A bouncer speaks: 'Angry daddies are the worst troublemakers'

Illegal Class A drugs such as cocaine, ecstasy and MDMA will be high on the agenda of the next meeting of the Citizens' Assembly on drugs on June 24, 25. Accusations abound of both under and over-reporting and the resultant normalizing of drug use. A West of Ireland bouncer tells Sorcha Crowley what’s really happening inside our nightclubs and bars.

Every aspect of night-time entertainment has changed, Vinny says, for better and for worse. File picture: Pexels

Vinny* the doorman remembers a night back in 2006 when a solicitor “totally out of his mind” on drugs tried to get past him into his nightclub. 

“He just stuck his nose into a bag of cocaine and sniffed it. I wouldn’t let him in. I told him the next time he comes, if he’s the same way again, he won’t be admitted either,” he recalls. It was the height of the Celtic Tiger, the boomiest of boom times when, at least in Vinny’s experience, only “a certain class of people” in Ireland snorted cocaine.