The village of Castleisland is usually the last stop for tourists bound for the Ring of Kerry, just a few miles further south.
But for a small group of visitors Castleisland has played a much more significant role in their lives. It is here, at the Talbot Grove residential treatment centre, that drug addicts from the region come in the hope of getting clean and restarting their lives.
Clare is one such person. The 34-year-old mother of one is living proof that drug addiction is no longer a Dublin problem or one which only affects major urban centres.
The Southern Health Board region, where she lives and sought treatment, has the most drug users in treatment per capita than anywhere else in the Republic outside the greater Dublin area.
Having lived all of her life in a rural village in the heart of Co Kerry, Clare became addicted to drugs in her 20s, and has only recently emerged from her lost years.
She started drinking at age 17 and quickly started smoking cannabis. She progressed to ecstasy when she was about 25.
"I was still living at home and out all night every weekend. I have a young daughter and if I was to be honest about it my parents reared her."
"I was smoking 20 to 30 joints a week in between weekends and had also begun taking cocaine. I was down to eight stone. I wasn't eating for days on end. My concentration was gone; my ability to communicate was gone. I didn't want anybody in my life. I had no relationship with my family, nothing."
When her father was alive he insisted that the family could deal with Clare's problems without looking for outside help.
But when he died in 2001 her siblings gave her an ultimatum: either go into rehab or she would be asked to leave the family home and her family would apply for custody of her child.
With no money and facing the prospect of losing her daughter she agreed to do a 30-day stint at Talbot Grove in Castleisland.
"The drugs were my best friend, I didn't want to give them up. But I knew if I lost my daughter that was it, I was gone. I came in July 2001 and stayed for the 30 days. It wasn't easy. When I left my rehabilitation was only starting. The day I left I had a panic attack, my first ever. It was like being a stranger in my own village."
While out of the drug scene she says anecdotal evidence from her village suggests cocaine has now flooded the south-west. But she is determined not to relapse.