the people that use our services and our staff as Turning Point celebrates its 50th anniversary

50 Voices Ian Farrell

50 Voices Ian Farrell

Ian Farrell was previously supported by Turning Point at a service in Walthamstow, London and has since gone on to success as a hairdresser and a music artist.

50 Voices Ian Farrell

Before I came to Turning Point, frankly life was awful.

Then a terrible life event happened and my drinking got worse. It made me feel depressed and down and I began drinking even more until it spiralled out of control. But it wouldn’t be fair to blame my drinking entirely on the life event as it had always been somewhat of a problem only now I had an excuse.

I had always been the life and soul of the party but whilst others knew when to stop I didn’t, I always pushed the limits. If my friends went out 7 nights a week, I’d make sure I went out 9. Also living in Brighton, running pubs and working in that kind of environment I feel that I made the choice to drink. It gave me a ready made cover story: of course I smelled like alcohol, I was working in a pub so people expected that. What they didn’t expect was me to be drinking as much as I was.

In the end I referred myself.

As ridiculous as it sounds I think I became an alcoholic on purpose. My drinking was mostly borderline and I could have continued to coast along like that but I wanted to move on. In order to do that I had to cut drinking out completely and in order to do that it had to be a huge problem.

I started to realise that I needed support from Turning Point when I wasn’t able to drink for a few days. One day, when I was still living at home, my best friend came over and decided to make me breakfast. Breakfast on that day was an omelette but the eggs must have been off which gave me terrible food poisoning. As I was so ill, I didn’t drink for 48 hours and started to suffer from withdrawal symptoms. Then I began hallucinating. I think that’s when I realised my drinking had finally become a serious problem. I knew I not only wanted to but had to get my act together so I set myself a challenge. I wanted to re-train as a hairdresser and the course was starting in the September of 2009. So I had 3 months to turn my life around. I knew in my heart of hearts that if I didn’t do it then, I never would.

Turning Point is a beautiful, amazing organisation which allows people to come

to them and say “I need help” and they say “Ok, cool” and then they help you

50 Voices Ian Farrell

My memories of first coming to Turning Point are all a bit blurred but I know I was probably scared and worried.

Scared mostly of stopping drinking because of the mental health issues I had experienced previously; imagining events were happening that weren’t. I remember sitting on the sofa in my mum’s living room and starting to spin out because I was convinced there were tons of red spiders crawling all across the living room floor. What is a mother supposed to say to her son who’s crying that the big red spiders are coming to get him when she can’t even see them herself? How does she comfort him? So I was definitely scared that the hallucinations would come back.

I needn’t have been so worried. Turning Point is a beautiful, amazing organisation which allows people to come to them and say “I need help” and they say “Ok, cool” and then they help you. To be honest just the fact that Turning Point and the staff at Beulah Road in Walthamstow were there for me was the best thing. My key worker Stephanie, was great, a genuinely lovely woman. I wasn’t being judged by anyone there.

I wouldn’t say there was one part of Turning Point that helped me more in my recovery than another. Of course my one-to-ones with Stephanie were awesome but I could really enjoy the group therapy sessions some days as well but then not on other days. For me, all aspects of Turning Point combined contributed to my recovery. I couldn’t just choose one that outshone everything else.

I finished the 12 week programme at Walthamstow on the 11th of September 2009 and was even given a certificate in recognition of me completing it.

I still have that certificate, it was such a proud moment I know I will have it with me for the rest of my days. I started the 6 month hairdressing course in late September 2009 but completed my NVQ level 2 in hairdressing in just 3 months. It was almost impossible to get a salon job after that because everyone pretty much required you to have salon experience already which was a real catch-22 situation. But I was determined that my fate would be different. I spoke to the Senior Education Manager at Headmasters and convinced him to take me on for a short training period. My experience at Headmasters lead to some truly amazing opportunities such as assisting with London Fashion Week, working on photo shoots for Glamour magazine and being sent to Las Vegas after winning a Paul Mitchell’s hairdressing competition. However another passion of mine, singing, has not taken a back seat. I’ve recently recorded my album called Unforgettably My Way and I’m looking to donate any proceeds to Turning Point because they deserve it!

50 Voices Ian Farrell

It’s hard to convey exactly how much Turning Point has helped me because just saying that they’ve done an incredible job supporting me just doesn’t seem to do them justice.

I think of them helping me like this: I’m the old me again. There is a photo hanging up at my mum’s house of me and my two brothers when we were younger but when I was drinking the boy in the photo seemed so distanced from and alien to me. I always thought “I know it’s me but he looks nothing like me”. I couldn’t see any similarity between the boy in that picture and the man I saw in the mirror every day. Our eyes were different. Our noses were different. I just couldn’t see me. But after the support from Turning Point, after I started to get sober, something changed in my head. There was one day when I was at my mum’s, I looked at that photo and I did see me, it did look like me again. That was truly amazing because It was then I realised “I am Ian Farrell again. I am me”.

If I could go back and give a message to my past self I guess it would be “You’re going to be alright” but I wouldn’t change anything. Honestly I would quite like to just show the past me 10 seconds, or even 5 seconds, of my life now to show him what his life will become!

Turning Point is the most amazing charity in the whole wide world and the reason I stand here today.

The way I see the future now is that I’ve got my head screwed on tight and I’m looking forward to all of it. Now I don’t drink not because I can’t but because I don’t want to. I’ve just celebrated 5 years of sobriety and to be able to say that is amazing!

I’ve just celebrated 5 years of sobriety and to be able to say

that is amazing!

50 Voices

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