She talks to Ali Bracken

A nun with a serious cocaine habit, a priest addicted to over-the-counter painkillers, dealers who daily drop off drugs to leading solicitors' offices, surgeons who cannot perform lifesaving operations without first snorting their white powder of choice. We all know of the rise of middle class cocaine abuse but it is the detail of what it does to people's lives, how cocaine changes users' personalities, how people continue to live with it, or learn to live without it, that fascinated author and journalist Justine Delaney Wilson and prompted her to find out more.

She has just published an impressive new book about drugs and middle class Ireland, The High Society, for which she immersed herself in the drug scene and met people from just about every professional, high-powered occupation imaginable, all of them - from judges, to doctors and nurses, to business executives - with a very serious interest in cocaine.

Apart from the nun, the priest and the cocaine runners, she interviewed more than one hospital consultant - people who carry out life-saving surgery on a daily basis but cannot function without their dose of methamphetamines, cocaine or morphine. She spoke to doctors and nurses, whose close proximity to drugs (coupled with no training about addiction) proved to be too much of a temptation.

Delaney Wilson's research is vast and all the more riveting for the fact that she allows the users, often articulate and self-knowing, to describe their cocaine experience for themselves.

We hear from people like Marian, the events co-ordinator who feels she has her coke use "under control", to Alan, the composer who is now clean after abusing coke and every amphetamine in sight for years, to Susan, a solicitor who recently got fired and then missed a job interview due to her drug use . . . everyone profiled offers new insight. Susan cried the last time she spoke to Wilson, as she finally admits to herself she has a problem. What keeps the reader interested is the different point everyone profiled is at with their addiction from denial, realisation to recovery.

"It's not shocking that middleclass people do drugs but they're not considered the stereotypical drug-user with a needle in their arm. These aren't the people who come before the criminal justice system, " says Wilson. "They're not regarded as drug addicts and most of them certainly don't consider themselves that. Nobody I met shocked me except for the nun.

She was wearing her habit."

The book avoids being overly preachy and hysterical, unlike so many other 'drug' books. It doesn't suggest that everyone who tries cocaine will end up jobless and homeless, their life in tatters. As well as users, the book is also littered with addiction counsellors and statistics are peppered throughout, one being that 17% of people who regularly use coke over a sustained period will become addicted.

"I'm not having a go at middleclass people; I just wanted to explore drug-use in that group because I don't think it's been explored very much, " says Wilson.

"One thing that really stood out was that every one of these people was so different. One thing that was similar about many of them I met though was this funny type of snobbery. Once they weren't injecting, it was okay. For very educated people to think that whatever drug they're addicted to is so different from injecting heroin is only fooling themselves."

For every politician, lawyer, garda, journalist and airline pilot Wilson features in her book, there are hundreds more like them holding down the exact same jobs but who aren't quite teetering on the brink of self-destruction, not within that 17% addictive-personality bracket.

"But that's even more worrying in a way, " argues Wilson. "Their drug-use probably won't push them over the edge and force them to get help." But maybe they don't need help? "Maybe they don't. But do you want them performing surgery on you or flying the plane you're a passenger on?" Definitely not. But as Frank, drug-dealer to a Dublin law firm puts it: "Nothing is illegal when a hundred businessmen decide to do it."

An interesting thread that runs through the book is the level of denial and the extent people go through to hide their drug-use from their partners, colleagues and families but in the same breath insist they're in full control.

"We are important people with important jobs, " screams from every page. Yet most of these people are doing drugs every day, to survive the day.

Not all of the stories have happy endings; some people you empathise with while others have become "an unavoidable dickhead" from doing so much coke, according to Karl, a columnist with a national publication. Liam an accountant is of the latter school.

"One day, my fiancee went to the bank to withdraw a deposit for the Shelbourne hotel from our wedding fund of 50,000 and discovered there was 80 in the account.

Our relationship ended soon afterwards. I had spent it all and borrowed at least that much again."

Yet you're happy that he's come through it and have to smile at his refreshing honesty: "I'd do drugs now, today, if I thought I could do so successfully. Ninety per cent of the best times I ever had was when I was doing drugs and partying. I have to keep reminding myself of how bad it all became. If I was 65 and thought that I might not have long left, would I start using again?

Yes, definitely."

The story of Tom the judge and his wife Eileen is also particularly memorable. The couple are wellknown for hosting parties in their beautiful Georgian home in Dublin while their three children are tucked up in bed. Early in the night, the "coke board" is passed around to get things going. Tom has nipped up to Sheriff Street before the guests arrive to score.

At the end of the night, the "ketamine board" is passed around to bring everyone down and make sure they're capable of driving home and facing the babysitter, he explains. "I see nothing wrong with it. Nobody has ever caused any trouble or had anything other than a great time. You wake up much clearer in the morning than if you've had your fill of pints, " he says. "I've yet to come across a guest who hasn't taken part." The message is clear . . . drugs don't kill people, hangovers do.

While the judge might well have his habit under control, it's clear that most people Wilson meets do not. We hear from Amy, a former air traffic controller who was close to suicide because of her abuse of coke and ecstasy. Twice she got pregnant and had abortions. Her second pregnancy was deliberate as she decided it was the way out of her spiralling drug-use, a way to make her stop. But when the hard reality of pregnancy and prospect of raising a child sunk in, she couldn't go through with it.

Although she's now drug-free and married with a child, Amy feels she'll never recover from the choices she made while under the influence. "I think pregnancy and abortion are very prominent issues for many female users. I still cry over the babies I didn't have and I don't think I'll ever come to terms with my stupidity and loss."

Although the book seems to focus on middle-class drug-use in Dublin, there are exceptions, like Sean. He's a young GAA star, university graduate and captain of his town's senior team. They recently won a major trophy and photos of them clutching the cup made the papers. "I snorted three lines of cocaine in the locker room before that game with four guys in that picture. I won't talk for them but I use coke before almost every game and also three nights a week on average, " he says. "It makes me feel stronger, more competitive."

For many coke users, competitiveness seems to be the key. Wilson spoke to people in high-pressured, powerful jobs where stress comes part and parcel and white lines make all the difference. She wrote a book based on something that everyone knows is happening yet it's the first time middle-class drug-use has been so diligently documented. What makes it a significant book is the depth and honesty she elicits from her many subject and the book's refusal to try and solve Ireland's futile 'war on drugs'.

"I wrote this book to try and open people's eyes. Drug-users aren't just working class heroin addicts, " says Wilson. "They are your dentist, your doctor, your solicitor. People just like you."

'The High Society . . . Drugs and the Irish Middle Classes' is being made into a two-part documentary series to be screened on RTE