Jane Fallon Griffin | Deputy Magazine Editor
Liam Duggan is a first year BESS student but his journey to Trinity is outside the norms of many of his peers. Having overcome homelessness, mental illness and addiction, Liam Duggan spent nearly twenty years trying to make it to Trinity. It wasn’t originally like this, however. In 1988 he had just completed his Leaving Cert and hoped to be accepted to college. While he waited for his results, Duggan spent the Summer working in London as a labourer and as a team member in Sainsbury’s head office, before visiting the Greek island of Paros for a holiday. Here, however, things spiraled out of control, impeding the school leaver’s path towards higher education and impacting greatly on his immediate future.
Duggan became immersed in the drinking culture and recalls spending his time sleeping on beaches with two other low cost travellers and existing on a diet of shop bought vegetables softened in boiling water using their small stove. By the end of the two week holiday, Duggan suffered a mental breakdown. Having lost his travel documents and money Duggan stowed away on a ship to Athens before eventually returning home extremely ill, suffering from psychosis.
He explains this experience of psychosis as having “a different reality.” Never having acquired a taste for alcohol, Duggan had also began smoking cannabis at the age of seventeen, feeling that as he did not drink, this would act as his indulgence, one he did not think posed as much of a threat as alcohol. His peers accepted their university places and started tertiary education without Duggan. Although he had obtained a place in Thomond college, he had to begin a different journey of his own: recovery.
For Duggan the opportunity to gain admittance into transition housing with two reformed alcoholics gave him the break he needed. Transition housing allowed him to escape the uncertainty of nightly hostel stays and gave him stability.
The relationship between cannabis and mental illness, as with all drugs (alcohol included), is a complicated one, fraught with temptation and challenge. Between spending some time in a mental institution and becoming sober, education remained an attractive prospect. Liam says, “My goal was to get back into education, but I knew I wasn’t capable of that.” The ten years that followed were tough and he notes that “I wasn’t relapsing. I was frozen in time. I wasn’t really recovering either.”
Duggan was encouraged to begin a course in the National Learning Network in Bray after he decided that he needed structure in his day. He spent time working a few hours in his father‘s taxi, which he refers to as “occupational therapy” as it allowed him to stay connected with friends and made the transition back to education less strenuous. For Duggan the opportunity to gain admittance into transition housing with two reformed alcoholics gave him the break he needed. Transition housing allowed him to escape the uncertainty of nightly hostel stays and gave him stability.
He spent two years studying in the National Learning Network in Bray where he achieved his ECDL (European Computer driving license) and level five FETAC in informational communication technology. His success and diligence was noted by the staff who put him in contact with the Trinity Access Program (TAP). Duggan says of the TAP open day “I was privileged to even go to the open day. Walking along the cobblestones in Front Square it’s almost a dream university the way it’s laid out.” Having completed an excellent interview, the TAP staff were convinced of his commitment to the program and he was allocated a place in TAP. On TAP he says it was a “challenge but I enjoyed it.”
Along with three others Duggan recently started a charity koinsforkids.ie which aims to buy equipment to help treat children in the Liberties hospital. The group has raised five thousand euro to date and hope to raise more in the coming months.
Although he admits that his brain “isn’t as spongy as it was at eighteen”, he continues to embrace the learning process, expressing a desire to participate in the wider college community rather than just attending solely for the sake of a degree, hoping to engage in society life. He credits his girlfriend Suzie as having been instrumental to his success in supporting him as well as assuming the role of the important aspect of his life that he did not want to lose and had to work for. “She brought me out of a very dark space and I’m right in the light at the end of the tunnel” Duggan says, speaking fondly of his girlfriend.
Liam and the marketing student have been together three years and he delights in what he refers to as the “clarity” of his drug free life. His mother attended his TAP graduation and he recalls a very enjoyable day during which his parents were extremely proud. Like all incoming undergrads, despite having graduated from his prior educational institution, Duggan felt that he could not relax until had his CAO offer in his hand. He was delighted to receive the offer and repeatedly mentions the “clarity” he received following giving up cannabis and he repeats how it has been worth the struggle and is no longer of any interest to him.
Along with three others Duggan recently started a charity koinsforkids.ie which aims to buy equipment to help treat children in the Liberties hospital. The group has raised five thousand euro to date and hope to raise more in the coming months. Despite having spent a considerable amount of time in hospital himself, Duggan says of the project, “It isn’t really a personal thing but I know what suffering is.”
Photo by Benedict Shegog for The University Times
