CLARE Shine knew what she was doing as she closed her eyes and stepped in front of the oncoming car. Fuelled by alcohol, cocaine and self-loathing – none of them in moderate measures – she wanted to end her life at the age of just 23 on a Cork night-time street.
That was in October, 2018, and there was to be a second suicide attempt on a scorching afternoon in Edinburgh less than two years later. That neither succeeded only added to her sense that she was a failure; an addict – or junkie as a disgusted acquaintance once brutally called her – who was a burden on her long-suffering family and friends.
