In the maw of the dragon

There are, in Northern Ireland more than anywhere else in Europe, people who see all human history as part of an epic struggle between the forces of good and evil, God and Satan, sin and redemption.
This evangelical worldview, though not exclusively a Protestant phenomenon, is to be found in much its most intense form in the stretch of County Antrim widely known as the ‘Bible Belt’.
Encompassing the towns of Larne, Carrickfergus and Ballymena, as well as several one-horse villages in between, the area has long been a stronghold of Ian Paisley’s oxymoronically-named Democratic Unionist Party, and of fundamentalist Presbyterian zealotry.
Its heartbeat is Ballymena, a once-thriving market town which remains the third-biggest shopping locale in NI (Belfast and Derry excepted), and is variously described – depending on who you talk to – as ‘a lovely wee town’ or ‘a sectarian little dump’.
Perhaps due to the small proportion of Catholics in the population (24.2%), the town has no significant history of sectarian violence, especially when compared to flashpoints like Portadown or North Belfast.
Although loyalist paramilitaries are certainly active in Ballymena, it could be said to have largely escaped the worst excesses of ‘the Troubles’.
For the last decade, the town’s inhabitants have been largely preoccupied with a still more noxious cancer: an unexplained, apocalyptic level of heroin addiction.
Statistics in this particular field can be notoriously unreliable, but Ballymena’s heroin epidemic is far-reaching enough to have been described as the worst anywhere in Europe (per capita).
For all its other miseries, Northern Ireland did remarkably well to escape the worst of heroin’s ravages. Compared to Dublin or most urban centres in the UK, the North’s problem has been negligible.
The Provisional IRA is credited with keeping hard drugs completely out of nationalist areas: in the Republic, its members’ opposition to the heroin trade frequently spilled over into vigilantism.
The tactics were distasteful, but there’s no denying that the IRA had a very significant influence on the almost total absence of any heroin problem in the nationalist north.
Among Ballymena’s loyalist paramilitaries, there were no such compunctions. In 2001, UDA and LVF top brass (at the alleged behest of Johnny ‘Mad Dog’ Adair) cut a deal with Scottish drug traffickers.
Believing that the time was ripe to cash in on a worldwide glut of Afghan heroin (Afghanistan was at that point under US military bombardment, and that year’s heroin harvest had doubled in size), they flooded much of the North with smack at £1 a fix.
Ballymena and the North Down area, by this stage, were already awash with the stuff. Estimates of the number of addicts in Ballymena (population 28,717) run to 1,000 or more.
In per capita terms, this constitutes a worse problem than that in Dublin or Glasgow. Obviously, per-capita figures for huge metropolitan areas tend to mask the full extent of the problem in the worst-afflicted areas, and Ballymena was never quite at the nightmarish level of Summerhill or Fatima Mansions, but neither was it far off.
A Health Promotion Agency report noted that, "Heroin use has for years been prevalent in Ballymena…it would appear to be almost a historical accident, depending more on circumstances than the specific socio-environmental determinants associated with such use in Britain.
It is not clear whether the recent increase is a result of more people in Ballymena using heroin, or heroin users moving into Ballymena where they may perceive a more supportive sub-culture."
There are countless theories as to why such a problem should have emerged in what was historically a middle-class town, noted for very high church attendance rates. Drug Squad Detective Inspector John Kelso advanced the theory in 2001 that, "A handful of people from Ballymena went to England in the 80s, developed a habit, and brought it back with them.
They then got others involved to finance their own use and the problem spread. There are about 40-50 people who can source it from abroad.
They each have three or four friends who distribute it down the line to the others, meaning about 200 people are involved in dealing at some level.
The worry is that people with more money, say £20,000 - £30,000 to invest, could make this a bigger criminal enterprise."
Ballymena was hardline DUP territory long before the party took over as the dominant force in unionism, and is unquestionably one of the most devoutly religious, God-fearing places this side of the Vatican.
This rigid belief in closed certainties lends itself to an unshakable dogmatism and general narrowness of worldview.
It would be very difficult to conclusively prove a link between the elders’ religious piety and the carnage heroin has wrought among Ballymena’s youth, but it seems at least plausible that such a link exists.
Intriguingly, it has also been suggested that since the 1970s, Ballymena has been ‘the swinging capital of Northern Ireland’.
If such speculation is true, it’s not difficult to imagine the reaction of the constituency MP (Dr. Ian Paisley).
There was general surprise that President Mary McAleese’s recent visit to the town passed off peacefully, with several DUP councillors having promised Her Excellency a hostile reception.
In the event, their desire to protest was overcome by their fear of negative publicity, and with the PSNI dutifully manning all entrances to Ballymena Academy, all the pessimistic predictions proved unfounded.
What was most striking about Ballymena, from a visitor’s perspective, was the abnormally large presence of skeletal, black-toothed specimens aimlessly milling around the shopping centres, their cheekbones frighteningly pronounced, their pupils contracted to pin-point size.
The scenario would be familiar to anyone acquainted with the nastier areas of early-‘90s Dublin, but seemed thoroughly incongruous in such a provincial setting.
The obvious question – why here? – remains as much a mystery to inhabitants as to outsiders. However, it may reasonably be surmised that for a multitude of reasons, addicts from devoutly Christian backgrounds find the road to recovery far tougher than most.
Having grown up with a profoundly powerful spiritual palliative, only to exchange it for another with physically addictive properties, the level of alienation can only be imagined.
Perhaps the moral environment is more unforgiving, less inclined to bestow ‘second chances’. In a geographical and cultural grey area, family and friends may find their patience exhausted that bit earlier.
There may also be a scarcity of artistic or cultural outlets to serve as a replacement focus for those in recovery. This view is lent support by the disproportionate level of long-term addiction: 22% of the registered heroin addicts are over 35 years of age.
Whatever factors are involved, the black secret at the heart of Ulster’s Bible Belt persists, with no visible solution in sight.