“We are seeing guns, arson and attacks on houses”: the families in the eye of the Irish cocaine storm | Drugs

Patrick Murphy still remembers his first cocaine use. “I was 19 and that first line just made me fall in love with it,” he says. “The confidence it gave me was unparalleled. It was so easy to keep doing cocaine because it was everywhere. Even now, sitting here, I could get a bag in my hand in 10 minutes, faster than I could order a taxi.”

It took seven years for addiction to destroy Murphy’s life.

“Everyone around me put up with it, I felt like nothing bad could happen, but it brought me to my knees,” he says.

“I lost my job and my relationship. Dealers were constantly knocking on my family’s door. The last few years of my addiction were horrific: I was alone, homeless, sitting in a van, sniffing cocaine. The only thing that mattered was that I found a way to keep taking it. It took me to dark places I never thought I could escape from.”

Now, at the end of an eight-month stay at Coolmine, a centre for drug and alcohol addicts on the outskirts of Dublin, Murphy sees himself as part of a new generation of drug users in Ireland, in the grip of a cocaine epidemic that is destroying lives like his across the country.

“There are so many people like me, young people, but also people of all ages, who tell themselves that because we don’t put a needle in our arm, we’re not like the other heroin addicts who end up homeless or dead,” he says. “I know so many people who have no idea how addicted they are because nobody takes it seriously.”

Cocaine use in Ireland has soared in recent years as record amounts of the drug from South America flow across Europe’s porous borders and social media platforms and encrypted messaging apps provide dealers with an efficient and low-risk marketplace. In 2023, Irish authorities said they seized more than €210 million worth of drugs – a record amount, the majority of which was cocaine. But that is likely to be only a tiny percentage of the amount that enters the country undetected.

Data from the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) shows an upward trend in drug use across all age groups since 2016. Last year, Irish people in the 15-34 age group were the biggest cocaine users in Europe. But the drug is also becoming more commonplace among older age groups who may never have used drugs before, says Prof Colin O’Gara, head of the addiction unit at Saint John of God Hospital in Dublin and clinical professor of psychiatry at University College Dublin.

“In Ireland, cocaine has become a public health emergency with no end in sight,” says Gara. “This drug has somehow managed to maintain its reputation as harmless, even glamorous, but causes enormous and rapid addiction problems. There are countless health problems that arise from heavy use, including strokes, heart palpitations and the rupture of major arteries in the brain. There are many new users in their 50s and 60s – people who have never used drugs before – who are suffering serious health problems as a result. And across the board, we are seeing devastating effects on mental health, including depressive disorders, anxiety disorders and psychosis.”

According to Ireland’s National Drug Treatment Reporting System (NDTRS), which collects data on people attending drug treatment facilities, the number of new cases reporting cocaine as the main “problem drug” increased by 258% between 2016 and 2022. Last year, NDTRS data showed that cocaine was the most commonly reported drug in new cases in treatment facilities across the country.

“Those of us who work in addiction services saw the situation spiral out of control,” says Pauline McKeown, director of Coolmine, where Murphy was receiving treatment.

“Cocaine use is very, very widespread and it affects so many families across the country. It’s a drug that crosses socioeconomic barriers like no other drug I know of. Cocaine use is as common in rural areas as it is in cities, across multiple generations of the same family, in sporting communities, in farming communities – and there is so much more recreational, problematic and individual cocaine use than we’ve ever seen with other drugs like heroin.”

McKeown says that in the past, Coolmine has primarily supported people seeking help for opioid or heroin addiction. In just a few years, that has changed dramatically. Now, she says, cocaine users are the largest group of new clients coming to them.

“Last year, 36% of all our admissions were for powder cocaine and we expect that number to continue to rise,” says McKeown.

Murphy’s mother, Sharronsays her son’s descent into cocaine addiction was a terrible experience for the family.

“With my son, I saw him go from one line to two lines, from one bag to two and then three, and he thought he was just an occasional user,” she says. “At his 21st birthday party, we found out he had ordered €500 worth of cocaine. We could see him changing: he was an incredible football player, but that just disappeared; he was twitching all the time, his jaw was shaking; he was losing weight. He was always such a gentle soul, but he became aggressive and punched walls. It was terrifying how he completely changed.”

Sharron says she and her husband have paid back tens of thousands of euros in drug debts over the years to protect their son from threats from drug dealers.

“He was constantly ordering cocaine through social media. We would look out the window and see people leaving bags of drugs for him on the wheels of our car or on window sills. People were constantly knocking on our door asking for money. My husband would go out alone to meet strangers and try to pay off (Patrick’s) debts because we didn’t want him to get hurt. He bought a pair of brass knuckles online because he never knew who he was going to meet. Patrick said they threatened to throw Molotov cocktails at the house. It was this constant nightmare that we couldn’t escape from.”

Even now, Sharron says, the ringing of her doorbell sends me into a panic. “My husband had a nervous breakdown. We lost years of our lives to it, but I see it happening all around me. I work in a pub and everyone there does it – it’s lawyers, freelancers, men in their 50s and 60s and the younger people who just don’t care,” she says.

“They just take out a bag and do it openly, no sneaking out to the bathroom. For some reason it’s now acceptable for someone to shove cocaine up their nose while ordering a drink. My own family do cocaine all the time, at family birthdays, christenings. They have no idea the damage and pain it can cause. No one listens. It feels completely out of control.”

Violence and intimidation of families and communities by people with links to the cocaine trade is so widespread that last year the Government launched the Drug Related Intimidation and Violence Engagement (DRIVE) project: a multi-agency approach to tackling this increasingly widespread crime problem.

Siobhán Maher, coordinator at Drive, says: “Before taking on this role at Drive, I was a family carer and one in two family members who came to us experienced intimidation or violence related to drug dealing. Cocaine is particularly associated with this because that is where most of the money is made.

“We see young people being recruited to sell drugs and forced into criminal activity, firearms entering communities, arson, attacks on homes, violence and sexual violence and the danger of that spreading, families being targeted to pay off huge drug debts. It manifests itself in different ways across the country, but it’s everywhere and no community is exempt from it.”

Maher said Drive plans to launch a nationwide cocaine education program this year to highlight the devastating impact the drug has on families across the country.

“People need to know that there is help and support available. They don’t have to deal with this alone,” she says. “But the public needs to understand the connection between this drug and the horrific violence and abuse that occurs in ordinary families. This is not a problem that is just going to go away. If we don’t act now, it will only get much worse.”