A ROWDY group comes in the door. They look unwell, all on heroin or something similar. They sit together talking a bit too loudly, looking as if an argument might begin any moment. To most people they look like trouble.
Just as the argument seems about to take off they are joined on the sofa by one person, then another. The two engage the group in animated conversation. Cups of tea are produced. The potential troublemakers, distracted by this attention, forget their argument. The simmering anger which came in the door is quietly dissipated.
Watching the crisis centre" in operation at the Merchant's Quay Project is a fascinating study of the management of people particularly the difficult" people which the bulk of society would father not know. The crisis centre is a room at the project with a door to the street and it is the main link between the project and the outside world. Anyone can walk in looking for help, and the staff are trained to ensure the drug users are first calmed down newcomers are often nervous and then gently questioned to establish their needs.
Because the project workers look and talk much like the drug users many are fonder users it can be hard at first to ascertain who in the crisis room is a stall member and who has come for help. Only alter a few minutes watching people moving from one group to the next do the dynamics of be operation become clear.
It's a very important role managing that area and it is quite skilled," says Tony Geoghegan, coordinator of the project.
The Merchant's Quay Project, based in a Franciscan friary in the centre of Dublin, recently announced a significant expansion. The project is funded by the Department of Justice, the Eastern Health Board, voluntary donations and its own fund raising efforts. The expansion is an effort to cope with the ever growing number of people coming to the project about 100 drug users arrive at the door daily, three or four for the first time.
In particular, the new facilities are for drug users on temporary release from prison who may have nowhere else to go. Over the past six months 70 of the young men and women who have called into the project have been on temporary release.
Since its foundation in 1989 the project has been primarily an advice and direction centre, offering information on drugs and HIV (a danger for all intravenous drug users), as well as free condoms, a needle exchange, information on health, social welfare and housing. It has also acted as a referral agency, trying to find places for drug users in methadone and other treatment programmes.
The expansion has doubled the project's accommodation in the friary, making room for arts, drama and craft work groups. This is the stabilisation centre where ding users can hopefully develop and maintain new interests.
According to Tony Geoghegan. Merchants Quay is careful not to preach to drug users about the way drugs can destroy their lives.
Most people who get involved in drugs are marginalised to start with. They might be second or third generation unemployed, and have a problem dealing with authority.
When people come into us at first it's usually because they have some sort of crisis in their lives they can't pay their rent or ESB bill. We help them with that, talk to the ESB or the landlord and try to take the pressure off. Then maybe they'll come to us again after a couple of weeks with go another problem, and we help them deal with that. On their third visit we might say. Do you think your drug use is part of this crisis?
Tony Geoghegan says that engaging with these drug users is the first step towards helping them. The project also offers massage to drug users, and according to Geoghegan the experience can be an extraordinary one for people whose lives only feat tire touch in sex or more likely some form of violence.
The expansion has been made possible through extra funding and the fact that the Franciscan population at the friary has been diminishing in recent years, make available rooms on the upper
According to Father Sean Cassin, a Franciscan who also works with the project, the expansion will give more drug users so me where to belong
Father Cassin says that on a recent visit to Cork prison he noticed a man aged about 50 in the waiting room just inside the locked gate. The man was still there when he was leaving an hour later, so Father Cassin asked him if he was still waiting to get in.
Oh, I'm not on a visit, the man said. I'm only here to sign the book" (meaning he was out on temporary release).
The man didn't have anywhere else to go," Father Cassin says, Prison was the place where he most felt he belonged. In most drug users experience, longer or shorter spells in prison are an accepted reality. Some welcome the security of jail when the streets become too manic. It's not the being in prison that is the problem, it's the getting out.
According to Father Cassin, the new facilities and, workshop groups at Merchant Quay can provide a sense of belonging which motivates people to get here in the mornings, and gives the energy to slow or to make new families"