Social Ground Force is a force for good in Sligo and the north west Aubrey Melville talks about the work of Social Ground Force, of which he is the CEO, in helping people with issues relating alcohol, drugs and gambling
“I’M 36 years in recovery and sober. I’ve walked the walk – an alcoholic cannot hide,” states Aubrey Melville, the CEO of the Social Groundforce charity.
Set up by Aubrey (pitured below) 10 years ago, Social Groundforce has been helping many in Sligo, Mayo and all across Ireland with addiction issues such as alcoholism and drug abuse.
The charity exists to tackle a gap in existing mental health services caused by addiction. This gap is the passage of time from when the sufferer calls out for help to when they actually get help. Aubrey states that some of those crying out for help could not suffer this passage of time and as a result lives were lost by suicide or other methods.
Many an addict in Sligo and Ballina who has recovered and got their life back on track has had contact with Social Groundforce who – without a cent or a euro from the State – with the help of donations from the public have been able to help them.
“We’ve never had any funding – that’s one of our sore points,” admits Aubrey. “We’re very good at helping people with their addiction but we’re not very good at sourcing funds. We’re trying to find somebody that would help us achieve that because we are entitled to quite a lot of funding due to the issues that we deal with.
“We deal with mental health, suicide prevention, addiction and housing issues. We deal with a lot of homeless people because of the issues that are caused by addiction. This is where a lot of people get mixed up – if a relationship or a marriage breaks down, somebody is left homeless.
“Social Groundforce’s purpose is to bring about changes in people’s lives because there isn’t another service like ours. We deal with all aspects of an individual’s disastrous outcomes caused by alcohol and drug addiction.
“We’re offering intervention. If we get the phonecall, we intervene immediately. There’s no age restriction when it comes to addiction. It’s very difficult these days to find a ‘good old alcoholic’ because most people have dual or multiple addictions. That can be alcohol, hash, cocaine, proscribed drugs or gambling.
“The services that exist in Ireland at the moment don’t cover what has to be done for an individual. To say to somebody, ‘we’ll give you an appointment in six weeks time’ for somebody who is in that position, just can’t work.
“There’s a ‘death gap’ and that is that span of time when somebody makes the call for help to actually getting it. That could be six weeks or more if you’re very lucky. Any family member will tell you that the chaos that comes about in that period of time just ravages relationships.
“There are psychiatrists and GP’s who will tell you that they don’t have the knowledge to deal with alcoholics as they are not trained in that direction. Psychiatrists will tell you that they (alcoholics) don’t qualify as psychiatric patients – which is totally insane.”
The line between drinking socially and becoming an alcoholic is a very fine one and, as Aubrey says, it can be that very first drink that can set a person on the downward path to addiction.
“Some people who take a drink find that it changes them and their personality,” he added. “For example, a normally placid individual on a work’s night out may take a drink and suddenly there’s a personality you don’t recognise. Then they come into work the next day back to their placid self.
“Individuals don’t realise that this is a disease. It’s the first drink that triggers the allergy because the disease is twofold in nature.
“The alcoholic suffers from an allergy in the body and an obsession in the mind. The first drink triggers a craving in their body that can never ever be satisfied. The first drink will demand a second, the second will demand a third and so on until everything’s out of the window. “It takes people to places they shouldn’t be in, with people they shouldn’t be with and doing things they shouldn’t do and saying things they shouldn’t say.
“That doesn’t happy to social drinkers – they don’t have t h a t disconnect in their body. Every body is different from other individuals. But to those who do have it, then it leads to other things – they forget to pay their bills, they forget to pay their commitments to the house, they forget their own needs such as clothing or hygiene, their own needs with family members. Yet it tells them which pub, club or off-licence is open or which drug dealer is available. It takes away their power of choice with the substance making the choices for them.”
Aubrey is hoping that the government will work with Social Groundforce one day and insists that when that starts to happen, more addicts will be helped and the State will save money in the long run.
He continued: “We’ve met many people in the medical profession – especially those nurses on the front line – who say how they can’t cope with alcoholics and don’t know how to deal with them. The worst thing the medical profession can do with an alcoholic is to put them in a waiting room and ask them to sit and wait for eight or 10 hours.
“All they are going to get is chaos. So Social Groundforce has put this proposal to the Minister for Drug Strategy (Hildegarde Naughton) to back and support us as we’ve got the knowledge and wherewithal to take somebody that is high to come down.
“If you don’t know what the problem is, then you’ll never know what the solution is. And if you don’t know what the solution is, you don’t know the pathway going forward. That’s what we’re about – taking the individual in their hour of need and supporting the family network.
“If we got the backing and support, the cost effectiveness to this government – and in this county – would be slashed completely because we’re good at what we do. It costs a minimum of €90,000 per year to keep a prisoner in jail. There was one case where our help ensured that a person who was looking at a two-year prison sentence received a two-year suspended sentence as the Judge took into account the help that this person was getting to try and change their life around. By doing so, we saved the State €180,000 – just with one case.
“We’re very successful in what we do – there is no one else out there covering the aspects of this disease like we do. But we don’t have any money and you’ve got to say to yourself, ‘how do we do it?’.
“If you look at our bank account just now – and our accounts are published every year, there’s about €2000 in it. Our funds come from street/bucket collections and the odd cheque from the Court.
“I’m negotiating with Minister Naughton now to see if we can get a scheme up and running. There are not enough medical professionals to deal with this. There is not enough money to deal with this and the expertise doesn’t exist to takes somebody from the gates of Hell and back to sanity – taking them from being a liability and back to being an asset.
“Based on the figures we have over the last number of years, I recognise that there is a major issue with (the lack of) individuals who know what they’re speaking about. If you don’t understand the disease, you’ll never know what the recovery is.
“I’m in the process of developing an educational course that will create – what I call – Strikeforce Counsellors. The term means exactly what it says – the minute the phone goes, they’ll jump into action. This doesn’t exist right now.
“These people will be educated on the disease, on alcohol and all aspects of drugs. If we get this course up and running, not only can we educate the Strikeforce Counsellors, but we can also educate the people in the frontline such as the garda, the nurses and GP’s.
“We have around a 40 per cent success rate just now. We haven’t even got a proper office – my taxi, which I’ve not been able to taxi for over a year and a half now, is my office. That’s where I assess people – it’s been called the ‘taxi of tears’.
“If we had a proper office, we would have people on the street wanting to come into recovery because we would be more accessible. I want to create a social scene around recovery because when people – of whatever background – make the choice to change their lifestyle around, they wonder where am I going to meet people? Yes you can go to the cinema or for a coffee but everything costs money and a lot of people don’t have that.
“My vision is to have a place where everybody can come in to get a bite to eat, one-to-one counselling, group sessions, get social prescriptions and have meetings every day and night – then when the meetings are done by Friday or Saturday night, the disco lights go on and you have a social night.
“The amount of money that a project like this could save the country is unbelievable. We could make Sligo the ‘town of recovery’ because people would come.”
If you need to speak in confidence to Social Groundforce for help or advice, call: 086 894 1991. Email: socialgroundforce@yahoo.ie
For more details, log onto: www. socialgroundforce.com.