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Dubs star’s pain over brother’s drug death
duBLIN GAA star Philly McMahon opened up about his brother’s death following a decade-long struggle with heroin addiction at the Citizens’ Assembly on drugs use.
The former sportsman, whose brother John died in 2012 after a long battle with drug addiction, has since become a strong anti-drugs advocate. McMahon was appointed to the Citizen’s Assembly’s advisory support group last month to examine the issues surrounding drug use alongside hSE boss Paul reid and 99 randomly selected members of the public.
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The 35-year-old told the assembly in Malahide, Co dublin that his family discovered the link between his brother’s addiction issues and his mental health struggles years later. he said that the family were “educated to be ashamed” about drug use and mental illness.
“It wasn’t until John was in his late 20s, that we discovered [he] had schizophrenia,” he said.
“So for a long time, based off our education as a family, and the wider social education was based off it being incriminating to take drugs.
“We were educated to be ashamed, to be embarrassed and that stigmatisation was crucial in all of that education.” he added that John’s addiction would have been treated as a mental health issue had they known about his diagnosis earlier.
“And we would have definitely, I think, you know, we would have, we would have dealt with it a little bit differently”.
In a recorded message, Leo Varadkar said that drug deaths are affecting “far too many families” in Ireland.
“Far too many families have lost loved ones due to an overdose,” the Taoiseach added.
“Far too many communities have been living in fear of those who supply drugs in towns and villages across our country.
So, we need to find better ways to deal with the problems arising from the use of illegal drugs.”
The aim of the Citizens’ Assembly on drugs use is to examine “legislative, policy and operational changes the State could make to significantly reduce the harmful impacts of illicit drugs on individuals, families, communities and wider society”.
