“What if I told you that there was a way to go back out there and be indisputably the coolest, most confident person out there? It is a little more expensive than alcohol. But look at it this way, we can share, and it will change your way of partying forever. It is so much better and faster than alcohol. Come on, it’s fun. Everyone does it.”
I am in a club bathroom, with a drink in my hand, and my head spinning. But still, I stop and stare. I shake my head. No, thanks.
According to Trinity students, this is not a rare interaction to have on nights out in Dublin.
It was two summers ago that Charli XCX declared a new generational persona, the brat girl. Through messy aesthetics and smudged eyeliner, she defined a new type of party girl who has fun and doesn’t care about the consequences. “Bumpin’ that” does not only refer to the music, though. In the last few years, the “little line” she sings about has become more than just the drug of rich singers and celebrities who party in exclusive clubs. It appears that most cities in Europe have been experiencing a huge surge of the white powder, and Dublin is no exception. Asking many students on campus, I realised that cocaine does not surprise us anymore.
It has been declared by various studies that alcohol has been decreasing as the younger generations get a hold of the social scene. But the need for a buzz, a thrill, and “a good time” did not extinguish. It transformed.
Cocaine can be in powder form, snorted through the nose, injected, eaten, or in the form of crack cocaine, which is usually smoked and is even more addictive. Cocaine is not only incredibly dangerous for your physical health (just to mention some things that might occur: raised blood pressure, heart attack, respiratory problems, strokes, seizures, kidney failure…), but it also causes mental health struggles. The danger of becoming addicted always seems distant, but it is not. Overall, about one in seven people who try cocaine become dependent, and about one in twenty become dependent in the first year of use. In Ireland, between 2013 and 2022, cocaine poisoning deaths increased by 259 per cent, the largest increase of any drug group.
Clearly, it is not only the risk of addiction that should worry us. Even the occasional use could be fatal. Especially because when used in party settings, it happens as a follow-up to alcohol. The occasional user does not imagine that, from a chemical point of view, this is one of the worst things that they could do to their body – alcohol is a depressant, which means that it has the exact opposite effect of cocaine. Mixing the two substances impedes you from discerning how intoxicated you are, thus increasing the risk of overdose. Studies indicate that the risk of sudden death from heart attack or stroke becomes eighteen times higher from mixing cocaine rather than using it on its own. Furthermore, the liver combines alcohol and cocaine and produces a substance known as cocaethylene, which is equal in potency to cocaine, but extends its psychoactive effects and increases the toxic effects on the cardiovascular system, as well as memory, intelligence and verbal learning.
It can seem scary to think about how common hard drugs are becoming, especially among younger generations. But fear can end up being more dangerous than the evil itself. Destigmatising the use of drugs is an essential step to limit their dangers and to intervene by offering a helping hand to those in need. Stigma around drug addiction is usually rooted in the belief that drug use is a personal choice reflecting a lack of willpower and a moral failing. But addiction is not a monster to be shoved under the bed. It is an incredibly complex coping mechanism used to cover up deep scars. Drugs might make you forget, just for a moment, who you are and whatever it is that hurts you. But they end up taking up all the space and energy within you, until they become all that you seek. Inevitably, you start believing that the drug is all there is to your life and you cannot stop “just because you want to”. We must remember that cocaine is not a pint, nor a cigarette. Cocaine is expensive, and its rise seems to become the reason for the bankruptcy of more people than you might expect. A study found that 82 per cent of families reported their loved ones suffered adverse financial effects from substance abuse, with 48 per cent saying the user depleted their savings or retirement accounts.
This is why it is imperative that people suffering from addiction receive the care they need. This might take the form of psychological support, addiction recovery programmes, and urgent medical response to overdoses, withdrawals, etc.
In Ireland, supervised injecting facilities are one of the institutional responses that cocaine users might refer to. These facilities have the goal of reducing drug-related overdose deaths, as well as reducing the risk of disease transmission through shared needles, while also connecting marginalized, vulnerable people who use drugs with treatment services and social services.
The idea of extending this type of support to students could mean instituting injecting facilities on campus. Immediate access, a higher level of support, and physical proximity would help many struggling students to reach for a helping hand. But exposure to these structures could be seen as bringing both destigmatization or even higher marginalization.
I spoke to some students from Trinity about what they would think of such structures. Most of the people I interviewed agreed on the need for better information as well as psychological support, but see with great difficulty the possibility of creating sustainable, functional facilities, both because they do not think it would be easy to finance them, and because they admit that in a position of necessity, they would rather not have their college involved in such personal matters. They still think that Trinity can do a lot for sensibilization and destigmatization, but they are skeptical when imagining the presence of injecting facilities on campus. Most students agree that creating more discourse around drug consumption is more urgent within the campus community, however, they do not see injecting facilities as a suitable solution, and would rather separate them from their college life.
Asking for help might seem tricky, since falling into rabbit holes such as addiction can make us feel worthless, as though we do not deserve to be helped or we won’t be able to get out of the loop. Bearing our pain in silence is easier than the shame of admitting that something is truly wrong. But recovery is possible. Educational institutions have the power to shape how we perceive these systematic problems, how we adjust to their existence in our reality, and how informed we are about the dangers and consequences of our actions. The first step towards a decline in deaths by cocaine overdose is to learn what cocaine actually is and why it is so dangerous. Discourse, information, and support are the best chance we have, and that is where our college could do more about this.
