Jennifer Zamparelli, the presenter of Dancing with the Stars on RTE1, has told how she saw childhood friends becoming hooked on heroin in north Dublin.
The former 2fm star last week became an ambassador for Coolmine, the drug and alcohol treatment centre. Operating nationally, the charity is especially associated with heroin addiction recovery services.
Zamparelli has told The Sunday Times that her support for Coolmine has its roots in personal experience.
“I think everyone has been touched by addiction in some shape or form,” she said, “and there were childhood friends of mine from Baldoyle who fell into heroin addiction.
“I remember one in particular, whom I met up with when I moved back to Ireland from the UK. He was beginning his recovery journey at the time and today he’s clean and married with kids,” she said. “I’ve seen what addiction can do and it is heartbreaking but I’ve also seen what recovery can do.”
Zamparelli has visited Ashleigh House, the Coolmine women and children’s residential centre in Dublin 15. “It was upsetting and inspiring at the same time,” she said. “It was incredible to see how far these women had come with the programme and to see the relief it was providing for them.”
The centre is the only facility of its kind in the country with a full-time crèche that allows recovering mothers to live with their young children. “I didn’t even think about the fact that many women in addiction would be reluctant to go into recovery because they’d be worried that they wouldn’t see their kids, or that they’d be taken from them,” Zamparelli said.
“This facility means they can have breakfast with their babies, drop them off to crèche, do the therapy and come back in the evening and sleep with them. It’s a vital service.”
Zamparelli will run the VHI Women’s Mini Marathon on June 1 to raise funds for Coolmine. “It scares me because I’m not a runner,” she said. “But if these women can salvage their lives by enrolling in a drug rehabilitation centre, then I can run 10km.”
The number of drug addicts is rising in Ireland. The Coolmine Therapeutic Centre, founded in 1973, treated 35 per cent more people in 2023-24 than the year before.
“I work in the media and yet I’d never heard of Coolmine,” Zamparelli said. “This is something we need to talk about more. These stories need to be shouted from the rooftops because it’s very difficult, not just for the addicts but for their families. We need people to know that recovery is possible.”
Dancing with the Stars goes out on Sundays, and Zamparelli says her departure from 2fm morning radio has given her more time with her Florence, her ten-year-old daughter, and Enzo, her six-year-old son.
“They’re only babies for so long and I wasn’t really around when they were very young,” she said. “I was contracted to go back to work eight weeks after Florence was born.
“I was in fight or flight mode before I left radio. I was always hustling and trying to be everywhere, and be all things to everyone.”
Zamparelli, who will turn 45 in April, said she is loving her forties. “I had a wobble when I turned 40 but I’m loving it now. I’m more aware of my health and my fitness, in a positive way,” she said.
“I think you care less about appearance [as you age] so if I get any negative comments, I don’t let them affect me. But in my thirties or my twenties, they would have. I no longer suffer fools.”