Medication Nation, RTE 1, Monday at 9.35pm
So it seems it’s not just alcohol that the Irish like to get jacked up on.
There also a serious addiction to mind-altering prescription medication.
Dr Eva Orsmond (Operation Transformation) was on hand with the properly shocking figures.
The Republic has twice as many pharmacies as the UK per head of population and spends 40 per cent more on drugs than the EU average.
It spends 77 per cent more on legal drugs than Norway, Europe’s richest country.
And the habit is getting worse. In 2000 there were 32 million prescribed drugs consumed. This had risen to 73 million by 2015.
Dr Eva kept coming with the figures.
More than one-in-five pensioners are on ten drugs or more per day, and many have been on the same drug for decades.
More than 10 per cent of the total population are on benzodiazepines, drugs like Valium and Zanax which are used to treat anxiety and depression.
This usage rate rises to 20 per cent of the population on medical cards, that is those claiming social welfare.
Cork is the capital of this benzo addition and Dr Eva asks one GP why.
“Because they’re bloody effective,” he says, but goes on to explain that it’s not easy to convince someone who’s been on Valium for a decade that they should stay off the drug until he can get them a talk-therapy session.
Some patients are so determined to get their fix that they threaten violence, he says.
Opening my eyes to a whole new world, Dr Eva introduced us to a man - whose identity was hidden - who had an addition to over-the-counter codeine.
His drug of choice was Nurofen Plus and because of restrictions on their sale, he spent his day travelling around his native Waterford to get his required four packs-of-24 - that’s 92 tablets per day.
He reckoned he’d spent E300,000 on the drug in his lifetime, an addiction which began when he injured himself playing sport.
His codeine addiction had cost him everything - his health, his job, his family and he was now living in his car.
Dr Eva's prescription for improvement was a cultural change which would begin with the understanding that medicines can cause great harm as well as good.
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Newsnight, BBC 2, Tuesday at 10.30pm
It wasn’t a good night for those who argue against the oft made claim that journalism is full of leftie-liberal types.
The normally excellent Newsnight was like a meeting of the students union on Tuesday.
There was Brexit fear, right-wing media-fear, Trump-fear and sure what student gathering could survive without a dose of Yanis Varoufakis.
Presenter Emily Maitlis got carried away on the euphoria of it all.
She lost her patience when interviewing a member of Donald Trump’s White House on the appalling decision to ban citizens of seven Muslim countries from the US for 90 days.
“He’s (Trump) acting like a dictator gone mad,” she declared with the zeal of a student union president.
The Trump man laughed, as I suspect did a lot of the audience.
After agreeing that the dastardly Daily Mail won the Brexit vote and running through the costs of the UK leaving the EU again, it was over to the short lived Greek finance minister to finish the show.
Varoufakis, a modern day Che Guevara for the BBC, called for a “New Deal” for the world.
“Every citizen (should be) granted property rights,” he argued.
And that these rights would guarantee a “universal basic dividend.”
Now that’s must have got the students cheering in the union bar.
