THE SURVIVOR
Stacey Buckley was just 31 and almost dead as emergency doctors battled to save a life ravaged by drugs.
She had become ill from pneumonia and seizures after years of taking street drugs and lapsed into a coma.
Doctors told her family to expect the worst.
It was when she woke from a coma in hospital four weeks later that she vowed to turn her life around.
Stacey said she was trying to give up drugs three years ago when she suffered a seizure.
“I was detoxing from years of using drugs. Luckily I was in a women’s respite centre at the time or I wouldn’t have made it to hospital,” Stacey, now 34, from Renfrew, said.
Stacey, a mum of one, was rushed to Inverclyde Royal Infirmary and into intensive care.
Doctors summoned her family and told her she was unlikely to survive.
“They told them not to bring my son as it would have been too awful for him to see his mum on life support.
“They were told I wouldn’t last the night. My lungs were packing in.
“Seizures added to my problems.
“I was 31 and dying because my body had been weakened by a drug addiction.”
Stacey had started taking cannabis after someone urged her to try it at a party.
“Gradually, I moved up to drugs, whatever I could get. What I didn’t realise was that they were taking over my life.
“I’d had a happy childhood. I just took drugs because they seemed fun.”
Stacey emerged from her coma four weeks later.
Her weight had plummeted to four and a half stones.
“As I recovered I realised I needed to get completely clean,” she said.
Stacey got a place at the women’s centre at Jericho House in Greenock and recovered well enough to volunteer there.
Today she is a fulltime support worker with the Simon Community helping the homeless.
“If my experience helps I will be extremely happy.
“But, best of all, I am now able to be the loving mum I always wanted to be.”