Clare Drug Addiction Cases Reaches Record High

0:00As you've been hearing in our news bulletins, the number of cases of people treated for drug addiction in Claire last year reached an all time high with 399 episodes of treatment for drug and alcohol addiction recorded in this county throughout 2025. Joining me to discuss this further is Claire Femmes, Dara Dolan. What else do these statistics tell us? So Alan, the 389 cases of drug and alcohol addiction is an increase of 30% of what was recorded in Claire last year alone. And it can be broken down to 250 cases specifically of drug addiction and 131 of alcohol addiction. It's important to stress, these are not individuals. These are episodes of the person to be re-admitted to an addiction center multiple times in a year. But with that said, it's still by far and away a record for the number of episodes of drug addiction care in Claire in a single year. We do know, however, that 136 individuals were treated for drug addiction in Claire for the very first time.

1:00This is people admitted to a drug addiction center for the first time and for them it is definitely their first episode of care. That's up 36% in the last year alone. And when it came to alcohol, there were 67 people treated for the very first time for an alcohol addiction in Claire last year. Okay, so what's behind the increase in drug addiction cases? Well, Cain is consistently the main problem drug in Claire, but surprisingly last year at the use of that skyrocketed. It's up 89% from last year. So last year there was 69 registered episodes of treatment for cocaine addiction in Claire. This year that was 129. So by far and away the worst year on record in this county. And it was also a record year for Benzo Diazepine addiction. These are more commonly known as Benzels. And it's prescription medication that's commonly used to treat anxieties. The number of episodes of care for Benzels Diazepines more than doubled last year. That rose up from 24 to 54 in the space of the year.

2:03What types of people then are presenting for treatment? And this is more interesting, I think because we often have stereotypes, I think, that form in our heads when we talk about any form of addiction. What does show us is that 127 people that presented for drug or alcohol addiction in care last year were in regular employment. 28 were retired and at least 12 were students. Now the vast majority were unemployed at 200. But when we get to the age ranges, I think it gets a bit more interesting there. 10 people being treated for addiction were under the age of 18. 48 were aged 18 to 24, which I suppose is an age racquetude expect to find here. Again, with a big increase when it comes to the 25 to 34 range, you have 119 people treated for addiction. I don't think there's any great surprise there. 115 were treated for addiction last year were between the ages of 35 and 44. And again, I think that is an age that we would commonly associate with a story like this.

3:06Maybe starts to get a bit more surprising is 89 were aged between 45 and 64. And then you'd six individuals treated for drug or alcohol addiction in care last year that were over the age of 65. But it goes further than that. It also looks at the type of accommodation that people are living in. This is also the worst year on record for people living in stable accommodation, which of course is just people in regular housing that have a consistent place. They live worth a thorough rent, you know, whether they're living at home or whether they have their own house. There was 324 individuals in stable accommodation presented for treatment of drug or alcohol addiction last year. And just 25 individuals were documented as being homeless. And that's not a record year for homelessness. That's actually down on last year. It also breaks it down into usage. So roughly half of people presenting a drug or alcohol addiction in care last year were using daily. But most were using more than twice a week. So we don't have a defined figure on that. What the health research board tells us is between two and six days a week.

4:09It also breaks it down by gender. The vast majority were male. 211 episodes of people presenting for care involved men. 148 involved women. It does finally then tell us the source of referal and self-referal was the most common pattern people to get into rehabilitation center. So it does seem on some level that people are more aware maybe of their conditions because there was 160 cases last year where people went to an addiction center in care through self-referal. And that is also a record for self-referal. This is followed by a healthcare referral and a referral from family or friends. They both roughly had 50 cases. The courts and social services followed after that were roughly 35 cases each. To find out a little more about what's behind these figures, I spoke to Michael Gehrin, who's an independent addiction counselor, working across the Midwest. I think there is a positive to be taken from the figures from the HRB in relation to

5:11Claire in that the fact that you had so many presentations means that people are less afraid, are not afraid at all, hopefully, to come forward and seek help when they have a problem. Historically, there has always been a stigma around drug dependence. And it's good to see that the number of people is high because these people were out there. And the fact that they came forward and received help and got episodes of treatment is a very, very positive sign. I suppose the worrying part about the report, at the stand or part by a mile, is the 87% increase in presentations for cocaine addiction. And I would imagine that that is replicated to a greater or lesser extent nationwide at this point. One third of people that presented four addiction in Claire last year were in regular employment. I suppose does that surprise you, Michael, but based on maybe the people that you encounter

6:12in this line work? No, it wouldn't surprise me at all. I suppose it's probably down to a stereotypically view of people that have people have about people with addictions that they are so entrenched in the addictive cycle that they are incapable of working. But I mean, it's not at all unusual. Her cocaine is concerned at least for us to meet people from 20 years of age up to mid-50s presenting in active cocaine use. So a lot of these people would be employed. Cocaine is a very expensive drug. And it's quite easy to hide, particularly in the early stages. So I can see quite easily how a third of the entirety of the case is presented for both drugs and alcohol could have been in regular employment. That wouldn't surprise me at all. I spoke earlier there about how on one level there is the positive that more people are

7:12presenting. And what we can also see here is that the greatest source of referral is self-referred. There was 155 cases in the county last year where people referred themselves. Does that point to people knowing that they have a problem or does that point to the scale of the crisis with cocaine? Well, it probably points to both. I mean, in an ideal situation, if you were running an addiction treatment service, the ideal situation you would like to see is that the person themselves would come forward and refer themselves for help rather than somebody representing them doing so. Because the person needs to want to get well in order to get well. But it's quite regular at this stage. And again, it goes back to the breaking down of the walls of stigmatization that people are able to comfort themselves, contact services and admit, honestly, and openly that they have a problem and that they need help. And it's not just cocaine that we're seeing is going up.

8:14Benzol de Azoppins, which are prescription drugs which are often used straight to like syvanxiety or depression or insomnia. Case is there more than doubled last year. Benzol de Azoppins have been a constant in the ecosystem of drug taking in order to know for decades. And I think there might be a misnomeral, or at least I was a number of years ago, that Benzol de Azoppin addiction was linked to over prescription by doctors. That isn't the case at all. Benzol de Azoppins are a street drug at this stage. And they are traded by drug dealers in the same way that cocaine, heroin, cannabis are in anything else is traded. So the fact that the cases are up again speaks to the fact that people are prepared to come forward and talk about their Benzol de Azoppin abuse. But I wouldn't think that he is in anywhere linked to bad practice in medical care. Because Benzol de Azoppins are very tradable at this stage. And we're constantly hearing and going back a number of years now that cocaine itself

9:19is a drug that's crossed all boundaries and all sectors in society. And it's becoming increasingly more prevalent in all circles. What do you think is behind that? Well, I suppose the best way I could describe what has happened with cocaine over the last five to ten years, ever since we started to return to prosperity after the financial crash of 2008 is that we have essentially as a nation, sleepwalked onto a landmine where cocaine is concerned. And we're no dealing with a problem that is far greater than the perceived problem that we had with cocaine in the Celtic Tiger era, where cocaine was seen as the drug that the affluent people, that the rich people, that the well educated people used recreationally to parity. And then of course, a percentage of these people, a quite high percentage of these people went on to become addicted because cocaine is a drug with a very high addictive potential.

10:20The latest iteration of cocaine is alarming in a number of ways. One of the things that we're seeing is that the age of forced use of cocaine that's being recorded by services is extremely low. And in some cases, it has been as low as 15 years old. And I think we're nearly moving towards a situation at this stage where always with people with addictions, it tends to start out with them engaging in experimentation with various substances in early-termidadolescence. And historically, these substances were cannabis and alcohol. I would nearly go as a far as to say that cocaine is nearly in that milieu of substances with which adult addicts have experimented with in adolescents such is its widespread availability. Do you think that it's got to a point where people think it isn't dangerous or most?

11:22Absolutely. I mean, cocaine in some sectors is as normalized at this stage as alcohol consumption. And the levels of presentations of treatment services that we are seeing across the country and the levels of seizures we are seeing being made by garody, customs and revenue. And everything points towards the fact that we have a huge, inestimable problem nationwide with cocaine. And I don't think really anybody understands that the actual size of this problem. Because we're reading on a regular basis in the newspapers, whatever, multi-million euro seizures of cocaine carried out by Gare de Chiaucana revenue and customs. But I've never heard of, and I have asked a number of colleagues this, I have never heard

12:24of a cocaine news or reporting a shortage of cocaine. So if we're taking something like 10 million euro of cocaine, a street value out of circulation at the point of entry into the country through very good work kingdom with the Gare de et cetera, yet there is no shortage. That gives you an indication of the amount of it that's actually making this way in. So we have a massive problem with cocaine at this stage. And we need to start treating the problem that we have with cocaine like we treated the huge problem that we had with tobacco in the 1970s and 80s, where it was causing untold amounts of physical illness within the population. And the way we did that was we ran a very, very strong robust national awareness campaign around the dangers of smoking. And I think something similar needs to be done with cocaine.

13:27And I think something absolutely needs to be done in terms of educating young people with an evidence based robust fit for purpose, education and prevention program at June or cycle in second level school. You deal with a lot of people in Claire in your service here, which you've described as a one stop shop for people that are dealing with addiction. One kind of turnaround, have you seen from people that have presented because I'm sure maybe there's even people listening this morning that might think that they can't turn this around. Yeah, and I suppose that's the one thing the prevents people coming forward for treatment is that they feel that there's no way out of this. They feel trapped in this situation. They cannot count in this situation where they can live happily, or live at all, or cope at all without a chemically crotch in order to do so. And there are many cases, I mean, up to an including borderline miraculous that I have

14:29seen where people have managed to successfully abstain from drugs and alcohol like myself. For indefinite periods of time, once they have admitted and accepted that they have a problem, and once they are prepared to accept the help that they need to get in order to get free of that problem. And just to create a touch on it as well, because I noticed this conversation has been heavily oriented on actual drugs, but this obviously covers alcohol addiction too, and we also had a part of 130 cases in clear last year. Michael, you could just how you got into becoming an addiction counselor yourself. Well, my root addiction counseling was I did, my primary qualification was in alcoholism and I did post-graduates studies in counseling. I am an alcoholic, and it's not that I was, I still am, I'm just well known that it doesn't drink, and I haven't drank for a good number of years.

15:30You will find within the addiction treatment system, and the professionals within it, a lot of them would be people who would be recovering addicts themselves, which gives them unique insights into the struggles that people face in the early stages. And I suppose you actually said when I first walked in here was you commanded the services that are available to people from HSE Midwest if they are looking for help. Absolutely, and comparatively speaking in the HSE Midwestern catchment area, we have a very extensive range of good services providing excellent quality of care to two people who are suffering from addictions. County Claire is very lucky to have its own residential addiction treatment center in Bushie Park, and that's a premises that's being extensively modernized at this stage, and that's all good news. A lot of other parts of the country wouldn't have at all the range of services and the availability of services that we have in the Midwest, so that is a good thing.

16:32However, I do believe that at this point in time, the government need to seriously look at taking the whole drug treatment and harm reduction services arm of the health service executive and putting it under its own banner. And what I mean by that is the Minister of Responsibility for the Drug Treatment Strategy is a Minister of State at the Department of Health. And in order for her to get resources and all her predecessors, they had to go into the Department of Health and compete with things like GP care, acute hospital care, care for people with disabilities, care for the elderly, and all these very, very worthy, worthy necessary services, and they had to compete with them for resources. And I think it's high time that the Minister of Responsibility for the National Drug Treatment Strategy, and incidentally we haven't had one since 2018, which he said.

17:36I think that needs to be a standalone ministry with a standalone budget so that we can once and for all start to take on this massive issue that we have at Cork Inn. Alongside all the other issues, and we need not forget Alka Halauðar.