After joining the army and training as a medic, and working as a civilian paramedic, Matthew Heneghan wants the public to remember that first responders are human.
“We wear a uniform. We have a skill, but we are not impervious to the effects of sadness and trauma,” he said.
Heneghan shared his story recovering from alcohol addiction.
“I battled alcoholism, I didn’t really know that I was battling, I just fell into a bottle essentially for, for a great number of years of my life. And I never felt like I had a problem,” he said.
“When I lost my mother in 2017 to suicide, I drank even more because I felt like, well, this is a natural thing. I’m sad. I’m going to drink. People do that. You know, I see it in the movies all the time.”
One day, at a session with a therpaist Henaghen had been working with for a few years, Heneghan faced a turning point.
“She had asked me point blank, ‘do you think you’re an alcoholic?'”
“I started really taking inventory of the decisions I was making at that time and the impacts that alcohol had played on my life, And I had to say yes,” he said.
“Saying yes out loud is probably the loudest thing I’ve ever said in my entire life.”
Heneghan would enter a treatment program in 2018. The early stages were difficult.
“That first night without a drink, I wasn’t feeling great, feeling very jittery, feeling very out of my element…I started to get the shakes and the shakes, you can’t control them. It doesn’t feel like being cold. It’s a very unique feeling,” he said.
“It is one of the worst feelings physically I think I’ve ever felt in my life.”
Heneghan said he started to believe he could succeed after a therapy session during treatment.
“I was talking about, my feelings about my mom and it was among the first times that I had ever had to speak about her passing stone cold sober,” he said.
“When I left the office, of course I was exhausted and really emotionally depleted, but I was alive. And I still was able to find a chuckle later on that day with a friend…having that conversation about my mom sober and being able to survive it, that was for me the turning point where I said, you know what, I might be able to do this.”
Heneghan shared how things have changed six years later.
“I have so many wonderful people in my life,” he said. ” I have this wonderful woman in my life named Sheena, and she has two beautiful girls that have accepted me and treat me better than I think I could ever say I deserve.”
“I wouldn’t have got there had I not accepted certain elements of my life and of my story, and had I not accepted the graceful hands of help that people were offering me.”
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