Tackling rural drug addiction: ‘People are buying boxes and boxes of codeine-based drugs’

Yvonne Moroney in Nenagh, Co Tipperary. Photograph: Diarmuid Greene

“There is hardly a place around in any of the villages in North Tipp that we haven’t heard of that people aren’t using drugs and dealing drugs,” he adds. Even young farmers, he says are buying, and using cocaine. “Go to addiction services and you are told you have a mental health issue and we don’t do mental health, so you’re being ping-ponged all over the place,” says Ryan, who set up the charity in 2019 along with consultant psychiatristThe charity is “responding to unmet needs in a rural community by offering services” to those who are hurtling towards the brink or coming back from it.

They are seeing results, says Ryan. “We don’t judge, so if somebody comes up the street and they are off their head or come into us really intoxicated, we’ll still talk to them, and we find they will come back. Others on the rural frontline, such as Julie McKenna of Novas, a voluntary organisation working with single adults, families and children who are disadvantaged and socially excluded, are concerned not just about illegal drugs, but about over-the-counter medicines such as painkillers and prescribed medicines too., Clare and North Tipperary last year, the charity dealt with 131 people addicted to over-the-counter codeine tablets, as well as benzodiazepines/prescription drugs.

“I’ve had clients taking 24 tablets a day, 42 tablets a day, 70 tablets a day,” says McKenna, warning that people can go from taking a couple of tablets for a back injury to becoming addicted to tablets in a dangerously short time.

Drugs!, just say Nenagh.

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