CONTENT WARNING: This article involves a discussion on mental health and substance abuse. Reading this story may be difficult, especially if you’ve had similar experiences or supported a friend or family member. If you’re feeling impacted, contact Beyond Blue for immediate support, Lifeline on 13 11 14 , Headspace, or your local GP.

Jess Kennedy suffered a 20-year battle with drugs and alcohol, all complicated by undiagnosed ADHD. Now a Beyond Blue speaker, she shares her journey, hoping to help others with similar issues.

Jess Kennedy’s story of addiction and recovery is raw, powerful and frankly, very difficult to hear. But she’s telling it because she doesn’t want anyone else to find themselves, like she did, on their kitchen floor at 4am, contemplating ending her life.

That was Jess’s darkest of dark places; her rock bottom. It was also the pivotal moment, after struggling with alcohol, drugs and undiagnosed mental illness for nearly 20 years, that she knew things had to change; she had to get help. It was only four years ago but today, thanks to lots of professional help, her wife, and an amazing rescue dog called Delilah, her life is filled with purpose, clarity and joy.

Jess is a smart, funny, high-achieving, tattoo-obsessed LGBTQ+ woman who doesn’t do anything by halves. Born and raised in Melbourne, she says that growing up, she always felt like a square peg in a round hole. ‘If you imagine a set of goalposts and you’re aiming for those goalposts, but every now and then those goalposts just move slightly to the left. That happened to me from a very young age.’ She was an ‘emotional, hyperactive, overzealous child’ who struggled to read social cues and connect with her parents and peers.

When Jess was 10, her sheltered life came crashing down when her sister’s child – Jess’s nephew – was stillborn. After the excitement of impending “auntiehood”, the shock was insurmountable.

‘I was devastated,’ Jess says. ‘But I didn’t understand the devastation. I didn’t know what grief was. I found myself hyperventilating and crying. I now look back and see it was a full-blown panic attack.’

A family member walked into the room and, instead of comforting Jess, said, ‘This isn’t about you; it’s about your sister. Stop behaving like this’.

‘Now that memory is so crystal clear in my mind… Just stop behaving like this. Your emotions are too much.’

Being too much

Those words planted a seed that grew through Jess’s mind like a noxious weed. It never left her, that feeling of being ‘too much’. At the time, 10-year-old Jess didn’t know how to stop the floodgates of grief. So, she went to the big brown cabinet her parents would open at parties, took a bottle out, and drank. ‘I didn’t end up with alcohol poisoning, but within 10-15 minutes, I felt fine. And all that anxiety had gone away.’

This was the beginning of her addiction. ‘And that’s precisely what addiction is,’ she says. ‘It is grabbing on to something. Because you don’t wake up one day to be an addict, you don’t want to be an alcoholic or a gambler – you want to not be in pain. And in that moment, at 10 years old, I didn’t want to be in pain. I didn’t want to be an embarrassment.’

Fast-forward to Jess’s twenties. She’s living in the UK, a finance manager at a large publicly listed company, travelling the world and over-achieving to the max. ‘During the light of day, I was a successful woman achieving amazing things. I’m standing in front of boardroom executives, telling them how they can make millions of pounds. And that, in itself, was this huge high.’

Propping up this facade of success was her old friend alcohol and an escalating addiction to drugs. ‘While alcohol was a crutch to manage social anxiety, what helped me function was stimulants. They made me feel like I was invincible.’ Around this time, Jess’s (undiagnosed) ADHD and bipolar 1 were also manifesting, followed by a nosedive into depression. ‘The only way I could get out of it was through taking substances and through self-medicating.’

Massive relapse

She concealed her addiction behind a ‘party animal’ persona. If anyone asked if she was OK, she’d say, ‘I’m great. I’m successful. Everything is perfect. Because the more I overachieved, the more I was congratulated, the more I wasn’t that kid that was too much.’

Jess knows now that the average lifespan of an addiction is 18 years. And recovery is never linear and never easy. When she was 30 and still living overseas, Jess quit cold turkey. This led to a massive relapse. She tried to keep it together ‘by a thread that was just slowly, slowly breaking’ for the next three-and-a-half years.

What came next was terrifying. A tricky question at work triggered a two-week bender. Her addiction grew to include prescription medication benzodiazepines for alcohol withdrawal and the overdosing began. ‘First time at work, my boss said, “I’m looking at you right now, and I feel like you’re about to die in front of me”.’

Between January and April 2020, she had three heart attacks and three overdoses. ‘I also tried to take my life twice.’

She had no job. She had isolated herself from all her family and friends. She’d sold everything she owned to finance her addiction. And that’s when she found herself on the kitchen floor in an empty house, convinced that one of three things was going to happen: ‘I’m going to kill myself, I’m going to be arrested, or I’m going to end up getting killed by the dealers I owe money to.’

This was the jolt she needed. ‘Something in my head just went, I don’t want to die.’ She reached out to an old friend, who encouraged her to call her parents. She moved back in with them, made that first trip to the GP and got an urgent referral to a psychiatrist. ‘I told him absolutely everything. He literally saved my life that day.’

A psychiatrist soon diagnosed Jess with ADHD. ‘He said you were high functioning and self-medicating up until the point where you weren’t.’

Diagnoses of bipolar 1, generalised anxiety, social anxiety, panic disorder and complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) followed. It was a revelation – once you know exactly what’s gone wrong, you can create a roadmap for recovery.

Love and strength

For Jess, that involved medical intervention to get the bipolar and anxiety under control, and she’s working through CPTSD with a psychologist. She credits much of her recovery to her wife’s love and strength. ‘She’s my rock but there’s no accountability enforcement stronger than a wife of a lesbian in recovery. It’s like living with a narc,’ she laughs. And the dogs. ‘I collect dogs, I collect mental health.’ Delilah, a pound rescue so traumatised ‘she didn’t know how to be a dog’ has healed and blossomed alongside Jess – they’ve done it together. 

‘Finding who you are in recovery is one of the hardest but most rewarding journeys you’ll go through,’ she says. ‘I’ll always be in recovery. But my past doesn’t define me. It’s something that happened, and I’ll always be recovering from that.’ 

There are millions of Australians out there struggling with the complex tangle of addiction, ADHD, anxiety and other mental health conditions. ‘The best advice I would give anyone is to reach out for help,’ Jess says. ‘I didn’t know there was help. I didn’t know anybody else was going through what I was.’

That’s why she’s driven to now ‘be the voice I wish I had heard. Because if I had heard anyone say, “I’m taking drugs just to get through the day”, I would have been, “F*** me. Me too!” 

‘If I can share my story and one single person takes from that an opportunity to not feel alone, to have someone to speak to, that’s such a huge success for me,’ she says. ‘If I can share my experience, and one person takes something away from that, my job is done.’

Recovery is possible

‘Addiction is a complex behaviour that can be hard to understand unless you’ve lived with a level of pain or distress so intense that you’d do anything to get some relief from it,’ says Dr Luke Martin, Clinical Psychologist & Senior Advisor at Beyond Blue.

‘Jess’s story provides us with a real insight into how difficult many people’s life experiences can be, even when it might not look like it from the outside. It reminds me of that great quote, “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle”. 

‘To overcome addiction,’ he continues, ‘we need to address the root causes of the pain. And you can’t do this alone. You need to reach out for support. This takes great courage but a step that could save your life. 

‘Recovery is about connecting with addiction specialists and mental health professionals and doing some really tough work. This often involves going back and processing traumatic life experiences and getting the right treatment and support to manage any underlying mental health conditions and neurodevelopmental conditions, such as ADHD, that might be driving your distress. 

‘Recovery is not always a straightforward process. Relapses are often part of the journey. Recovery is a decision someone makes every day to keep trying, with the support of their family, friends and professionals. In Jess’s inspirational story, we see that recovery is possible, and there’s hope that life can get better even after the darkest of times,’ says Dr Luke Martin.

HIA Charitable Foundation (HIACF) proudly supports Beyond Blue. HIACF is committed to the wellbeing of members of the residential construction industry. To find out more or to make a donation visit HIACF.

First published on 19 Jul 2024