Inside Belfast’s Deadly Benzos Boom

Northern Ireland stands apart from the rest of the United Kingdom in a number of obvious ways, from its turbulent history to its geography. But visitors who find themselves on a big night out in Belfast might also notice something starkly different about its recreational drug scene. 

Benzodiazepines—a class of sedative drugs, known as name brands like Xanax and Valium, which are commonly prescribed to treat anxiety and depression—are a major part of Northern Ireland’s drug culture, with recreational users often necking down benzos alongside party drugs like cocaine or MDMA in a way that’s uncommon in the rest of the UK.

For the latest episode of VICE’s War on Drugs series, we explore Northern Ireland’s appetite for benzos, known colloquially as blues or yellows, and how it has its roots in the decades of sectarian conflict known as The Troubles.

Watch our new film on Belfast’s Deadly Benzos Boom:

The conflict, which lasted for three decades until the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, took more than 3,500 lives and left its scars widely across society. Notably, it left Northern Ireland with high levels of post-traumatic stress disorder, with an estimated 8.8 percent of the country’s adult population meeting the criteria for PTSD at some point in their life.

Doctors have responded to that trauma by prescribing large numbers of benzodiazepines—diazepam, a common benzo, is prescribed in Northern Ireland at 3.5 times the rate it is in England—creating an abundance of prescription pills that, in turn, has shaped the country’s recreational drug culture.

“Belfast, in particular, has always had a really strong history of use of benzodiazepines,” said Michael McDowell, who runs Belfast Experts by Experience, an activist group dedicated to improving services for drug users in the city.

“Record numbers of people were prescribed diazepam and other benzodiazepines by GPs to cope with the trauma of living in a conflict zone. So people were just overly prescribed these drugs as a crutch.”

Now, he said, “We’re seeing an increased number of young people using them.” Users would eat dozens of pills at a time, their mouths turning blue from the coloring in the tablets.

“They’re cheap, they’re available, and they get the job done,” he said.

VICE spent time with young benzo users in Belfast to hear about the way that the drugs are used in the city.

They said that benzos were relatively easy to come by—whether legitimately prescribed for anxiety or depression, bought on the thriving black market, or pilfered from relatives’ prescription supplies.

“Eighty percent of my friends use benzos,” said one.

“People use them as an escape. Honestly, they’re everywhere.”

While abusing benzos could bring a euphoric high and a temporary sense of invincibility, users were all too aware of the downsides of the drug, and many were trying to kick their habits. The potential dangers of benzo abuse are no secret in a country where drug deaths have surged over the past decade—with high numbers of the victims aged under 35, rather than the older, longer-term drug users who are the typical drug fatality elsewhere in the UK.

Benzos have played a large part in the rising drug death numbers, with benzodiazepines the second-most commonly mentioned drug on death certificates after opioids in recent years, according to a report by the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency.

Meanwhile, the emergence on the market of nitazenes—a class of potentially fatal synthetic opioids, some of which are hundreds of times more potent than heroin—being mis-sold as benzos posed another potential threat. Last year, tablets containing nitazenes that were sold as benzos were linked to a cluster of overdoses in Northern Ireland.

“I did have the time of my life a few times,” one user told VICE.

“But then the amount of mates I would have lost due to them, the amount of mates everyone we know has lost—there’s a real ugly side to it.”