WHAT he did was right for himself. As long as I have known Alan he has never been happy. He never had a chance.
"His life was terrible. He was smoking hash as long as I have known him and we were childhood sweethearts. But when he started on heroin things got worse. He needed money and started robbing shops at night. He was in and out of Mountjoy. It was easier to get drugs inside than it was outside. He hadn't a chance.
Ms Vanessa Kelly, wife of prison suicide victim Alan 0'Neill, spoke yesterday of his addiction to heroin and his attempts to go clean in a drug-ridden prison.
On Thursday an inquest heard that the body of the 25-year-old man from Coburgh Place in inner Dublin was found hanging from a sheet in his prison cell.
A three-page suicide note said he had "gone clean" initially inside Mountjoy but he feared he would not be able to stay off drugs while he stayed in the prison.
"Lord, there would be a day that I would start to use them drugs in here and that would be the end of me. Maybe I would live for a few years but I would prefer to do it my way before anything like that happens to me," he said.
Vanessa had watched her husband's drug problem deteriorate rapidly in recent years. Since he was a teenager he had taken hash and was involved in petty crime to feed his habit.
"But for the last three years or so he has taken heroin. He only smoked it; he was terrified of needles and of getting the virus. In prison he wouldn't have had a choice: He would have had to shoot it up. That's why he killed himself. He was afraid of getting AIDS and passing it on to me," she says.
Alan had tried on several occasions to give up drugs but there was never any help available, she says. "He tried the clinics but they didn't care. He was not injecting it so they didn't want to know. Once he lasted for nine weeks. But he lived in hibernation during that time. Once he left the house he was back on it. People asked him to go halves with them, people offered him a smoke and he was as bad as ever," she explained sadly.
ALAN O'Neill grew up in St Joseph's Mansions, off Killarney Street inner city. When he was just 14 he started going out with Vanessa. Four years later the couple moved into a flat together. Their son Damian was born three years ago.
"Alan was one of the nicest fellas you could ever meet. He was really charming, really helpful. You would never think he was a junkie", she said.
"There were eight of us who used to hang around in a gang together. The others were like walking corpses. They were always strung out on heroin. Alan swore he would never turn out like them. But all that changed when we moved back to St Joseph's."
While Alan was serving time in Shelton Abbey for robbery, Vanessa was offered a flat in the complex where her husband had grown up. "He didn't want us to go there. But we were desperate. We couldn't stay in the flat we were living in. One night I went to fill the baby's bottle and I rubbed off a rat. I was terrified for the baby. All I wanted was a safe place for Damian.
"Sometimes I blame myself. If I had not taken the flat in St Joseph's, this may never have happened. St Joseph's was a junkies' paradise. There were drugs everywhere."
Alan started smoking heroin on his release from Shelton Abbey. He sold hash to feed his habit, but still owed money to dealers around the city. By the time he was sentenced to jail again the family were living in terror of money lenders and dealers. "We were hiding in a small bedroom in the flat, pretending not to be at home. He owed everyone money. There were days when he would be really sick and he would beg me to give him £20. It might have been all I had for the week.
"The worst thing about junkies is the lies. I couldn't handle it any more. He promised he would give it up; he kept on promising but he never did. He couldn't, not in Mountjoy anyway."
Vanessa believes urgent action is needed to tackle the drug problem in the prison. If proper treatment was available for addicts Alan might not have committed suicide, she said.
His suicide note read, in part: "Sir, do not think me mad or anything like that. I am sane as anybody in here. I am doing this because of the heroin problem in here. I thought this would be the place for me to come off all that shit but it [is] not; it is just as bad in here as it is on the [out]side.
"I do not want to be going out of here with a heroin problem ... and then going out to a heroic problem on the outside.
"So I am very sorry for what am about to do. Please God, forgive me."