‘IT’S LIKE THE DARK BELLY OF THE DEVIL’

Wexford mother who saved her son’s life speaks out about the heroin epidemic gripping the town

A WEXFORD town mother, who saved her heroin-addicted son after he attempted suicide, said the drugs ‘epidemic’ here ‘is like the dark belly of the devil’.

‘It ruins families and causes heartbreak,’ she said. ‘You think you’re going out of your own mind when you face it, and I faced it.’

She said that her son ‘went to hang himself, and I stopped him’. Things subsequently reached a climax when he ‘crawled into my house, fell through the door and begged me to get him help’.

The woman said aid came from an unlikely quarter after her son admitted to the gardaí that he had committed a burglary and a district court judge sent him to Cloverhill, recommending that he undertake a detox programme while in prison. Free from heroin, he is now rebuilding his life.

Meanwhile, Kieran Donohoe, from the FDYS, said that while in the past there would have been an average of one death a year from substance abuse, so far this year, and in the period of a fortnight, two of his workers’ clients had died. And he said HSE waiting list to access treatment is ‘out of control’.

A WEXFORD town mother, who saved her son after he attempted suicide while he was out of his head on heroin, said the drugs ‘epidemic’ here ‘is like the dark belly of the devil’.

‘It ruins families and causes heartbreak,’ she said, ‘you think you’re going out of your own mind when you face it and I faced it.’

She said her son’s life had spiralled out of control after he became addicted to heroin.

‘He went to hang himself and I stopped him,’ she told this newspaper, following a weekend report in the Sunday World about the extent of the drugs problem in the county. The woman said her son thought he was in a dream, a nightmare would be more appropriate.

‘I went out looking for him in the middle of the night. He was going to take his own life. I jumped on him and brought him home,’ she said.

She said she had called in Caredoc who referred her son to Waterford Hospital, but they wouldn’t take him.

Things subsequently reached a climax when he ‘crawled into my house, fell through the door and begged me to get him help’.

‘I thought he was going to do something to himself. He was as bad as I have ever seen him.’

The woman said aid came from an unlikely quarter after her son admitted to the guards that he had committed a burglary and a district court judge sent him to Cloverhill, recommending that he undertook a detox programme while he was in prison.

‘The gardai who were on that weekend treated me as well as they could have done and the judge was very good too, without them he could have been dead,’ she said.

She said her son was now trying to get his life back together and had the full support of ‘other members of his family,’ all of whom had rallied round him.

The woman said Cllr Davy Hynes, a counsellor with ‘It’s Good to Talk’, had also been instrumental in helping her son after she exhausted all the normal channels and was left to do things for herself.

‘A mother’s love and his family were there for him,’ she said.