FOLLOWING a spate of 34 drug overdoses at a homeless shelter in Limerick City over an 18-month period, a report has been commissioned to ensure the ongoing safety of its clients and staff.
It is estimated that there are between 700 and 1,000 heroin users in Limerick, with the numbers of women using the Class A drug also on the rise.
Between May 2012 and November 2013, McGarry House on Alphonsus Street responded in-house to 34 overdoses — almost two a month — from a range of drugs including heroin and benzodiazepines. As a result, Novas Initiatives engaged a research company to carry out a study to look into the prevalence of overdosing amongst the charity’s client group.
Novas, a non-profit group which works with those are homeless or at risk of being homeless, will launch their findings in the coming weeks before considering how to manage what they consider to be a very “high risk issue”.
The city shelter provides 34 emergency beds to homeless in Limerick as well as long-term accommodation for another 33 residents.
Head of homeless services at Novas Initiatives’ McGarry House, Anne Cronin told the Limerick Post that it works with a number of service users at the shelter with “varying levels of problematic drug and alcohol abuse”.
“Very often, service users present with a serious addiction issue combined with poor mental health, intellectual disabilities, brain injuries as well as other, often quite serious, physical injuries,” Ms Cronin explained.
“Quite a significant number would use heroin as well as other substances like benzodiazepines and other legal and illegal substances,” she said.
According to Ms Cronin, the new research will inform Novas’ policies and procedures as well as its every day working practice to ensure the on-going safety of its client group as well as the staff who work within the services.
There are currently 238 people on the HSE’s methadone treatment programme in the Mid West region with 172 of those in Limerick. Drug education and prevention worker with Limerick Drug Education Prevention Strategy, Daniel Butler, claims most overdoses occur when addicts who get clean from heroin, later fall back into drug-taking.
Mr Butler believes heroin use in Limerick has escalated in the last five to six years. He also highlighted the strong links between heroin use and criminality in the city.
“There is definitely a link between heroin use and crime and the reason being is simple. I start taking heroin and I can function for a while but then things start to deteriorate and I might lose my job and then I’m on the dole. Next thing I’m forgetting to sign on and then I stop paying my bills and I’m thrown out of my house. I now have nowhere to go therefore I cannot claim social welfare as I’ve no fixed abode. How else am I going to feed my habit?
“So that will start me off on the road to petty crime, then I’ll be shoplifting and then it escalates to more high level crimes like burglaries. Then what happens is you are trapped in this vicious cycle by your addiction. Once you are in this cycle it can be very hard to get out of it,” he concluded.
