Ireland’s use of cocaine is on a sharp upward curve according to experts, with a 171% increase in the number of people seeking treatment between 2011 and 2019.
According to experts, its widespread use is beginning to have knock-on effects in people’s working lives as more conversations are had around issues such as performance, absenteeism, and behaviour.
A leading HR expert has warned that an increasing volume of issues related to substance abuse is coming across his desk including drug users asking for loans off managers to feed their habits.
READ MORE: Gardai seize almost €5 million worth of cocaine after stopping vehicle in Dublin
CEO and Co-Founder of HR Buddy, Damien McCarthy, explained: “In one instance I dealt with, an employee had approached the business owner for a loan and openly admitted it was to feed his cocaine habit.
“We have other indirect instances of employers being approached for advancements on wages.
“There is also worrying employment relations scenarios where people are irritant or snapping at work colleagues and communicating and engaging differently and erratically.”
He said, it used to be the case that employees would be trying to cover up a mild hangover at work, but today’s society is dealing with “a much darker and dangerous problem of substance abuse and many workplaces do not know how to deal with it.”
Another issue is the ease with which people are hiding their drug use, as Mr. McCarthy said: “It can be hidden more easily in a remote and home working environment, but it can have the same negative impact on a workplace and someone’s career.”
Meanwhile, Dr. Garrett McGovern, a GP specialising in substance abuse at the Priory Medical Clinic, told Newstalk Breakfast that there is a clear link between our society's attitude towards alcohol and drugs and this emerging trend.
"There's absolutely no question that our own relationship with alcohol has an effect on our children,” he said.
"We are very permissive about alcohol in this country, it's a real problem.
"We've had the introduction of minimum unit pricing which will help, it'll only go part of the way.
"I think we really need to look at, overall, the culture - this is going back, I'd like to say decades, possibly going back centuries.”
Despite the age-old ‘drunken Irish’ reputation, Dr. McGovern says the issue is, "we sort of revel in it and laugh in it.
"But if you look at any Emergency Department in this country - and any hospital bed in this country - if you look at reasons why people are in hospital beds in this country.
"One of the risk factors for many of those illnesses in those beds is actually the relationship with alcohol.
"But yet our message of prevention has been completely lost".
Similar to the issues Mr. McCarthy is seeing in the world of HR, Dr. McGovern said hospitalisations as a result of drugs are on the rise as people find easy ways to hide their habits at home.
"The number of presentations over the last couple of years - and understandably so, cause people were holed up in the house - men going out to garden sheds away from their wife and kind of snorting away for the evening.
"It's very, very grim."
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