Dr. Brian Pennie

I suppose a big part of my journey, there was a lot of trauma, there was a lot of childhood challenges, there was a lot of emotional pain, afraid of my own inner body.

I found drugs in Blanchardstown at a young age and they took me in a direction that was not good.

I started dabbling in drugs.

I was about 13 when I started smoking hash and messing around with cigarettes, hash, petrol.

We sniffed petrol in the fields.

Just sort of testing out all the different drugs.

And then I found opiates and heroin at 16.

Yeah, I was quite good in school, Brenda.

Like, I was really, I wanted to please people, you know, that way, teachers and stuff like that.

And even like when I was doing, I was dabbling in heroin, doing my leaving cert and I got quite a good leaving cert.

I had high hopes I was going to go to college and I was going to do big things in the world.

But at the same time, drugs were just taking me down a different path and I was very unaware of where it was actually bringing me.

1994.

Yeah, the 80s.

Yeah, it was big in the 80s, yeah.

And how did you get your hands on it?

It was funny because I remember like we only done certain drugs.

Like we smoked hash, we took tablets, we took LSD and stuff like that.

And we were obsessed with Jim Morrison.

And Jim Morrison had a mantra, try everything once.