WHY I GAVE UP COCAINE... YOU CAN BELIEVE THIS ONE

Of all the terrible programmes RTE have inflicted on us in recent
years, the two-part "expose" High Society, which started last
Thursday and continues later this week, will go down as the worst.

For those of you have been living with your head in a bucket for the
last week, High Society purports to lift the lid off -- shock! --
the fact that now middle class people are doing drugs.

The obnoxious naivety in this very proposition -- it's okay for
working class oiks to use drugs, but when nice, respectable people
start then we need to get worried -- is exceeded only by the
ham-fisted, cliched and frankly unbelievable testimony we were shown.

Hear about the pilot who likes to do lines of gak in the cockpit
because "planes fly themselves these days"? Justine did.

Hear about the teacher who racked out lines during her free classes?
Justine did.

Or what about the middle-class drug dealer who is so blase about his
work that he allowed Justine to accompany him on his nefarious
rounds of the top offices and boardrooms of Ireland? Or the
Government minister? Or the gakked-up nun?

Yup, you guessed it. Justine did. And, of course, snugly wrapping
herself up in the cloak of journalistic ethics and protecting
sources, we have absolutely no proof that these people even exist,
let alone whether they are guilty of the things this woman claims.

But what would certainly lead me to believe that there is no
evidence to prove that Wilson is not simply the Jayson Blair of the
Irish media is the fact that each scenario we saw last Thursday just
looked completely unrealistic, while the experts interviewed
were prepared to rattle off statistics off the top of their head.

Dr Chris Luke is a long-standing anti-drugs campaigner who claims
that anything up to 10pc of the population uses coke, despite the
fact that we simply do not know how many Irish people take it.

But still, amplify the figures, get the mammies and daddies of
Ireland worried that their kids will try it and immediately become
monsters and you have high book sales and high viewing figures. It's
the equivalent of shouting "shark" on a crowded beach -- when you
panic people, you get their attention.

The one notable exception to the dubious hyperbole was Stephen Rowan
of the Rutland Centre.

Rowan is an intelligent, thoughtful man, and by far the most
interesting and reasonable figure on the anti-drug side. The only
anti-drug campaigner who refuses to take the "Chicken Licken"
approach, he has an undoubted and admirable concern for the victims
of addiction.

But he is also brave enough to admit that the vast majority of
people who try charley go about their day perfectly well and that
the proportion of people who become hooked could be as low as 1 in
12. Or it could be higher. As he said himself, we simply don't know.

As someone who would fall in the 11 out of 12 category, I could see
where he was coming from. Like many people my age, I haven't just
tried coke, I was an enthusiastic indulger of the substance. But I
don't take it any more and can't even remember the last time I did.

That notion-- that people will take it and then stop of their own
volition -- seems beyond Delaney-Wilson and her cohorts.

And why did I stop taking it? Was I missing work? Was it causing
relationship problems? Did I get a pang of guilt over handing money
over to criminals?

Not at all. Like most of my mates who used to indulge but no longer
do, I stopped taking it because it stopped being fun. It really is
as simple as that.

Because regardless of the horror stories peddled to us, regular
charley use becomes extremely dull after a while.

There comes a point where you simply realise that spending a hundred
quid on a gram of grit that's going to burn your nostril hairs --
not a nice smell, believe me -- and will, by the end of the night,
probably turn you into a dickhead just isn't worth the hassle.

Irish coke is expensive and rubbish and, really, you shouldn't be
bothered with it.

But the fact that the vast, vast majority of coke users experience
that trajectory with the drug doesn't wash in a black and white media.

One of the small but obvious defects in the programme was the
language used by the people. According to the addicts, they were on
"cocaine or "coke".

Nobody I know who uses the drug ever says cocaine -- they call it
charley, or gak, or chang or one of the innumerable slang terms for it.

It's a bit like someone asking you down to the pub so you "can drink
some alcohol".

It just doesn't happen and is another reason to simply not believe her.

And I also have proof that she is dodgy -- one of the people
interviewed for the book is a friend of mine and is furious at the
way his comments were distorted. I'd say who it is, but I have to
protect my sources. Something Justine will understand better than most.

I'm certainly not defending coke. As I said earlier, it's not a
particularly nice drug.

And frankly, I really don't miss either it or the paranoia -- or Dr
Fear as we used to call it -- which kicks in after a particularly
heavy weekend of dipping your beak.

But if we are going to have a debate about drugs, we owe it to
people to at least talk about it honestly, rather than spreading
dangerous misinformation.