The eighTh NaTioNal Service USer coNfereNce
‘L
ike probably a lot of you in this room, I
was brought up on a council estate,’
Richard McCann told delegates. He
lived with his sisters, mother and
father, the latter labelled a ‘feckless
ogre’ by social services, who had placed the family on
the ‘at risk’ register. When his father eventually left
home his mother found a new boyfriend, who
‘became a little bit more friendly than he should have
been’ with Richard’s sister Sonia. Then, a week before
his sixth birthday, his mother went out one evening
and never came back. She’d become the first victim of
‘Yorkshire Ripper’ Peter Sutcliffe.
‘I’m not the only person in this room who’s been
through challenges,’ McCann told a rapt audience.
‘Attitude is everything – an “I can” attitude. You take
small steps, add them together, and it makes a
massive difference.’
Although his grandparents had wanted to take the
children in – something he only discovered years later –
social services thought it would be in their best
interests to place them with their father. ‘He was a big
drinker, very violent. When he drank whisky he became
a monster. You wouldn’t want to cross him.’ On one
occasion he drowned the family dog in the bathtub.
Inevitably, Richard went ‘off the rails’, he told the
conference, frequently running away from home.
‘You’ve got to do that scary stuff. You’ve got to face
your demons. If you don’t like where you are, do
something about it. You can always do something
about it, even if you think the odds are stacked
against you. You’ve got to grasp those opportunities
that sometimes only come around once.’
After leaving school and a couple of short-term
jobs he took ‘a leap of faith’ and joined the army.
Doing his basic training at Woolwich barracks he told
people his mother had died in a car accident. ‘They
had no reason to disbelieve me. It was the first time
nobody knew the truth about my past.’ After being
posted to Germany, however, a crime magazine
printed the full details of his mother’s murder. ‘My
secret was out,’ he said.
He went on ‘a drunken rampage’ around a German
village and was placed in a psychiatric ward as a
result. ‘For the first time I was going to get some
professional help. Or so I thought. They said I had a
personality disorder. Sometimes we’re given labels,
and that’s one of the easiest ones to give. You can’t
turn back the clock, but you can always decide how
you react to stuff – whatever that stuff is for you –
and what you do next.’
Deciding to ‘dust myself down and start again’ he
returned to the UK and got a job in a warehouse. ‘I
was determined to make a go of it. Eventually I was
told I was management material. Me?’ Thriving in the
job, he stayed in and saved for a deposit on a house
while his friends were out drinking and taking drugs.
‘I had a house, with a CID officer living next door, I
got a bank loan for a car. I was bordering on middle
class.’ Eventually, however, a colleague persuaded him
to take speed in a nightclub, ‘one of the nicest
feelings I’ve ever had’. He started taking drugs
regularly, and moved on to dealing. Before long he’d
lost his job and his partner, been arrested and sent to
prison.
‘It was horrible, it was hell. But the quality of your
thoughts affects the quality of your life. I vowed to
turn my life around.’ On release he desperately tried
to get a job, as his house was close to being
repossessed, but his criminal record meant rejection
after rejection. He contemplated suicide, but at his
last interview before the repossession deadline, he
got the job.
‘I was determined to go the extra mile and be the
best at it that I possibly could be.’ He changed his
circle of friends and – as ‘one of the final things I did
as part of my recovery’ – he asked for some help.
‘Some people think asking for help is a sign of
weakness, but it’s not. No one ever achieved anything
without some help from somebody on the way.’
After writing a well-received book about his
experiences, he decided to set up a support group for
people who’d lost loved ones to murder or
manslaughter. ‘Sometimes when you go through
something you can help other people in years to come.’
Now a very successful motivational speaker, things
were ‘going well’, he told the conference. ‘But the
important thing is we’ve got to celebrate who we are
– we’re all walking miracles. We should never be
ashamed of our past. Yeah, we’ve had some stuff
happen to us but we can still turn it around. It took
me years to find out that it’s OK to be me. It doesn’t
matter what you’ve been through in life, what
setbacks you’ve had, how dark those clouds have
been. With the right attitude, and the right support
along the way, you can achieve anything.’
The day’s final session saw an uplifting presentation from Richard
McCann on the challenge of achieving things he’d never thought
possible, and turning trauma and tragedy into triumph
against the odds
8 |
drinkanddrugsnews
| March 2015
SoundbiteS
‘If you don't like
where you are – do
something about it!’
RIChaRD MCCann
‘It doesn't cost much
to do little things that
make a difference’
LInDa Chan, BoB
‘We should never be
ashamed of our
past... It took me
years to find out that
it’s OK to be me.’
