![]() James, 29, also from Cork, has been in Teach Mhuire, Cuan Mhuire’s step-down facility for recovering addicts for five weeks. "I think that easier access to detox facilities and to step-down housing like this would help a lot of people get clean." Losing everything, having to rob for money. When you’re on drugs you’re living in your own bubble, going from day to day, just thinking about how you’ll get the next fix. It’s opened my eyes, making me live in the real world. I said to myself, ‘no matter how hard it gets I’m staying here, I’m not leaving. I had to go into a detox place.” Aaron said that it took him four months to get a place in treatment but once in, he was determined to succeed. “I often cried and said to myself, ‘I can’t do this.’ But the next day I’d do it again. Just to let people know that you had it, so when you were selling bags, they’d know that you were carrying it. ![]() I wouldn’t leave the house without a knife. “I used to carry a knife every day, even going to the shop. “I always had my shoes tied tight in case I had to run from the guards or fight. 'The high only lasts for a few minutes so you're constantly chasing it, you can never have enough'. “You could definitely see people snapping and stabbing the person they’re with just over pure paranoia.” I’d take the gear to try to come down, and smoke joints but all that night you’d be up in a heap. “It is a nice feeling when you’re up, but 30 or 40 seconds later the paranoia and anxiety kicks in. He would lock himself into his room at the homeless hostel with three rocks of crack and “two or three pipes later” he’d board up the door and block out the windows. Or you can inject it.”Īaron said that the drug made him intensely paranoid. It’s €50 for one rock, and that’s gone in 15 - 20 minutes. This form of cocaine can be smoked or injected, hitting the bloodstream faster and with more impact than snorting it in powder form. An alkaline solution, like ammonia, can alternatively be used with a solvent which is evaporated to extract almost pure cocaine crystals. Powder cocaine (cocaine hydrochloride) is heated in a pan with baking soda to remove the hydrochloride until a solid rock is formed. And he is now speaking out to warn people of its dangers.Ĭrack is a free base form of cocaine. “The high only lasts for a few minutes so you're constantly chasing it, you can never have enough.”Īaron said that the drug that he first tried ‘to be one of the boys” eventually lost him his home, his family, everything. You have to keep going until you have no money left or there’s nothing left to rob. "But when that gets a hold of you it’s as bad, if not worse, than the heroin. It made me feel good, like I was part of something. I had a child on the way and I had to say ‘this is it.’ I was 14 when I started taking tabs and E’s. ![]() “My whole life was unmanageable,” he said. ![]() The birth of his baby daughter made him seek help and he said that he will never return to his chaotic old life which almost killed him. Polite, with a warm smile and easy charm, after four months in addiction charity Cuan Mhuire’s step-down supported housing facility in Cork, Aaron is excited to start an apprenticeship and is building a new life for himself and his family.
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