Three parents tell of their teenage schoolchildren's horrific descent into addiction and how they were saved by a Kilkenny-based Mercy nun, Sister Veronica Mangan, in a documentary to be broadcast this week.
The programme tells how adolescents as young as 14 and 15 are being helped by a pioneering drug and alcohol treatment centre run by the Mercy sister in the Aislinn centre in Ballyragget.
In the documentary, one mother, Christine, tells how she watched her daughter Aisling spiral into heroin hell and live through two suicide attempts.
"Every time the phone rang we would think it was guards. It was death, it was grim. We had no joy and no hope, apart from God. We always expected the worst."
She said her child's addiction began when she started to attend secondary school and became involved with the children of criminal families.
"The people she was hanging around with at 12 and 13, she had started taking prescribed drugs for one of the lad's mothers . . . valium, librium.
"She was also smoking hash and using heroin and literally would take anything.
"It left her with no person, it left her with just a physical body," she told the RTÉ Would You Believe documentary.
Anther parent, Noel, said his son turned into a different person though his addiction.
He said: "When the addiction thing happened it was like a death and a new arrival. Someone I loved dying and this monster . . . It was like having a monster in the house."
His son's addiction started when he was at school and Noel said he was amazed by the support he got from his teachers.
He said the vice-principal and principal went down to a railway tracks to talk to his son after he had run away from home.
Another mother, Dorothy, said her son was hopelessly addicted to drugs but she eventually managed to get him to attend the centre.
"It was a miracle. He was here for six weeks and at the end of six week I came back.
"He was just a really different person. He was happy again, chatty, affectionate, glad to see me. I was looking forward to life again."
Sister Mangan, who is director of the Aislinn centre, said the adolescent addicts need to be treated with dignity and respect.
"The whole ethos of the programme is based on respect and dignity - it's our belief they have suffered enough before they come to us."