Six men and two women are playing with a plastic ear. They are community-based workers with Fettercairn Drug Rehabilitation Centre and other family-support services in Tallaght, studying to become ear-acupuncture detox specialists. They are following a protocol set in 1985 by the National Acupuncture Detoxification Association (NADA), an American organisation. The model has proved successful around the world in easing withdrawal symptoms from heroin, methadone, alcohol and codeine.
"There's the shenmen, sympathetic kidney, liver and lung acupuncture points," explains their trainer, Jim Byrne, a gentle 59-year-old whose brogue has been smoothed by 16 years of living in New York. When these five sites in the deep, cavernous part of the ear are needled simultaneously, they stimulate corresponding organs in the body to balance the system, according to traditional Chinese medicine.
Today the members of the group are to undergo the treatment themselves. They don't look too eager. But they let Byrne arrange everybody, including this reporter, on comfortable chairs in a U-shape formation. In less than a minute per person, he inserts five needles in each of our ears with a minimum of pain. We sit, grinning self-consciously at each other.
About five minutes later, I feel my body begin to relax. My limbs loosen and my eyes close involuntarily. Forty minutes later, when Byrne removes the needles, everyone reports similar experiences.
Located in a sprawling estate of faceless public housing, overgrown fields, derelict cars, graffiti and broken glass, Fettercairn Drug Rehabilitation Program is fairly typical of the approximately 50 community centres that were set up in the mid-1990s to counter a growing heroin problem in Dublin's poorest communities.
"We started with no money in a Portakabin, a most undignified setting," says Liam Collins, its co-ordinator. The idea was to provide as many options as possible, methadone treatment and otherwise, for drug users and their families, whose needs were unmet by the health boards. (At the time, addicts had to travel to the National Drug Treatment Centre on Pearse Street, in the centre of Dublin, for methadone.)
"We wanted to treat people with dignity and respect, to offer a place where they could speak their heart out," says Collins.
Today the programme boasts cosy new quarters and has 33 clients. Among them is 'Dennis', a slight 31-year-old who has been using drugs, including heroin, morphine, codeine and cannabis, since he was 17. He's been off heroin and taking 80 milligrams of methadone a day since 1996.
He's enthusiastic about acupuncture, and in only two sessions it has helped him relax and calmed his aggression. He hopes to reduce his dependence on methadone through acupuncture, build himself up physically and, eventually, find a job. "This place has done me a world of good," he says.
'Ryan' is 23. His first acupuncture treatment has relaxed him and, miraculously, eased a chronic backache that had, he says, left him drained. He likes the quiet music that's played during the treatment. Combating depression and numerous domestic problems, he also hopes to lessen his dependence on methadone and Valium.
Both men have been fitted with acupressure beads, tiny metal balls that are taped to the posterior of the ear. In trials in the US, the beads have been shown to improve concentration and focus, offering hope to people who suffer from attention deficit disorder.
Down the road, Addiction Response Crumlin has also followed the detox protocol, as part of an arsenal of holistic interventions for drug users and their families, for more than a year.
"When Jim Byrne approached us, we took it on ourselves, at our own expense, to visit the Lincoln Hospital Recovery Center," says Bernie Butler, an outreach worker, referring to the clinic in the Bronx that pioneered "acudetox" in 1974.
"We were floored. It's the best thing that ever happened here. We've noticed that in some cases, if people are on waiting lists for methadone treatment, if they start doing acupuncture for a few days while detoxing, then they may end up not needing methadone at all."
Addiction Response Crumlin's headquarters, in a community centre on Cashel Road, are abuzz with activity. As drug users queue to have their urine samples tested by health-board staff, others wait to see the organisation's therapists, who include a doctor, homeopath, counsellor, licensed acupuncturist and reiki practitioner (such treatments ease arthritis and other ailments); there are also education and training specialists.
In one treatment room, a group of local women have acupuncture needles protruding from their hips; they've discovered the 45-minute treatment helps their arthritis while providing a forum for a chat.
While the mood is optimistic, nobody is fooling themselves. The drug crisis is far from over. Heroin is cheap and widely available, and Collins fears a new wave of addiction is being spawned by the craze for uppers such as Ecstasy and whizz (powdered amphetamine), often used in tandem with heroin to come down from a high.
No one knows the extent of drug use in Dublin. There are an estimated 13,000 drug users, and 5,000 people are on waiting lists for methadone programmes. "We're playing catch-up from a 20-year-old problem," says Anna Quigley, who is co-ordinator of Citywide, a network of grass-roots community organisations delivering services for drug users.
The ambitious seven-year National Drugs Strategy stresses partnership between health departments, statutory agencies and voluntary groups in supply reduction, prevention, treatment and research. While the health boards have pledged to work with local communities and assist them in every way possible, Quigley hopes they will involve the localities as partners, as "the community centres have a more sophisticated understanding of local needs".
Which is where Byrne comes in. His life as a doorman at an upmarket Fifth Avenue apartment building took an abrupt turn in the late 1980s, after a visit to a Sioux reservation in South Dakota exposed him to the horrors of widespread drug and alcohol misuse.
He trained by night as a substance-abuse counsellor and underwent training as a NADA addiction-detox specialist under Dr Michael Smith, Lincoln Hospital Recovery Center's director.
Feeling compelled to help fight the heroin crisis that was devastating his home city of Dublin in the mid-1990s, Byrne funded the establishment of NADA ╔ireann. Thwarted by two lung-cancer surgeries and adjuvant radiation and chemotherapy, he returned home 18 months ago. Since then, he has trained more than 130 drug-centre workers in the inner city, Ballyfermot, Ballymun, Crumlin, Clondalkin and Tallaght. He hopes also to train staff at Mountjoy Prison.
Byrne dreams of opening in the inner city a free, drop-in ear-acupuncture centre that would be open six days a week, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., to anyone in Dublin. He is hoping to get Local Drugs Task Force funding. "I feel passionate about this," he says. "There is no shame about it. There is no such thing as no hope for addiction, or anything else."
Jim Byrne can be contacted at NADA ╔ireann, 45 Orwell Park Rise, Templeogue, Dublin (01-4505593)