PHOTOGRAPHS BY CRISTINA DE MIDDEL FOR NEWSWEEK
AT THE TURN of the millennium, a young woman moved to a cabin on the Mull of Kintyre, a headland in southwest Scotland renowned for the bleak beauty of its cliffs and the treacherous swirl of the currents below. There she took in two horses, and for a time the silent companionship of those geldings offered more in the way of healing than the countless prescriptions she’d been given by psychiatrists, or the well-meaning attempts by therapists to excavate the most painful parts of her past. Then, in early 2013, she did something she had promised herself she would never do again: She bought a bottle of vodka.
The woman, who asked to be identified only as Karen, cannot recall the precise trigger that made her reach for a drink after 12 years of sobriety. But she does remember stumbling into the hospital in Lochgilphead, the nearest town. Intoxicated and near-delirious, she feared the suicidal impulses that had racked her since she was a teenager might prove too strong to resist.