Cocaine Destroying Rural Ireland

I saw addiction in weak men early in my life…I saw addiction, I saw and identified weak men who would neither follow or lead. When presented with A or B could not find a third solution and avoided them like the plague.

Mr Compassion…🙄

Yes, you 'saw' addiction, but clearly never understood it.

Rambo doesn't feel pain surely

At this point I'm pretty sure we're dealing with a troll here (and not one of the better ones to be honest) but it'd be interesting to see a surgeon's reaction to him declining the anesthesia before evasive testicular surgery.

Oh I saw it, I later studied it for three years. It was part of a weak mans escape for poor life choices and having a pigeon holed life looking for easy answers. I came across the same problem myself in life due to shared genetic and I found ways around pain killers.

Tell us how you cured sciatica in one night.

How do we know it was over a drug debt? How do we know the drug in question is cocaine?

I'm very skeptical about the validity of this, especially considering the heart attack bit. Its all a bit too... convenient. Plus something like that always winds up in the papers, especially local.

That said, I'm not accusing the poster of making it up, but someone did.

Does you hearing them automatically mean they're true.

What's RTE got to do with it…? I specifcally said "local".

Well, when you hear it and literally witness it for yourself, as I have done, you will take to take that into account when you hear dozens of other people tell you the exact same thing from all over the country.

What's RTE got to do with it? You seem to be untrustworthy of what your fellow citizens are telling you up in here. I'm not making it up, and I'd bet my life savings and house that these other posters up in here aren't "making it up" either. Would you believe our accounts if the likes of RTE decided to do a local Nationwide account on the actual Cocaine trade in rural Ireland?

I think it's dangerous to believe what you hear on the street automatically and I hold a healthy degree of skepticism. Keeps me sane.

That said, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

I'm not saying none of this ever happened - I'm saying it's grossly exaggerated (especially the heart attack bit) and there are a lot of suspicious details like, as I said, how do we know it;s drugs? or that the drug was cocaine? As I said earlier, if it was heroin I'd be way more likely to believe it because getting into drug debts with travellers is not something people do lightly and heroin is way more addictive to the point you'd put your safety at risk for a fix that cocaine.

Cocaine is more "more-ish" than addivtive. It;s like the chocolate cake in the fridge in that you keep wanting more when it;s there, but when it's gone its gone. You generally dont go putting your self at risk.

(And PLEASE don't misinterpret that as me saying cocaine is not worse than chocolate cake :) )

I'm the same. I'm in my 30's and I know one person who takes cocaine, and that's a casual friend. My core friend group of around 8 people I know for a fact don't, though they would've dabbled in weed/mushrooms/ecstasy/etc but some of the claims here would have you believe that if you drop into the corner pub in a quiet village, all the John's and Mary's are hoovering cocaine up in the toilets.

I'm not for a second saying cocaine isn't common, in the same way that weed is common, but I sometimes wonder if it's quite as common as is made out to be.

I guess all things are relative. I’m in the same boat as you - it’s probably that cocaine has become a lot more mainstream than what it once was, which was the preserve of the wealthy - so increased consumption certainly - but not to the extent that every second person is taking it .
2023 statistics state 2.4% of Irish population admit to using cocaine regularly - while that apparently means Ireland is joint 4th globally of users which is extremely worrying, if you look at your own social group, and take your age and demographic into consideration, that statistic might drop considerably for you personally - maybe one in 300 people you may “know” or know of, takes cocaine -

Whereas if I’m in my 20s or 30s I’m probably likely to know a lot more people who have either tried cocaine or who take cocaine regularly - obviously some of that demographic are posting here on this thread - I can inderstand how some might say it’s “rampant” because the reference group these people are associating with are likely to be the greatest consumers of the drug- so their 2.4% statistic is probably more like 24% or higher

https://www.drugsandalcohol.ie/38406/

Cocaine is a highly addictive drug, no-one doubts that. The best time to break that addiction is before you actually take it for the first time. People need to recognise its dangerous and addictive. Down-playing its effects is not helpful, as people then believe its harmless.

What doesn't work with this argument is the huge amount of people that have taken it a few times that didn't have that problem happen.

Warnings like this are counter intuitive. It IS addictive, BUT, it probably won't be the first time that gets you addicted. Regular use, definitely will though! Honestly, it's up there with telling teens that they'll definitely get pregnant after the first time.

Feeling alright there, Judge Dredd? Glad to see you must be in favour of full legalisation of all drugs, so people can exercise personal responsibility.

By young people do you mean people in their 20s? Are you close to that age group also? As I’m not I just don’t see it but interested to hear what your estimation is around % number of users in their 20s, assuming you associate with this age group