A former addict who shares her struggles via poems on TikTok hopes to become the first person to walk from the northernmost to the southernmost point of Europe for suicide awareness.
Kit Birks, 29, from Andover, Hampshire, struggled with anxiety, depression, and eating disorders throughout her teens, before slipping into a “destructive” pattern of substance abuse that eventually left her homeless and suicidal.
With support from her friends and family, Kit began to attend recovery meetings in 2022 and has been sober ever since.
She has developed an online platform dedicated to being more open about mental health and suicide, often showcasing poetry she writes to document her recovery, where she will now document a groundbreaking challenge.
Hoping to “turn (her) advocacy into activism”, Kit wants to be the first person to travel by foot from Europe’s northernmost point in Norway, to its southernmost point on the Greek island of Gavdos.
Starting in July and armed with a flag adorned with the names of suicide victims, the solo 8,500km (5,280 mile) journey will take Kit through 10 countries and last for around a year.
“I’m doing this trek to make lots of noise around suicide prevention,” Kit told PA Real Life.
“I made a vow to myself that I didn’t want anyone else to go through years of feeling lost and misunderstood.
“I just want people to know that it’s OK to talk about it more, and there’s no shame in anything that you’re struggling with.”
Kit started taking antidepressants when she was 13 to treat persistent insomnia, anxiety and depression.
She also struggled with anorexia and bulimia throughout her teens, before becoming addicted to drugs and alcohol at age 17.
“It wasn’t apparent at first: when you’re young, people your age are drinking lots as well,” Kit said.
“It’s just the done thing, (so) you don’t really spot addiction.”
Kit’s “party girl” persona became increasingly destructive in her early 20s, and eventually “spiralled into everyday using”.
Then, in March 2021, Kit “ran away from home” and became homeless.
“My family didn’t really know where I was. I put them through hell,” she said.
“I tried to take my life three times. Luckily, I was really bad at it.”
Kit said she “never thought” she was an addict at the time.
She added: “I just thought that I was someone who had bad things happen to them, so I was allowed to behave the way I was behaving.”
In May 2022, Kit found herself with “nowhere else to go” and was accepted back by her family “without hesitation”.
She recalled: “I didn’t know how to live with the drugs any more, but I didn’t know how to live without them.”
She saw a friend posting about a recovery programme and decided to attend an online meeting herself, which she said was “amazing”.
“I left that meeting with eight new numbers in my phone, and I was told to pick up the phone, don’t pick up a drug,” she said.
During her recovery, Kit was diagnosed with ADHD and bipolar disorder.
She initially thought being diagnosed earlier might have prevented her addiction but then decided she “can’t do this ‘poor me’ mentality”.
Instead, Kit poured her energy into “sharing openly and honestly online” about her experiences and showing others that “we can speak about them without suffocating a room”.
Kit recalled: “I found poetry in recovery – I wasn’t even 30 days clean, and I just picked up a pen and a piece of paper and started writing.
“I realised that, for the first time in a long time, I was going to have to start facing reality and myself, and admit all the things that I did wrong.
“By the time you get to rock bottom, you’ve got this rucksack on your back filled with so much stuff, and you think you’re going to take it to your grave.
“Poetry became my way of expressing that, when saying things really bluntly felt too scary.”
Her poems struck a chord on TikTok, where she has over 37,000 followers.
In a poem called Burnt Toast, which tries to convey how “clumsy” depression can feel, she describes how she keeps putting bread in the toaster but “all (she) gets is burnt toast”.
In another, she states that the “beauty of life” is “that we rise and fall, stumble and soar”, eventually learning to love “exactly as we are”.
In July, Kit is attempting to break a world record by being the first person to walk from Nordkapp in Norway to Gavdos Island.
While other explorers have trekked the European mainland before, Kit believes she will be the first to get on a boat to include the southernmost point of Cape Trypiti in Gavdos.
“I’m now realising why (it hasn’t been done before), because it’s actually quite complicated,” she said.
“I have spreadsheets coming out of my eyeballs and 40-page documents.”
Kit said that her family were initially uncertain, but have since come around.
“I really showed them how much I planned, I made them a PowerPoint presentation and handed them leaflets,” she recalled.
“They are so unbelievably supportive now, but they’re scared.”
Kit has been training to carry everything she needs in her 20kg backpack, including a tent and a large flag bearing the names of people who have taken their own lives – some of them friends, others sent in by bereaved well-wishers online.
She said: “I’m going to hit so many points where I think ‘I don’t know how I’m going to do this.’
“That’s why I’ve got the flag, and that’s why I’ve got people’s names on my tent, because it’s all these little reminders of the bigger picture.
“I’m determined to do this, so I know I will.”
Kit said she hoped to “honour the lives of those we’ve lost to suicide” and show people “it does get good again”.
She added: “If you take it one step at a time, eventually you will find yourself back in the light again.
“I can’t tell you what life is waiting out there, but it is beautiful, and you will do things that you never imagined possible.
“I’m not saying that you have to go and walk the length of Europe – just that one day, you’ll wake up and be excited about the day ahead.”
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