Nicole Ryan has been involved in raising awareness of drug use in schools after losing her brother Alex to the synthetic drug N-Bomb at a house party in the city in January 2016.Her awareness programme in his memory called "Alex’s Adventure" has seen her speak at dozens of schools about the dangers of drugs.In recent times the addiction counsellor says she has been contacted by a number of parents worried about their child's steroid misuse as they try to keep up with the images they see onlineSpeaking to RedFM News Nicole Ryan says education around steroids is vital as many young people don’t see the dangers of steroid use:
"It's still a substance very much so, it still has harmful effects. It might not work the same as other types of drugs, for instance, where it doesn't cause addiction in that kind of way, but it does cause psychological addiction. So you you start to dissolve and you become obsessed with this, let's say. So it is and there's obviously dangers with if you're injecting, for instance, seem dangerous that you would have with heroin or any other types of drugs to inject into yourself and also the effect that affects younger people as well like you know, for boys, for instance, shrinking of testicles for girls, growth of facial hair. So there's all those other side effects that are, you know, harmful to younger people."
