Two recent former pupils from a South Dublin all-boys school race out of a strip club in Laganas, having stolen a passing glance inside. There are “weird sex games” where participants are encouraged to eat chocolate off men and fruit off women, one of the pair says. The other says that they thought it was “a normal club” before going inside.
It is Wednesday night on the main party strip on Zakynthos, the Greek island better known as Zante, where the two teenagers mix with scores of other Irish students on holidays to mark the end of Leaving Certificate exams.
During the day, Zakynthos is the picture-perfect Greek island, with azure water, beaches worthy of the film Mamma Mia! and scorching sun. At night, the temperature mellows to around 26 degrees, but the atmosphere is febrile, full of sweat, shisha vapour and the smell of cheap drink.
“I think there will be a fair few people who will try to cook themselves with alcohol,” says Samuel Dalston (19) from Tipperary who did his Leaving Cert as a boarder in Clongowes Wood College in Clane, Co Kildare, and hopes to study medicine in September.
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Sitting on a stool on the rooftop Irish bar O’Callaghan’s Loft, he eyes the private medical clinics dotted along the party street. There are concerns about profiteering or the risk of visitors being left with inflated medical bills for emergencies. Dalston shares this worry about scams, but also see the benefit of such clinics, saying without them “we’d have a few dead bodies across the street”.
The mayor of Zakynthos, Georgios Stasinopoulos, tells The Irish Times the clinics “are there to make people feel safer”. He says: “The amount of private clinics is very good for the tourists because it’s very quick. You don’t wait in the hospital for many hours – you know how hospitals are, everywhere you go.”
The Laganas strip is designed to contain partying to one section of the island – and Leaving Cert students are here in their droves.
Covid shaped a lot of developmental milestones for this cohort. There were no teen discos, no stolen kisses at Irish college. There were two years without school plays or outings. The class of 2025 is now making up for it.
Caoilfhionn Roche (18), from Rathfarnham, Dublin, who went to Loreto High School Beaufort, says “some people would take advantage of the freedom here. There’s free rein here”.
However, the biggest danger she perceives is the spiking of drinks with drugs. “There’s certain places we have been told not to go to because the drinks get spiked a lot, even by bartenders, which is really scary. We’ve been told to buy stuff that’s bottled, that you see them opening in front of you and that kind of thing,” says Roche, who has a college course on radiography or speech and language therapy in her sights for September.
Stasinopoulos encourages caution when it comes to the promise of free alcohol. “They sell tickets for €10 and you drink all the night. For €10, you can only drink water”.
The mayor’s interpreter adds: “Don’t mix the bars as well. In case something happens, you know which bar you were in.”
Former Clongowes student Ryan Schacht, from Monkstown, Co Dublin, who is aiming to study theoretical physics at Trinity College Dublin next year, says: “I saw a guy punch a girl in the face yesterday. That was pretty brutal.” Otherwise the safety of the strip was similar to Dublin “with a few more fights”.
Ruairí Hegarty (18), who is hoping to attend the TU Dublin conservatoire for performing arts in September, says: “I’d say it’s because you have mostly 18-year-olds who are unsupervised abroad with unlimited alcohol. That’s probably the only reason that you would see more violence.”
He says the Leaving Cert holiday is “making up for lost time post-pandemic”.
Students are alert to the risk of financial “scams”.
Oisín Lambe, a former Clongowes boarder from Drogheda, Co Louth, was shocked to find air-conditioning being charged on a daily basis after already forking out €600 for flights and accommodation.
“The hotel charges extra for air conditioning. It’s a fiver a day. For seven days that’s €35 for the week.”
One of the friends says: “But you have to pay it.” With daily temperatures in Zante reaching the mid-30s, it seems the only option is to pay.
The costs surrounding Leaving Cert holidays are significant – and that’s before budgeting in the so-called “pink tax” for girls who are under pressure to conform.
A group of young women who studied at the Dublin Academy of Education say there is an expectation that they look a certain way in time for the holiday and this requires spending a good deal of money.
“The way you’d start the conversations in the library would be kind of sad. Like you’re looking forward to this holiday, but thinking, ‘Oh my body blah blah’,” one former student says.
“It was kind of concerning that everyone was nervous about what they would look like.”
Another girl says: “Yeah, you are spending a grand on flights and accommodation, but on top of that you are spending a grand to get prepped.”
Along the heaving Laganas strip, vape shops, sex shops, pharmacies and even supermarkets can be found openly selling cannabis and cannabis-related products. Medical cannabis is the only form of the drug legal in Greece and you need a valid prescription from an approved doctor to obtain the drug.
However, the cannabis products sold across Zante purport to contain low levels of THC, which is considered to be the main psychoactive ingredient found in cannabis.
One vendor selling cannabis products is pharmacist Constantine Grigoropoulos. “At the moment, the legal amount of THC in a product is 0.02 per cent up to 0.03 per cent; 99 per cent of the product is CBD [which does not cause a psychoactive high]. That’s all that’s allowed to be sold in the shops,” he says.
As a pharmacist, Grigoropoulos can dispense medical marijuana, which contains THC, and the CBD products. “I get people in from England and Ireland saying, ‘Oh, you have real THC, bro’, but, no, there’s none of that. There are a lot of cannabis companies in Greece, but we only sell what is legal.”
Fifty metres down the road is DownTown Laganas Tobacconist Weed & Sex Shop, whose staff purport to sell “real” products containing higher levels of THC. Products can be purchased here which provide no more detailed information on the contents other than “legal product, THC <0.3%”.
However, according to University College Cork lecturer in organic and pharmaceutical chemistry Dr JJ Keating: “There is no way of knowing based solely on the information provided on the packet and on what you may have been told it contains.”
For general information on safety and support, he recommends trusted resources such as the HSE booklet, Cannabis and You.
In Zante, Dr Elena Andritsou is tired and weary. It’s 10.40am in the midst of a challenging party season. Her clinic is in the middle of the strip. For her, the 5am patients are the scariest.
“I had a Norwegian patient a couple of days ago. He arrived in here really upset. Someone had drugged him, injected him. We don’t really know with what. He was really scared. He was only 17,” she says.
The drugs situation is worsening, Dr Andritsou says. “I was here in 2013. You could see a lot of drunk people. But people who used drugs? One every 10 nights, not every night.”
Asked what kind of drugs patients are taking, she says: “Street drugs.”
“It is impossible to say, it was this, it was that. It’s street drugs. It’s mixing. It’s ridiculous. There are so many side affects. Especially from people who are sniffing ‘cocaine’,” she says, making air quotes with her fingers. “It’s so little the amount of cocaine that it doesn’t even show up on the test.”
Most of the consultations at Dr Andritsou’s practice, however, are not related to drink or drugs, but are for problems such as “ear infections, eye infections”.
She cautions against the water parks, crowded swimming pools and ones in night clubs. “There are too many people in the swimming pools for them to be cleaned properly,” she says. “You can get ear infections, sinus infections, urine infections, skin infections.”
Aside from the infections that can be picked up, other reactions can occur because “they always put in a little more chemicals because it’s too busy and they think that’s right”. This can result in “chlorine damage on the cornea”.
What of the parents 3,000km away worrying about their teenage children? Not surprisingly, perhaps, they are checking in regularly.
“I got a notification from Family 360 [tracking app] saying that it had been checked 150 times in the last three days,” says Sophia Kelly (18) from South Dublin, who is hoping to study medicine.
Some parents are even resorting to following their children out to the party locations and staying within “emergency distance”.
One mother, who is flying to Santa Ponsa in Mallorca, Spain, said: “We are very aware of the tragedies that have occurred over the last number of years and believe that it is important to be able to support if something terrible or tragic occurs.”
She departed for Spain this week, a day before her daughter set off with her friends. “This is our second year going on the Leaving Cert holiday as we went with our son last year. Last year we stayed approximately 30 minutes away while this year we will be 1.5 hours away, as our Leaving Cert student this year is less of a risk,” said the mother, who wanted to remain anonymous for fear of “embarrassing her daughter”.
In terms of financial outlay, she says: “The Leaving Cert holiday is costing us €1,500 and we are expecting the usual Revolut requests to start by Tuesday. The beauty prep and wardrobe for girls is bonkers.”
She says she advises her daughter to “stay out of the sun and do not come home with green highlights because I am not paying for the repairs”.
While the extra beauty costs are substantial, she does not consider the additional cost of flying out to be close to her daughter to be extravagant. “We are going for a week and would be taking holidays anyway, so the cost isn’t a concern.”
Another mother who has also flown to southern Europe to be within emergency phone call distance has done so because her daughter has an severe allergy. “If anything happened, it wouldn’t be fair to expect the other girls to look after her if she is at the hospital and that sort of thing.”
Parents have to let go some time, however, and the students in Zante who spoke to The Irish Times were keen to emphasise they were behaving responsibly and looking out for one another.
Asked what she would tell parents who were nervous about their Leaving Cert teenager travelling, Amy Allan (18), from Rathfarnham, who attended Loreto Beaufort, said: “Trust them. Relax. They deserve to have a holiday. They deserve freedom.”
