Wayne Hart, who worked in Dublin nightclubs in the 1990s, could sell up to 9,000 ecstasy tablets in a single weekend.
Wayne had spent years travelling between his hometown and the United Kingdom after leaving at the age of 14, but it wasn’t until his late teens that he got himself into severe problems by distributing narcotics.
Beginning with hash, he advanced to selling ecstasy and then became hooked to the heroin he was using to manage his ecstasy comedowns, becoming a heroin dealer to feed his own addiction.
He appeared to have it all by the time he was 21, with a house, a great girlfriend, and two children, but his work and subsequent addiction sent him spiralling.
Wayne has now spoken about his participation in the drug trade for the new three-part series Dublin Narcos, which chronicles the narrative of how heroin, ecstasy, and cocaine transformed the fabric of the city from the 1980s onwards.
Wayne was pleased when clubs started sprouting up in Dublin a few years after he first went one after seeing rave culture in London.
‘Ireland was a few years behind UK but then the house music and acid and the E [ecstasy] hit,’ he said.
‘I was excited and thought it was lovely happy days.’
He explained: ‘Dublin is party central and when the clubs opened there was a readymade cohort.’
Wayne was working across three clubs in the early 1990s, selling thousands upon thousands of tablets as people partied.
‘At the time you had three main clubs in Dublin where the rave scene happened, and they were paradise for drug dealers,’ he recalled.
‘One would close as another was opening and you could sell about 900 [tablets] a night.
‘There was always a constant turnover of people wanting to buy.’
Wayne was making astronomical sums during the peak of his career, often earning £10,000 in a single week.
‘It was crazy because I didn’t have any respect or understanding of the money,’ he said.
‘I had cars and motorbikes and a house that I totally gutted and renovated and fitted out with the top-quality furniture and appliances.
‘I was footloose and fancy free with cash.’
It was a mindset he also extended to his growing family.
‘I had two young kids and I wanted to keep up with the Joneses and the kids had to have the best of everything too.’
As Wayne indicated, drug trafficking was a type of’social mobility’ for him and many others.
‘At that time, it was the unemployment economy in Ireland and it wasn’t an excuse for what I did, but it is the context and understanding for why we had to make our own employment,’ he said.
But all came tumbling down a few years later when Wayne was charged with drug delivery and sentenced to prison for the first time.
Wayne had spent a total of 15 years in prison and had 54 convictions at the time he chose to change his life.
He’d had enough of these spurts and decided it was time to learn to read and write, a skill he’d struggled to grasp while coping with dyslexia in the classroom years before.
He worked hard to improve his literacy skills before enrolling in various additional courses while jailed.
It marked a turning point.
‘I got out and realised that education, no matter what form it was, was a new way to fight,’ he explained.
When he was faced with those who were sceptical that he had changed, Wayne was unfazed.
‘While people say a leopard never changes its spot, I skinned the leopard,’ he said.
Part of that transition was giving back and trying his best to prevent other at-risk youngsters from following in his footsteps.
He currently works with government organisations in Dublin to help disadvantaged young people.
‘I’m not here to save the world but if I can help one person today, that is my job done,’ he said.
‘I am privileged today to be where I am and who I am because of my background, and it sounds crazy but prison did save my life.
‘I’m not advocating people go to prison, but for me that is what it was.’
Despite the fact that what he went through was a very “challenging process,” Wayne claimed it was all worth it because of where he ended up.
Dublin Narcos also features first hand testimony from the kingpins, cops, journalists, ravers and users who were all connected to the story of the rise in addiction, violence and organised crime in the Irish capital.
Dublin Narcos is now streaming on Sky Documentaries and on Now.
Source My Celebrity Life.