Eddie Killoran

Drugs expert whose experience informed his counselling and policymaking roles


John Podmore, Friday January 27, 2006, The Guardian


The proudest schooldays memory of Eamon "Eddie" Killoran, who has died aged 54 of cancer, was breaking into the headmaster's study at Bishop Ullathorne grammar, in Coventry, and destroying his collection of canes. It was at school that Eddie developed the dislike for authority and bullies that so characterised his later professional life. Then, one night, he climbed out of a window of the family home with nothing but his record collection under his arm - and was lost for several years on the hippy trails of Amsterdam and Morocco.

Many of the secrets of that time stayed with him, but drugs got the better of Eddie. So, in the mid-1970s, he returned to Coventry, and went into rehabilitation at Phoenix House, a national charity providing treatment for drug and alcohol users. Coventry was his birthplace - he was one of four children born to his Irish parents, Eddie Sr and Nora. In his childhood, the family frequently went back to the farms and beaches of Donegal; likewise, as an adult, Eddie was always enticed back there too.

After Phoenix House, he emerged a man determined to make a difference in a world scarred by the scourge of substance misuse. In 1981 he became a project worker with the social care organisation Turning Point in central London. Four years later, he qualified as a social worker, taking his CQSW at what was then North London Polytechnic, and became project manager of Turning Point's Roma drug project in west London.

At a time when people with intractable drug problems were only offered help if they were willing to change their behaviour, Roma was the only residential service for people who continued to use illegal drugs. And because it was working with people with such desperately chaotic lifestyles, it saw some of the first cases of HIV/Aids among drug users. Eddie realised that people facing a terminal illness with no family support had to find help from somewhere. So, in the late 1980s, he developed the first nurse team in a residential service for Roma, and later initiated the Griffin project to provide terminal and palliative care.

By 1987 Eddie was an area manager with Turning Point. He had a talent for identifying emerging needs and conjuring up donations from government bodies and charities by sheer force of personality. His life for a period seemed to revolve around finding and chasing the people with money and influence. He recognised the enormity of the issues quicker than most, particularly the need for nursing care rather than stigmatisation. He understood harm reduction long before the phrase was coined and put himself in the right place to influence policy at every level, from national guidelines to local practice.

Indeed, Eddie had become unstoppable. He chaired the National Residential Drug Forum between 1991 and 1993 while lobbying for, and contributing to, the Department of Health's plans to ensure drug users had rapid access to detoxification and rehab services. In 1995 he was apppointed central London area manager for the drug and alcohol treatment charity Addaction.

There he developed the Impact project for socially excluded under-16s - and rescued the funding for the Maya project, a 12-bed unit for women with crack problems and their children. In 1995-96 he offered specialist advice as a coopted member of the inner London probation committee. He was a founder member of the London Drug Services Provider Consortium.

Then, in 1998, Killoran decided to make a lifestyle change - to leave the fight to others and team up with friends to run the Royal Oak, a pub in the New Forest where he could indulge his passion for good food and wine. It was a vain hope. Later that year, alongside the long hours of being a pub landlord, he also became the first specialist drugs inspector for HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, under Sir (now Lord) David Ramsbotham, working within a service slowly coming to terms with its most intractable problem.

It was two years after that appointment that I first met Eddie. I was a prison governor, then seconded to the inspectorate and sent to look at Parkhurst prison on the Isle of Wight. Bad weather had prevented all but one of my colleagues from making it to the island. There he was, sitting in the prison boardroom, reading the Guardian. "Steady Eddie", as we came to call him, examined and reported on all aspects of drug treatment in a huge variety of prisons - rehab programmes, drug testing and security measures to reduce supply all fell under his gaze. His tenacity was not always well received, but every prison he inspected benefited from his knowledge and experience.

In 1982 Eddie had met Alison Chesney when they worked together on the Roma drugs project. Theirs became a true partnership, and their passion was helping difficult, damaged people leading chaotic and disordered lives. Had they been in the dotcom business, they would have been multi-millionaires by now. But they had very private riches of a different sort.

Then, in 2002, Alison contracted cancer. Eddie sold his share in the pub, and limited his prisons inspectorate and consultancy work. He stayed in London to care and support her. But he did not stop his drugs work; in 2004, he became a trustee of Release, working up to the day he walked into hospital suffering from uncontrollable pain, which was diagnosed as advanced cancer.

Eddie rose to his merciless illness with a stubborn determination. Even in his final days at the Trinity hospice, in Clapham, he kept up with the exploits of his beloved Coventry City and was never without his daily Guardian - though he bemoaned its new Berliner format. Passionate, knowledgeable and tenacious, he inspired and challenged people. He was a fearsome adversary, a sharp and funny colleague, and an indefatigable socialiser. Alison survives him, as does her daughter Annie, for whom Eddie became an original and entertaining stepfather.

Eddie Killoran

One of the true stalwarts of the drugs field

Mike Trace, Vol 21, 2, March/April 2006, Druglink

On January 7th, one of the true stalwarts of the drugs field died after a short and painful battle with cancer.

You may not have known Eddie Killoran personally, although, judging by the turn out at his funeral, large sections of the profession in the last 30 years did. But if you recognise the developments in our harm reduction and prison treatment services, or work in Turning Point or Addaction's services, you owe him a debt of gratitude.

Eddie was always in the frontline of new services – think of the toughest type of service to be run, and Eddie would show how it could be done. ROMA offered accommodation and some form of stability to street users on scripts, the Griffin Project offered a sanctuary to that most under-served of groups – HIV infected drug users – and the Maya Project a refuge for women crack users to rebuild relationships with their children. All of them (and countless other projects since) have existed in large part due to Eddie's vision, compassion and sheer bloody mindedness.

As the profession expanded through the 1990s and the call for real expertise grew, Eddie brought his fierce commitment to users' entitlement to quality services to more national roles. He chaired the National Residential Drug Forum for 3 years and becoming the Prison Service Inspectorate's first specialist inspector of drug services. In this latter role, Eddie's bullshit detector was set to maximum as, in report after report, the drug services of a particular institution were subjected to honest and rigorous scrutiny and recommendations for improvements soundly argued.

You don't get the respect and affection of so many cynics just by being good at your job, however. What also made Eddie special were his fondness for an argument, his fundamental mistrust of authority, and – still there through his fight against a real bugger of a disease – the twinkle in his eye that saw the absurdity in everything.

Many will tell you that he was simply the funniest grumpy old bastard they ever knew. He leaves behind Alison and Annie – two strong and brave women - a lot of happy memories and a drug treatment field the better for having known him.

Eamon 'Eddie' Killoran, Phoenix House (London) graduate, drugs expert and social worker, born July 12 1951; died January 7 2006

View other TC pioneer remembrance pages here