IT'S a familiar story. Young, carefree teenager starts dabbling in drugs until he becomes a slave to addiction, living a miserable existence. Finally, our hero decides to clean up his act following an "epiphany" in Fatima mansions and eventually shrugs off heroin following his admission to a radical treatment centre. So far, so predictable.

Shay Byrne, originally from Drimnagh, tells the story of his life with brutal honesty. Relatively innocent experimentation with amphetamines in 1970s Dublin within a year develops into a crippling heroin addiction. The subsequent life of crime is inevitable, but snatching handbags and breaking and entering is strangely justified by our author. Heroin is to blame, not him, he tells us.

After narrowly escaping death after a violent attack at Fatima Mansions, Byrne finally decides to get help and his rehabilitation involves taking stark stock of his life and exploring how his father's premature death sparked his drug use. This memoir, while occasionally shocking, mirrors hundreds of others and adds little to the debate on drug-culture. Competently written, it is the straightforward tale of one man's journey but fails to deliver any new insights. The title too, is a little self-indulgent.

Seeing himself as a 'miracle' because he manages to kick heroin seems overly self-congratulatory.

Byrne, who mixed occasionally with Phil Lynott in Dublin in the '70s, makes too much of this fact and it comes across as crass name-dropping.

But it's an important book insofar as it chronicles 1970s Dublin and how easily youngsters got involved with heroin while remaining blissfully unaware of its consequences. Even more importantly, the book explores the chronic underfunding of rehabilitation projects, which is now as applicable to cocaine as well as heroin treatment centres.

In 1983, Byrne moved to Germany and essentially it is here he finds eventual redemption. He marries a German woman, Ute, and remains living there today with his wife and two sons.

Much publicity has surrounded the publication of this book; largely because High Court judge Paul Carney launched it in Dublin last month. He hailed it as a "shocking book" and the public have been intrigued by the friendship between the judge and the exjunkie.

The preface to the book refers to comments made by Justice Carney during sentencing at a trial investigating the death of Joseph Sutcliffe two years ago, at which he said he was "haunted" by conditions in the "cruelly named Fatima Mansions".

Following these remarks, he was invited by residents to visit the area to see the changes that had been made since 2002 as a result of the Fatima Regeneration Board.