‘He was a child living in an adult’s world’

TEENAGE drug addiction arrives on a family’s doorstep without warning, like a thunderclap out of a clear blue sky.

The realisation a son or daughter is struggling with drug use, stealing to feed the habit, getting involved in violence, alienating their siblings, running up debts to dealers, and ripping a family apart is a shock like few others.

But it’s a shock more and more parents are having to deal with in today’s Ireland, an Ireland of saturated supply of most illegal drugs, dealers at the street corner and rock-bottom prices.