WHEN I'm putting the needle into my arm I'm crying. I'm thinking of my family and my sister who died. All it is drugs, drugs, drugs. Some days you go `f*** this, there's nothing for me'. You just feel so sick of it, and think `I wish I could just OD on this and never come out of it ... but then you wake up and all you're looking for is that bit of brown paper [pack of heroin] ... that bit of brown paper works miracles. It has you back on top of the world. Nothing else could compare to it."

Hunched forward, her white hands clenched tightly, Nora sits on the dusty sofa in her north Dublin sitting room. At 22, with a scruff of brown hair and a smattering of freckles, she looks a boyish 16. Two of her brothers and a sister are addicted to heroin and her 30 year old sister was buried in February. Jane died of the AIDS virus someone shared with her when they passed her their "works" [syringe].

"My mother's gone through a lot," nods Nora. "There's 10 kids in my family and five that went into drugs. I'm the youngest. My ma won't have me back til I'm drug clean. I think she'd be the happiest person in the world if I got my maintenance and got my head together."

Nora has been using heroin for six years. She has had three stays in Mountjoy women's prison - "robbing to get money for gear". There are two constants in Nora's life. Tracy, her closest friend, with whose family she now stays, she met in prison. Heroin has been with her longer.

"When I was 14, in Finglas where I'm from, it was glue, gas, shoe polish, Tippex thinners - that's what we used to get stoned on." After that came various opiates. "Then the rave scene came along and I got into the Es. I used to smoke heroin to come down. My first turn on [injection] was on my 16th birthday. I just had a turn on and that was it.

"That first hit was, how would you describe it? It was . . . beautiful. A lovely sensation going up through your body. Calming. You like everybody and you haven't a worry in the world. When you're using, all you do is get sick, non stop. You can't eat anything - I'd go a day on a Snickers bar, a can of Coke - but then, when you get it into you, you feel it. It's lovely. You are always chasing that first hit, but it's still there. If the gear is good, it's heaven.

"I was never scared injecting. I've good veins," she says, rolling up the leather sleeve of her jacket and extending a thin, pock marked arm. "A while back I was injecting into my neck. The quickest way to get it into me would be one of the veins in my neck, a big huge vein that I couldn't miss. I've injected into my feet, legs, back of my arms, hands, neck, everywhere except my groin. Some inject into their groin but I couldn't."

But there was also a flip side to "heaven". "From age 16 to 18 I was stoned every day. Then one day I hadn't got any gear. I started getting sweats, and cramps in my legs and my stomach. I thought it was flu, but I was `dying sick' [suffering withdrawals or `cold turkey']. Your whole body aches. .. you get yellow sick, the acid coming up from your stomach. You can't sleep. Your legs are just popping about. Your back is at you; your head is at you. You can't eat. You can't drink. You're just in a ball of pain."

Nora's first attempted detoxification programme was at Trinity Court Drug Treatment Centre in Pearse Street. "I went to Pearse Street when I was 17 and tried to do the 18 day detox. I didn't even last it. The 18 days is not long enough. There's two, three, four years of blocked out feelings there and they just come spewing all over the place. Then you walk outside the clinic and the pushers buzz on to you with tranquillisers, gear, methadone, everything. I did want to come off drugs but I wanted a longer detox to give me a chance to get the gear off my brain, slowly, off my mind."

There is no mandatory follow up programme after the 18 day detox at Trinity Court. There are maintenance programmes: a "day" programme which offers methadone maintenance, and a "night" programme which incorporates lower doses of methadone and a needle exchange.

Nora is now on the "night train". After numerous failed detoxes and returns to heroin use, a spokesperson for the centre explained, she would have to work with her doctor to get back on the day programme. For addicts who are still abusing drugs there is a concern that they may overdose if also taking a higher dose of methadone. The needle exchange is to lessen the risk of intravenous HIV infection.

When traces of drugs (Nora says they were tranquillisers) appeared on Nora's record she had to be put back on the "night" programme, in accordance with Trinity Court rules. "You're so happy when you're on your maintenance. You're walking past the pushers, your head held high like a normal person ... and then this comes along. You feel like you're back to square one. It kills you."

Nora goes to Trinity Court to collect her daily 20 mg of prescribed methadone and syringes. "You drink it on the spot. Twenty milligrams wouldn't hold you to lunch time - you're back to being a user.

And Summerhill, where she lives, is "user" friendly. "Heroin is everywhere. You'd get it down at the front gate. When you get that gear into you, you feel the pains go away, just back to normal, back to your old self. If you don't have it you're snapping at people and all you're ever thinking about is getting your next hit."

Having "scored" [a hit is about £15] Nora and Tracy "skin pop" in their bedroom, in an empty flat, "or in a toilet somewhere". She describes graphically how they heat the heroin and remove any pollutants before putting the liquid into their "works". "Then you get a tourniquet to get a vein up."

Every Wednesday Nora gets her £60 unemployment assistance. "That's gone by Wednesday. I'm a part time shop lifter and a full time dipper [pick pocket]. If I got a dip of three or four hundred pounds that would last two or three days."

Some of the best places to go "dipping", she says, are the cafes around Grafton Street. "The ladies just leave their bags on the floor, having a lovely conversation, and you walk past, cool as daylight, and pick it up and walk out. One day I got a bag in Saxone in Grafton Street. A French lady, I think, was trying on shoes, and she left her bag to go and look at herself in the mirror. She had a banklink card and a notebook. On the last page of the book were some numbers.

"So I says to Tracy; `Come on, we'll try them' and the machine gave us £200 a day for two weeks!

"At Christmas I got five grand and that lasted us two weeks. I used to rob off my family. The thing that killed me most was, my sister that died had a sovereign chain and I robbed that. She knew I was sorry but she never got it back. You live with the guilt.

"I've tried to OD so many times. You just get so sick of it, sick of scoring, sick of needles, sick of robbing. My ma caught me trying to hang myself Christmas a year ago.

SHE tries not to worry about AIDS. "I am Hepatitis C. It's been a long time since I was tested. To be honest I'm terrified. It would kill my family after Jane."

Over and over Nora says that what she really wants is to get onto the maintenance programme at the Amiens Street City Clinic. "My name is down at the City Clinic for two years. Just before Christmas they said I was priority. My ma was delighted when they said I was priority - nearly crying. But I never heard anything from them since." Dr Joe Barry of the City Clinic confirms that there is a shortage of places.

"I know it seems so small, but all I want is to have my maintenance programme at the City Clinic, a nice flat, a nice job to make a life for myself. It's hell. Hell when you haven't got the drugs and hell when you have."