'Good job on this ... perhaps a couple of kids will reap the rewards of truth and stay away from the 'white death' this week."
That comment, left on my Facebook page on Monday morning by Damien McCarron, is the single greatest response I got to my article on Gerry Ryan in this newspaper last Sunday.
Why? Because the 'truth' the guy is referring to is my having revealed -- two days after the inquest -- that I'd known for 16 years Gerry Ryan was using the drug.
Though morally torn and loath to add to the pain already being felt by Gerry's girlfriend, Melanie Verwoerd -- particularly given that she found his body -- his wife, Morah, their children, and friends, I wanted to highlight, yet again, the dangers of drugs abuse.
In the immediate aftermath of publishing the article I read that "RTE closes ranks on star's years of sustained drug use". Then I read: "RTE management and the station's top stars closed ranks this weekend and refused to make any public comment on the revelations that cocaine was behind the death of Gerry Ryan."
Source: Joe Jackson, The Irish Independent, 19/12/2010