‘I was in this black hole but nobody knew it, I just kept it all to myself’

It's two years now since Derek Sherry's life started to disintegrate and fall apart. Really fall apart that is. He had been fast motoring downhill for some time before that but in the summer of 2022 he stepped on the gas. It was then it all got a big crazy and out of control. It was then he hit the buffers.

He was drinking far too much for starters. Two, sometimes three bottles of wine a night. He was in deep hole of depression triggered by the medicine, prescribed for him by a doctor to sort out a back problem, and too much alcohol. He knew the lethal cocktail was doing him great harm - in fact it was driving him to the edge.

Sleeping tablets were among the medicines the Johnstown resident was given - but even though he had terrible problems getting some decent sleep, he wouldn't take them. Instead he stored them up, kept them stashed away without, typically, telling anyone.

Until, that is, one July day in the summer of '22, he took them all. A pile of them. All in one go. "I had been building up to it for a long time, just was a way to get out because I was just depressed all the time, just sitting in the house depressed," he recalls when he spoke to the Meath Chronicle. "I had contacted the likes of Pieta House, the Samaritans, other online helplines, but sure I never followed through with them. I just thought these people don't know what I am going through. I thought it was just me.

"I remember taking the overdose and going to bed. I woke up a few days later up in the psychiatric ward in Navan Hospital. I didn't know what had happened. My wife Gwen discovered me just before I went into a deep sleep. If that hadn't happened I would have been gone. A lot of what happened from around that time is blanked out.

"Two days later I signed myself out of hospital. I came home and I was still demanding wine and when the ambulance came to bring me back into hospital that's when I looked around the room and I was thinking: 'Ok these people aren't kidding now, this is serious.' I thought they were all over exaggerating everything I was doing but I wasn't fully in my senses. When I got back then to the hospital it was then I started to seek out help."

Derek received counselling from various sources and started to get a grip on the issues, the problems that were dragging him down - and there were a few of those. Damaging, deep-down demons he had hidden throughout his life; demons that could not be contained. Over the years they crept up and ambushed him; brought him to the very edge.

Now, two years later since that near-fatal overdose, he is taking things a step further in every sense. Derek, now 53, has formed a men's walking group - the Navan Boys Club.

The men meet up on outside the Feel Fit gym close to the Johnstown Shopping Centre each Monday evening, 7pm and embark on a walk around the local area. He knows similar groups have been set up in Dublin and Celbridge, providing men an outlet to get out and express themselves.

Derek is eager to push the concept. He knows something like that would have helped him greatly when he was in the darkest of dark places.

SMITHFIELD

Smithfield is a famous location in Dublin where country people back in the day used to bring their products to sell in markets there. It was close to where Derek Skelly grew up, one of five in his family. It was mostly a happy childhood but it wasn't without it's evil characters too. Close to where he lived there was a centre where food was handed out to needy folk. People would invariably be hanging about - and they weren't always pleasant people.

"I was abused at a young age, only three or four then I would have been abused at 11 years of age. There could be hundreds of people on the street waiting to get food, all the time. I was abused by a few people there, strangers, just people queuing, in cars. It's mental because it all happened right under my mam's nose out in the street yet she didn't know anything about it. As a four-year-old child how do you describe what happened to you, when you yourself don't even know what happened to you."

Young Derek learned to submerge what had happened; to bury it all deep down within his consciousness. To file it away where it could be forgotten. Or so he thought.

When he left school he embarked on a working life that could, conservatively be described as varied. He was employed as a chef for years including in schools in Navan such as Colaiste na Mhi and in Beaufort. He had spells on the building sites in Dublin and London. Someone who enjoyed cycling he worked also for a time as courier in Dublin, weaving his way through the traffic, seeking to escape the clutches of the past. At one stage he re-trained as a hairdresser worked for a while in salons in Navan.

In 1995 Gwen and Derek got married and went on to raise two children, a son and daughter, who are now adults. Twenty-five years ago Gwen and Derek moved to Johnstown where they have continued to live.

BLACK HOLE

Derek lived an active, full life until that is it all started to unravel in the summer of '22. The incident that really caused the descent into darkness happened some time before that when he was back working as a chef. The incident that triggered it all could hardly have been more mundane, more matter of fact. "I bent down to tie my shoe laces and my back just went, I slipped some discs , it couldn't have been simpler, although I did have problems with my back before that," he recalls.

"I basically couldn't walk, sitting at home I was on really, really strong medication. It just really brought me into a really dark place. I had never been in such a dark place before. I had bulging discs and they were hitting off the nerves and that stopped me from cycling, stopped me from standing, stopped me from walking.

"I was over a year bed-ridden, it was really bad, I couldn't stand up straight, I couldn't do anything. The medicine had a terrible effect on me, I just went into this black hole with it. I started drinking heavily to try and ease the pain on top of that, there was no way out of it. Drinking on top of taking all the medication as well, it was just insane what I was doing.

"I was in black hole but nobody knew it, I wasn't telling anybody, I was just sitting there, nobody knew what was going on, I just kept it all to myself. Even Gwen didn't know. She saw what I was like with the drinking but I was able to do all the housework while she went to work, it was just the evening times I would start going on the drink.

"The child abuse would have been masked by the alcohol as well. I would have been depressed by that. So many thing were going under the mat and the mat was getting fuller and fuller with problems."

Then it all went a little crazy on that night when he took the overdose of sleeping pills and nearly went to the other side.

The flirtation with death was a road to Damascus moment - and he started the process of getting himself sorted. There was the depression to grapple with as well as anxiety. Counselling was a big factor in helping him find stability. Then he heard of the various walking groups in Dublin and Celbridge that were aimed at encouraging men to get out of the house, meet others and, if they wanted to, have a chat about their mental health. He felt strongly there was a place for one in Navan.

In the group's first meeting a few weeks ago nine men showed up. He also says he has been "inundated" by people contacting him about the walk so he knows there is a need for such an outlet. Lots of people from the gay community have contacted him too.

The walk takes the men on a circuit around Johnstown. For Derek Sherry anyway every walk is a step back to full mental and physical health - and away from the darkness and madness. Away from the edge.