How cocaine became Ireland’s drug of choice

I ask Sinéad*, who’s in her early 20s, what it’s like to take cocaine.

“You get kind of jittery and you’ve got so much energy,” she says. “You feel like dancing – I always want to dance. Or else talk the ear off of someone. It’s like you actually feel like everyone in the world wants to hear about what you’re talking about.”

And what’s that like, as a feeling?

“It’s actually really fun. It’s really exciting.”

Sinéad, who lives in Dublin and took the drug for the first time aged 19, is one of a growing number of Irish young people who are using cocaine. A recent report by the Health Research Board (HRB) found that cocaine use among Irish young people is now the second highest in Europe, while there was a 171 per cent rise in the number of young people receiving treatment for cocaine use between 2011 and 2019.

Last year’s Irish National Drug and Alcohol Survey reported a six-fold increase in cocaine use by women aged 15 to 24 in the last five years. But what kinds of young Irish people are taking cocaine?

Michael Guerin is a senior addiction counsellor at Cuan Mhuire addiction centre. He tells me that while cocaine use may have previously been associated mainly with more affluent people, that is no longer the reality.

“It would appear, at this stage, that cocaine is the drug that has absolutely transcended all those social and economic boundaries that we perceived to be the case before,” he says.

Sinéad would agree. When I ask her whether cocaine use is common among her friend group, she says: “All of my friends do it. I don’t think I have a friend who doesn’t.”

But while Guerin has heard reports from clients that teenagers as young as 15 are using cocaine, Sinéad and her friends only really started using it regularly once they hit their early 20s.

“I feel like when you’re younger, MDMA [Ecstasy] is more popular because it’s so cheap,” she says.

Cocaine use has taken off among her peers, she adds, “only because we’re getting older and have a little more income than we did when we were younger”.

James, who’s originally from outside Dublin, but who has spent most of his early 20s living in the capital, tells a similar story. He first became aware that some of his friends were sniffing coke when he was in second year at school, when they were around 14 or 15. But this wasn’t the norm: “It wasn’t really popular when you’re a teenager.

“Once you stop taking pills, when you’re maybe 20 – definitely above the age of 20 – when people start not being able to handle the comedowns from all the pills, it becomes, I think, more popular,” he says.

He says cocaine use really takes off when people finish college, and that it’s most popular among those aged 23 to 30. “After a certain age – depending on what circle you’re in or whatever – taking a pill and being very messy and stuff like that becomes kind of frowned upon, but with coke you can be quite normal and still be on it.”

Then there’s the “weekend warrior thing”, where “there’s a lot of people working nine to five who make a good salary. And that [doing cocaine regularly at the weekends] is what they do.”

People who are making lots of money at a young age are especially fond of cocaine, James says. “Usually in competitive industries full of men being toxic.”

Although James himself only takes the drug every few months, he knows people who take it a couple of times a week, and in some cases, every day. He tells me some people he knows have no issue being high in front of unsuspecting family members, or even at work.

The cost of cocaine appears to vary quite a bit depending on where you are in the country, and how you get it. Sinéad says it’s supposed to be about €75 to €80 for a gram in Cork, and that she’s heard you can get the same for €60 in Limerick. For herself and friends in Dublin, she says, it’s €100. “I don’t know if it is inflation in Dublin or what it is, but you can never get any lower.”

But James tells me that collecting the drug yourself from a dealer in the suburbs of Dublin can slash the cost to €80 or even €50 for a gram. “If you collect it, it’s cheaper. If you go all the way up to someone’s house.”

Sinéad and James say that cocaine is most commonly taken at parties and after parties, and behind closed doors. But they have both taken it in bars and clubs too.

Sinéad has a friend who always has “three bags on him”. She tells me, “If you’re out with him, he’ll turn to you and ask you if you want to have a bathroom run, so you’re doing it in the bathroom of the club.”

This particular friend, she tells me, “would have no issue asking people to stand around him and taking a key of coke in the middle of the smoking area either”.

Clearly, cocaine use among young people from all kinds of backgrounds in Ireland is rampant – and on the rise. But why is this the case?

Professor Colin O’Gara, consultant psychiatrist and head of addiction services at St John of God Hospital, isn’t surprised by the findings of the recent HRB report in relation to cocaine use among young people in Ireland.

“It confirmed what we’ve been told by patients in terms of the level of availability of cocaine in particular,” he says. He mentions a number of factors as potentially playing a role in increased cocaine use among young Irish people: specifically availability, normalisation and a healthier economy.

Certainly, Guerin has been struck by the widespread availability of cocaine in Ireland in recent years. “The one thing that’s amazing to me about the current situation with cocaine is that there is this extensive spider’s web of supply and distribution that it’s almost impossible to wrap your head around,” he says.

“The number of sources from which one can secure cocaine in any given community is amazing. The fact that we have quite high levels of seizures of cocaine – in the millions of euro annually – and yet the fact that these seizures never seem to precipitate a shortage in supply, is very indicative of the amount of cocaine that’s going around.”

Where availability is concerned, O’Gara also points to the significance of the internet, “which has changed everything in the past ten years in terms of people buying drugs off the internet, be it on the Dark Web or just even simply on social media platforms. That has changed everything”.

O’Gara’s clients are sent menus and videos showing purity and quality through the likes of WhatsApp. Drugs are often being provided to people in a much more sophisticated way now, he says, and “that’s most definitely through the internet”.

Sinéad says she usually doesn’t use the internet or social media to buy cocaine. It’s more that she texts a dealer or finds one through someone she knows. And while she does get sent messages with “a price list and details of what’s available, and if there’s a runner out for the night” about twice a week, they’re sent to her via normal text, rather than social media.

In James’s experience, social media is more for buying and selling cannabis, rather than cocaine. But Sinéad does tell me: “I’m friends with someone on Snapchat who does sell drugs. And that definitely is a thing. I just don’t know how common it is, because I’ve never used it myself.”

O’Gara also points to how the use of cocaine is closely linked to the success of the economy; as he puts it, “If there’s money at all in the economy, cocaine, certainly from my viewpoint, tends to flourish.” Cocaine, he says, “almost disappeared” for a time following the 2008 economic crash, when cheaper stimulants such as mephedrone emerged.

But these stimulants, O’Gara says, are “completely gone now”, replaced by cocaine “from, say, 2016 onwards.” Guerin also dates his concerns about the rising tide of cocaine to the same period; specifically to “since about 2016, 2017”.

Talking about cocaine use with young people and experts alike, what is perhaps most striking is the extent to which the use of the drug has become an everyday fixture in Irish society. With every year that goes by, O’Gara and his colleagues have noticed “how much drugs are being normalised, particularly in the younger age group”.

If you go back to, say, two decades ago, he says, “you’d hear the word ‘subculture’ when it came to drugs”. But drugs have since become very much a part of the mainstream. “Nowadays it’s almost flipped over. In certain cohorts, among younger people in particular, people who are not using drugs would find themselves the odd one out.”

James reckons this normalisation may be due to social media. “People have access now at a way younger age to stuff that older people probably wouldn’t have had access to,” he says, “and they’re seeing people talk about doing cocaine and drinking. And they think that’s normal and that’s what adults do.

“You see TikToks of teenagers dancing to songs about doing coke and, yeah, that can’t be good. And I definitely think that the online culture of encouraging the ‘session’ is not good.”

“Session”-related content and memes have been on the internet for a few years now: the original Humans of The Sesh Facebook page, described by Mixmag as a “parody account sharing stories of booze and benders, gurns and gak”, first emerged in 2015. Nowadays, sesh-related content is more commonly found on TikTok, where funny videos hashtagged “nosebeers” and “seshtok” can score millions of views.

Self-described “cocaine content king” Jacob Hill-Anderson told Vice last year that publishing at least six “sesh content videos” a month made him “several times more than the average UK monthly salary”. At that time, Hill-Anderson’s monthly views were around ten million.

Closer to home, the Irish @ttseshmemes TikTok account (the bio states it is “not affiliated with any drugs or dealers shown”) has 16,000 followers and hundreds of thousands of likes. One Simpsons-themed video on the account (captioned “Me out of my nut trying to scab another sniff off my mate”) currently has just under 589,000 views. In the comments, numerous posters openly tag their friends.

But could this memeification of “the session” and drug culture actually be influencing real-world behaviours? O’Gara says it might.

He’s alarmed by “the insidious, pervasive nature of the messaging. And this comes into the binge culture of Ireland versus the continent. So it’s bingeing on alcohol and cocaine and other drugs, and this partying phenomenon that’s supposed to be cool”.

James also believes that high rates of cocaine use in Ireland are linked to how Irish people consume alcohol. “A lot of it has to do with drinking culture,” he says. “Much of it is fuelled by people drinking alcohol. They wouldn’t do it [take cocaine] if they were sober. It’s an impulse decision.

“Anyone that’s going out doing it is usually having a lot of drink, in my friendship circle. And it’s kind of expected that maybe they’ll buy one [bag of cocaine] because they’re drinking. It boils down to drink being the problem.”

Sinéad says she never takes cocaine when she’s sober: “I’d always do it when drinking.” She says that for her boyfriend and his friends, “whenever anyone is drinking, the first question they ask is: ‘Will we go on the bag?’”

Neither James nor Sinéad likes thinking about the risks of taking cocaine, which O’Gara points out are significant, even for once-off use.

“You could be dealing with very serious arrhythmia, possibly dying; you could have a major stroke, you could get into a very serious accident. Or addiction and all the misery that goes with it,” he says.

But for Sinéad, none of this is something she dwells on. “With taking coke, for me anyway, other than what I’m talking to people about, I’ve no major fear.” Meanwhile, James says that while he’s aware that there are risks, “I try not to listen to them or read up on them. I know it’s really bad for you, but I just try and turn a blind eye to it.”

When I ask James if he’s ever had a particularly positive experience on cocaine, he says no. “Not really. I don’t think it really suits me personally.” He hates the thought of supporting the drug trade, and thinking about doing cocaine sober makes him feel very upset. “After I do it, I feel really bad and guilty.” He’s deleted all dealers’ numbers from his phone, and says he doesn’t want to do cocaine any more.

When asked the same question about good experiences with cocaine, Sinéad says: “There was one time when we were in Central America and we were at a treehouse party and everyone was on drugs. And the sun was coming up and we were literally in the middle of a big rainforest. And it was unreal: I was like, this is bliss.”

She has no plans to give up cocaine any time soon, even though she does expect her use of it to dwindle down and mostly fizzle out. But, she says, “If I was 35 and had kids and I hadn’t done it in about three years and all my friends joined up and were like: ‘Let’s do some coke’, I’d definitely do it. That’d be hilarious. I don’t think I’ll ever have the attitude of ‘I’m never going to do it again’.”

* Some names have been changed