Who to we tell when good times go bad? Drug use in our venues

The speaker apologizes for the delay in uploading podcast episodes due to personal struggles. They express gratitude to a friend for encouraging them to continue and discuss their new role as a manager at a bar called Pawnshop. They mention the challenges faced by the hospitality industry, such as high taxes and rising prices. The speaker also raises concerns about drug use in venues, including instances of drink-spiking and the lack of training on how to handle drug-induced customers. They emphasize the dangers of mixing drugs and energy drinks and express frustration at the lack of support and training from government bodies. The speaker also mentions the prevalence of drug use, particularly cocaine and benzos, in venues and the need for better regulations and safety measures. They conclude by sharing their love for the Dublin bar industry and expressing gratitude to their team and supporters. Hello everybody. It's been a little while since I've been on here. Welcome to a cross of Agility Beans podcast. I can't even get the old name right. Thank you so much for your patience, because I know I haven't uploaded in a while. And it was something that I really wanted to keep going, was the flow of the podcasting, because I thought it'd be a lot easier to do than try to make videos. But unfortunately, life has took a little bit of a nosedive there for a few months. My dad's been really unwell. I did record about four episodes. But one thing I really pride myself on is being genuine. And I have to really thank Brendan from 1661 for this push to get me back online. We were having a chat there about a week or two ago, and he was talking about the podcast and, you know, went to the next episode. And I was just so truthful. I was like, I just recorded four episodes. But because I've been so down, and life's been quite tough, I didn't believe the words that were coming out of my mouth, because I could hear the undertone of sadness in my voice. And I just think it wasn't the right thing to do to upload when I meant to be all happy and chirpy and saying stuff, and I can hear it in my voice. So, Brendan, this one goes out to you. So, if you haven't listened to this yet, I know it's been a little while. This is a podcast that is very hospitality focused, but not as in, oh my god, like, what's your favorite whiskey? I'm still talking about the realities of working in hospitality, trying to get bartending recognized as a real job, as our venues continuously just get absolutely ravaged by tax and hike in prices, and we're still trying to live our little lives and do the best we can to keep everyone happy, ourselves and our teams. I am coming to you today from Pawnshop. So, I have taken the role of manager here. I'm delighted. Pawnshop is one of the most magical places I've ever worked in, if I'm honest. It's an amazing space with great music, dive bar-esque, but still focusing on, you know, long with our footprint really on the environment. So, trying to make as many green choices as you possibly can, but you know yourself, it's pretty much impossible in the bar industry. So, here we are. It's been a couple of months. What's been going on? Well, Dive got diagnosed with Lewy Body. It's an absolute fuck of a disease. It's horrific. So, it's taken a bit of while to come to terms with that because when that stuff starts, it is on a one-track mind to ravaging someone's body, and it is obviously the most terrific thing I think I've ever seen anyone go through, but less about me, more about what's going on in the trade. Festival season's happening. All the great things are happening. Dublin has become such a funny little place during the summer. You don't know what's going on. I think after COVID, you know, everybody's like concerts, festivals, Bloom, St. Anne's, and it's great. It's actually great to see things available for people to go out musically. Food, drinks, you know, it's a way for brands to be able to push through as well and to maybe showcase products that they mightn't be able to at bigger festivals. I think the one complaint that we do have is all the people in those local areas are being, their doors being used as toilets. So classic Irish government. I mean, let's make concerts happen, but potentially let's also have more jocks. Everybody needs a toilet. Not everybody has a strong public floor. Am I right, girls? Less about that as well because I don't want to come on here and be a negative Nelly. I want to be a positive person and, yeah, feel a lot better now, feel a lot more able to talk about kind of bars and drinks. Doodle to shed at the moment, so when I have that nice and spruced, I'm going to have my next little visitor in. I want to keep this rolling and being in the pawn shop has made me realise that Dublin can be such an incredible place to have a venue in, a really late night venue in, and it's up to us to take care of the people in it and the people who work for us. And I suppose the last couple of years, it's a subject that people may touch on, but I don't think it ever fully gets spoken about. For me, this is the subject of drug taking in our venues. You know, there's definitely venues that staff take drugs when they're not in work. There's venues that staff take drugs when they're in work. But when it comes to customers, I've never been trained. I've never been told. I don't think any of us have. We're all fairly aware of how to manage the alcohol part. But what do you do when someone is drug-induced? How do you cope? How do you know what drug is happening in that person's body? You know, recently I heard of a story of someone that I know, and I heard it from Good, what's the word? Good Facts, that there was a girl, a girl, by the way, spotted in Dublin, not in this venue, but in another late-night venue, spiking people's drink with G. G is an awful drug, okay? I know some people take it in a party sense. I know it's kind of like sex-cam parties. It's associated with certain groups of people, blah, blah, blah. If you are an unsuspecting victim of someone who's been spiked with G, I can guarantee you it's going to be one of the scariest moments of your life. It is a horrific drug, if you don't know it's coming. Any drug is horrific if you get spiked. Some people do spike for sexual reasons, so we all know the overall hypnol and other kind of hallucinogenic drugs. Apparently this person was just doing it for the crack, which is exceedingly, you know, just as dangerous. It's all dangerous. All of it. It doesn't matter if you're spiking people for fun or for other means. It's all fucking horrific. I've had my experience with a girl who had, I think, I don't know if it was G or if it was a yoke. And only because I go to festivals myself, you know, you know what to do. I see people on different kinds of drugs throughout the years and, you know, medics and stuff like that, you talk to them, like, what do we do? And this girl obviously just took, I don't know, I'm going to presume it was a yoke, and she was just in the throes of coming up, but I mean, she was kind of left by her friends, left another group of people. Now, guaranteed, she could have been a merry-melter before she took it, but, you know, in that moment in time, as a venue manager, you're responsible for that person's health and safety. And, you know, some people are like, oh, why is your drug for that? I'm sorry, do you know how small a pit is, and do you know how hard it is to even catch someone in the art of taking it? Like, it's near an impossibility, unless someone you know was going to take one right in front of you. But this girl literally couldn't. She was just like a piece of melted butter. Basically, no structure, no bone structure, like, literally just falling all over the place, so I had to prep her up in a chair and, like, literally koala-carry her to ensure that she didn't fall, smack her head. Now, in the interim, it wasn't a very nice experience for me. She was a bit handsy. Part and parcel, at that moment in time, these people are under your roof, and Jesus Christ, you wouldn't put something like that in a taxi, because God knows what could happen. So, that girl came around, 12 and 57 at the end of it, but couldn't remember what happened. So, is there somewhere, like, is there a body? Is there, like, you know, we have HACCP, we have, you know, oh, phyto-training, we have magnet-halving training, is there drug training? When do we actually get taught about how to deal with drug people also? Obviously, coke is massive now as well. Can I just say, if you're listening to this, and you're pounding coke onto your body, please don't start drinking vodka red bulls, please do not start drinking vodka, Jagerbombs, whatever. Please avoid all energy drinks at all costs, because the last thing we need to be dealing with is someone having a heart attack. Having heart attacks or witnessing a heart attack is one of the most frightening things in the world, if it's a bad one. If you are taking any stimulants, speed, cocaine, whatever, and mixing that with energy drinks, as people do, because you have a weekend off, your heart's gonna fucking explode. I mean, bit of common sense, bit of logic, but, you know, you see it all the time. Mental. Like, yeah, I don't know, throw it out there. Is there a government body that helps us deal with these situations? Alcohol is so expensive now, people are turning to drugs more. Why just fucking spend, you know, the logic behind it? Why just spend your own drink when you can just get a Yammer for 20 quid and that's it, off you go, have a great night, probably don't remember much of it, but it's definitely something that's on the rise and that we're seeing. There's also Benzos, Valleys, all that stuff, people snorting Valium now, that's a thing. Coming in, having a few drinks, and they're absolutely in bits, and you're like, what do I do here? You find them, you know, in the Jacks, you see them walking outside, you see young men, girls, boys, this, them, those, whoever, whatever you call yourselves, taking all these kind of drugs, and what do you do? Because at the end of the day, if you witness that happening, do you not want someone to die or get hurt? I know it's their own responsibility, and everybody does have a personal responsibility, but it would be nice if there was support from anyone, health and safety regulator, you know, to come and train buyers on what to do and how to spot the signs. Can't report it to the guards, they're just going to tell you to fuck off. Unless someone's really bad, then you have to call an ambulance, and what a waste of, for someone who's spent 200 and nearly 50 hours in A&E between the months of January and February, the amount of bodies that I witnessed just being crated in, people just off their heads, and what a waste, and what an absolute vacuum on the system that is, when there is really ill people needing attention, and because that person's unconscious, or they're not breathing properly, they get, you know, pushed to the back. It's just a bit of a clusterfuck, really. This is a very explicit podcast today, sorry. But that's just how I roll when it comes to this kind of stuff, I feel very passionate about it, I feel they can't ignore it. Of course they can't ignore it, you work in any venue that serves alcohol, part and parcel is drug use. You can say it doesn't happen, you go to your local pub, one and four, one and six, definitely going to be doing banger, or some other, like even people smoking too much weed are absolutely zonked. Weed has an effect, whether you like to say it or not, but it absolutely does. I have to say, like from experience, you know, you're able to kind of see or manage those people. The scary thing about ecstasy is when people take enough of it, their body temperature absolutely skyrockets. And when that happens, that's when you go into danger zone, that's when things get serious, because they get too hot and they overheat. Their heart can't take it either. Organs as well get affected. So I suppose if you do know that somebody has taken ecstasy or something of that degree, cooling them down is the main thing, you know, putting either ice on their wrists or the back of their neck, anything you can do to take down the core temperature. But I mean, that's as far as I know when it comes to, like I wouldn't know what to be doing if somebody was, you know, spiked with G or Valium or any of that, even though hypno, what do you do? I mean a bottle of coke's not going to send them back around, you know, but this is it. It would be interesting to know the effects of different drugs and what they have on the body when it comes to trying to regulate someone when they are emits in your venue. You don't want your staff to have to try and go through that either. As a manager, you should have the answers to these questions. LVA, I don't know if you listen to this, get on board, but sure. We all know that people just like to ignore these issues and not acknowledge them because it shouldn't be happening in the first place. Sticking our head in the sand isn't an option, really. The world of bars at the moment, there's just so much going on, isn't there? I see a few nice things happening throughout the city. System 61, killing it as usual. Pawnshop is having a ball, we're having so much crack, so much support and love to everyone who's coming to us. A tornado of an opening. Again, I wasn't meant to stay on, I was just helping out Deo, helping out a friend, it was this gorgeous kind of commune that I was, but I've absolutely just fallen in love with the place. And I think it's great. I was helping Café on Centre with their drinks as well, they're flying at the moment, big shout out to them. Great team, great people. David, the GM at Café, is an absolute star. What a machine that man is. I have to give him a bit of a boot of the bus. And he's one of the nicest people I've ever met in my life. Did a bit of a Miley Cyrus there. I'm going to keep this short and sweet today really. Just checking back in, keeping in touch. Off to those yummy holidays on Wednesday, Thursday morning. We'll be back online next week. Yeah, shout out to all the friends. Shout out to all the people struggling with the prices of everything going up, it's just so bad. But all we can do is our best and the drinks that we make and the service we provide is just give all you can to people who choose to come into your venues. Still scary times at the moment. But the Dublin Bar Industry is great. It's so nice to be back in the city centre. Raw Wine's opened up as well. It's just, there's a lot of us back in the city again after COVID and after kind of all of us realising that, you know, as much as we want to be out of the city, sometimes it's all after. Silking us back in with its love. It's such a great buzz, it's such a great neighbourhood. It's such a great neighbourhood to be in and I'm so grateful to be a part of this team. Some gorgeous people who work here. I adore them and I adore them for their patience with my fishbowl head. Okay, I'm going to knock it on the head, coming up to 15 minutes, that's a first. Wowee! Don't want to drag it on too much. Short and sweet instead of slow and steady wins the race today. I hope everyone has a gorgeous weekend, you're enjoying the weather. Keep safe, keep positive. Things go up and things go down, but we're all here in the end. Much love from my dad. Thanks everyone for the support. See you later. Bye!