Broadcaster and columnist Father Brian D’Arcy has warned that cocaine is “a huge unspoken problem in Ireland” and believes drugs may be a factor in the number of suicides and people experiencing mental ill-health.
In his new book, The Best of Brian, the 78-year-old priest discusses so-called recreational drug use and says: “One of the most common effects I come across is chronic mental health issues leading to anxiety and paranoia. Dodgy ‘coke’ increases suicidal ideation among vulnerable users.”
Fr D’Arcy said one young woman in his rural area of Co Fermanagh told him it was easier to get cocaine than to get pizza. Bar staff had also told him he would be very surprised at the “quality” of the people doing lines of drugs in pub toilets.
“I cannot understand why so-called recreational abusers of cocaine fail to see they are supporting vicious criminals when they buy illegal drugs to feed their habit,” Fr D’Arcy writes.
He said “some of those buying illegal drugs would be the harshest critics of drug dealers” yet “they are feeding those who are making fortunes on the misery of the poor”.
He believes the State should be “very slow to introduce legislation” to legalise drugs, “simply because we have failed to cope with the abuse of drugs. I think that’s a very false argument”.
Acknowledging he is not a medical expert, he added: “What I would say is, it is time we considered that perhaps the number of suicides, the paranoia, might not just be unaided mental health.
“The misuse of chemicals could be a major reason for much of the mental ill-health that we’re seeing around and the consequences of that, which can be suicides, it can be murders, it can be rows, it can be unsocial behaviour or harmful behaviour to the people themselves and to those around them.”
Another issue that is currently the focus of much discussion is assisted dying, and Fr D’Arcy worries it is people’s own fear of death and their inability to cope with suffering that “makes us jump to a conclusion that a person would be better dead than going through their period of passing from this world to an eternal world with God”.
Fr D’Arcy, who is a presenter for BBC Radio Ulster and writes for the Sunday World, trained in hospice ministry and said it had been “one of the most surprising and beautiful things I ever did”.
He contrasts the philosophy of care in hospitals – where if the person does not come out cured the hospital is considered a failure – with that of a hospice, where it is about trying to keep patients as alert and as pain-free as possible.
“So death isn’t a failure. A peaceful, controlled death, through the proper use of medicine, can be a wonderful time for the person themselves and for their family,” Fr D’Arcy said.
Medical science, he believes, should be helping people to understand death is part of life.
“So we don’t go to extraordinary means to keep people alive beyond what they’re capable of living,” he said. “Sometimes that’s what we do – we resuscitate people who are 90-something, and for what? There’s so much medicine now that people say we can fix nearly everything, but there has to be a limit on it too.
“There is a time for recognising that a peaceful death is a wonderful gift of life.”
On the decline in religious practice in Ireland, Fr D’Arcy believes “we need to ask ourselves if we ever had a deep faith”.
“Many people had a deep fear,” he added. “I think we almost had an addiction to religion that didn’t demand faith. We need to introduce a loving God rather than a strict religion.”
All of the royalties from the new book are being donated to charities helping the homeless and those in poverty.
Its publication comes as he heads towards the major milestone of turning 80, having overcome cancer in recent years, and after 60 years in the Passionist order.