ABOUT 500 people gathered in a Cork hotel last weekend for the annual convention of Narcotics Anonymous (NA), an organisation lord people who want to give up, and stay off, drugs.
According to the organisers, attendance at NA meetings has continued to increase over the last year. In 1995 there were about 50 NA meetings a week in Ireland but this year it has risen to 70 a week. Meetings are attended by between five and about 30 people, and about half of them are in Dublin. Some are now held in prisons and detoxification centres, at the request of the participants.
Each meeting group elects members to attend the convention, which involves a series of seminars. The 500 at this year's convention compare with an attendance of 400 last year.
NA is similar to Alcoholics Anonymous, and has a 12 step recovery programme adapted from the AA original. But it is not linked to any other organisation. The emphasis is on small self help groups where addicts, and former users who consider they are still vulnerable to returning to drugs, can share their experiences.
The group is aimed at people who are coming to terms with their addiction to "mood or mind altering drugs". Caffeine and nicotine don't count, but alcohol and prescription drugs do. Many of those who attend NA meetings have never taken an illegal drug. Almost all have started their addicted life with alcohol.
NA began in California in the 1950s and has a worldwide "fellowship", an international link which allows for exchange of information and literature. There are now NA meetings in 65 countries, and recovering addicts who travel can find and join the same type of meeting abroad as they have been attending at home.
The first principle of NA is anonymity. First names or alternative names are used no one is obliged to give his or her real name. All that is required is that the drug user wants to be "clean". According to Mark, now five years "clean", the only requirement for someone attending a meeting is a desire to give up "whatever drug is controlling your life".
The anonymity rule extends from the individual to NA generally. It does not adopt political stances or offer public comment on drug issues. It does not have or seek State funding - meetings are financed with small contributions from those who attend, and anybody unable to join in the whip around for the rent of a room or the price of tea and coffee is still welcome.
Mark, who has been attending NA meetings for five years, says its main benefit is that it places recovering addicts in an environment where they are understood - with a group of people who are having, or have been through the same experiences.
He says his experience was similar to many addicts trying to give up an addiction in their 20s or 30s, many find themselves coping for the first time with emotions which are normally encountered during adolescence.
Drugs can cut you off from things for years, not just from other people but from your own emotions," he said. "You have this kind of rule for yourself - `don't trust, don't talk, don't feel'. When you're trying to be clean, all those things that were blocked off come back to the surface".
Mark passed from alcohol to hallucinogenics to codeine, a prescription drug found mainly in tablets and cough mixtures. "That was my drug of choice," he says. One of the benefits was that his use of it was not obvious to other people "It was easy to get and it had the effect of wiping me out without levelling me - I wasn't falling over drunk or wandering around looking at colours.
There is a separate organisation, Nar Anon, for the friends and relatives of addicts. It follows the same rules of anonymity and the same principles of support through shared experience.
"The life of the addict is based around getting and using drugs, that becomes the sole purpose," said one of the Nar Anon organisers. "In the same way, a family can become focused on the addict, that becomes their sole purpose. For 24 hours a day everything seems to revolve around that addict. Everybody else suffers. You have to learn to take the focus off the addict."