Mod days , Magic Mushrooms and other drugs

Me and my BFF Jay McFall

Extracts from Belfast Child

As a teenager growing up in Glencairn, a bleak loyalist council estate in West Belfast there was little to do apart from joy riding, rioting and fighting with the gangs from the top and bottom of the estate.

I couldn’t drive , was bored of rioting and so like many of my peers I turned to drugs to escape the madness around me and block out the car crash that was my tragic young life.

I was 14 years old and my dad had just died after a long brutal struggle with cancer and I was missing him terribly, I didn’t know if my mum was alive or dead and all around me was death and destruction as Belfast tore itself apart and the paramilitaries waged a brutal sectarian war and the slaughter…