HOPES RESTORED OF NORMAL LIFE

Some ex-offenders who graduated from the Bridge project told Carol
Coulter how it changed their lives "I'd be dead but for my probation
officer."

Joe became an addict in his teens, and had served a number of
sentences before his referral to Bridge.

It is now two years since he completed his course with Bridge. He then
worked on a community employment project, and plans to start full-time
work as a fork-lift driver in March.

But it meant much more than that. "I've done a lot of video production
with Bridge. I've interviewed the people in Focus Point, and the
governor of Mountjoy," he said.

"It gives you a lot of confidence. At first a lot of people in here
wouldn't say much. Now you can't shut us up. I've gone into schools
and talked to the kids there."

Gregory is at an earlier stage of his work with the project. Now 25,
he, too, had been taking drugs since his teens. At 16 he went to St
Patrick's Institution for young offenders following convictions for
robbery.

"There were no courses there and when I came out I was back on the
streets. When I started taking heroin I ended up out of my house.

"I got a four-year suspended sentence to go here. I'm now on a
methadone maintenance programme. We do art and craft here, computers,
group therapy talking about our crimes, bringing in victims.

"We don't realise the things they go through. Some of them are afraid
to go back into their houses. They're afraid to open the door.
Drug-abusing runs your life."

"We're victims, too," said Fran. "The people in here treat us like
we're normal human beings, not scum-bags."

These ex-offenders understand the problem of relapsing. "The people
here understand," said Stephen. "No matter how many times you fall,
they leave you for a few hours and you come back."

"When you slip up on drugs you're beating yourself up over it, and
your family is, and if you come in here and they're beating you up,
too, it just makes you worse," said Michael. "But they don't."

Finding the way to talk and express their emotions is one of the most
important things the ex-offenders learned from Bridge. "I can show my
emotions now," said Michael. "I couldn't with my first child, I was on
drugs. Now I have another child and it's great."

Joe learned to confront the consequences of his behaviour in the
project. "I went home and I cried," he said. "I had actually sold
drugs. I cried my eyes out when I thought about it."

"What addicts really want is a job, a house and a normal life," said
Michael. "But that's just a dream."

"In school if you asked the kids what they wanted to be they'd say
they wanted to be a fireman or something," said Stephen. "But no one
showed us how to become a fireman. We learned how to become addicts."

Stephen started taking drugs at nine from another family member. "I
was a skinhead, then a Rasta, then a raver. I was on E, then on gear.
But I went to school. I had a lot of normality as well."

He was in and out of jail from the age of 16. Eventually he was
referred to Bridge at the age of 24. "Mentally I was still nine," he
said. "It's only in the last two years that I've grown up."

He is now working in a fulltime job. In addition he is taking a
diploma in addiction studies accredited by Maynooth University, he and
his partner have a child, and they have fostered two more, aged eight
and 11, whose father is in prison.

"I'm a person who couldn't get out of bed two years ago. Now I have a
job, I'm doing addiction studies and fostering two kids who would
otherwise be in a home, because of the support from people here."

Michael, Stephen and Joe have now all been off drugs for more than two
years.