Almost two years have passed since Clare Shine felt that, after trying so hard to keep going, everything had come crashing down forever. She had already achieved what once felt impossible, rehabilitating from drug and alcohol addiction to continue a hugely successful career with Glasgow City, but now she had to do it all again. A relapse, brought on by the loneliness of Covid-19 lockdowns, had culminated in more suicidal thoughts and a high‑profile 10-hour police search that found her in Edinburgh.
Living with 19 other patients inside the Nairn ward, a mental health unit at Glasgow’s Stobhill hospital, she could not let go of the thought that her chance of recovery had passed. “I felt like I was finished,” she says. “I thought I was done: that this is it for me, I can’t progress or move on from it, it’s taken over my whole life. I didn’t see any way out.”
