The Ice Age (39 page)

I kept seeing my counsellor, Jay, who told me that part of the overwhelming emotions I was experiencing was that I was ‘catching up' on my emotions. Using drugs had numbed me, and now I had a lot of repressed emotion that needed to find expression.

I agreed that it might be that, but I felt there were also things I was legitimately angry about. I found it a bit too neat to reduce all my experiences to being things that ‘made me stronger' or ‘happened for a reason'.

We moved on to talking about how my desire for meth was going. I told her I had been experiencing intense cravings.

‘How strong?'

‘Pretty strong.'

‘Does the thought of using ever make you drool with excitement?'

‘Sometimes, yes.'

‘Have you been considering using again?'

‘Um, yes, I think if I go down to Melbourne again, and see some old friends, if I just have it once, it won't matter and I might actually—'

‘I thought so.'

‘Why do you say that?

‘You're self-victimising, Luke. I've seen it time and time again: when somebody is having cravings for drugs, they begin to paint a picture of themselves as being a victim, so they feel they deserve to have meth. “Just one more shot, once won't hurt” — these are the kinds of thoughts people have before they relapse. You are responsible, Luke, and the more you realise this, the more empowered you will feel.'

I need to mention here that during the time I was in Bundaberg, I was sentenced to a hundred and fifty hours of community service for spitting on a café employee who had asked me to stop eating food I'd bought elsewhere on the café premises. I was very sorry about what I'd done — it was out of character — but I had been humiliated by what I perceived as the employee's aggression towards me. Needless to say, the court case went against me, and although I accepted that what I had done was wrong, I appealed against the ruling, as I desperately wanted to get overseas. My appeal was denied, though, and so I was obligated to stay in Bundaberg until I'd finished my community service hours.

I found the environment toxic — on my first day, I was offered crystal meth and marijuana, as well as being harassed for being gay. I just wanted to get out of Bundaberg, but I couldn't. That night, I told Mum I needed to go the psych ward and left the house. I walked around streets in circles with no shoes on, forgetting where I was going or what I was doing; I kept having visions of cutting myself. When I got back to the house, I snuck back in to see that Mum was still sitting there playing her computer game. I told her how much I hated living with her because it was impossible to hold a conversation with her. I became increasingly out of control as I told her that I knew she and Dad had been discussing the ‘spitting incident' in judgemental, non-constructive terms, and that neither had offered the slightest bit of help or support or advice. I went on to attack her personally, as all my frustration and the resentment of years spilled out of me.

After I'd calmed down, I rang Lifeline and spoke to them for half an hour. I then slept for twelve hours, and when I woke up, Mum came into the room looking as if she hadn't slept all night. She told me that she was tired of my abuse, and that I had to leave immediately or she would call the police. I said she was playing the victim. She in turn told me that she felt ‘threatened' because I was in the house, and so I left the house and sent her an email asking her if I could just stay until I got the rest of my book advance.

To which she responded:

01/02/2015

From: J Williams

Luke I would like you leave tonight. I would prefer we do this without police involvement.

http://www.bundabergtouristpark.com.au/

http://oakwoodvanpark.com.au/

http://bundyregionconnect.qld.gov.au/24-hour-crisis-support/bundaberg-homeless-mens-hostel

Everything is packed and ready.

01/02/2015

From: Luke Williams

Okay thanks.

When I got back, Dad asked where I was going, and I explained I would be sleeping rough for at least one night because I didn't have enough money to stay in the homeless shelter. I asked him to drive me to Bridges (the drug and counselling centre), where I slept on the porch, under cover, with a view to the stars and the palm trees, on a spectacular night where the temperature did not drop below 26 degrees. There were crickets creaking and bats screeching, and patches of thin wind-cloud over the moon, which looked about as comfortable as a mattress starts to seem after two hours of lying on concrete. In the morning, I was woken by a woman with glasses as I lay in the bright morning sunshine on a towel and a pillow.

‘Is Jay here?' I asked.

‘She will be soon. Don't worry, love, we will get you sorted,' she said ‘Do you want a shower?'

‘Yes.'

‘A coffee?'

‘Yes.'

After the shower, Jay came in and tears welled in her eyes when I told her what had happened; this was the first time I had seen her since before the sentencing.

Jay referred me to a social worker, who said I was a ‘high needs, complex client'. The social worker gave me food vouchers, paid for me to stay in a cheap motel room, and told me again and again how much she enjoyed my company — a small kindness on a horrible day.

The motel room was small and hot, and my window had a lovely view to the KFC next door. But how could I
really
feel angry with people, and angry at a society, when getting help when I was down and out was so easy?

Around the corner from the motel was a particularly beautiful part of town. A reminder that no matter how one feels, whether one is happy, sad, addicted, homeless, high, sober, alone, or in love — some things about the world will always exist whether we are able to see them or not. If we try hard enough we find selflessness, imagination, nature, long walks, a community, good people, and a place where we can pretty much do, or, at least, think whatever we like. There is a massive, wonderful, complex world that exists well outside of me, and what I might be in the mood to perceive.

As I stood by the great flood-prone Burnett River, which has flowed through these parts for hundreds of thousands of years, I felt a breeze that was cool and fresh and easterly — and it kind of smelt like the ocean. I looked up across perfect blue sky that seemed to go on forever. There were at least a hundred different plants before me: patches of old dry eucalypt, regenerated rainforest that ran along a creek, a single tall palm tree dwarfing the lush scrub around it. Moths scattered as I walked, crickets buzzed, lorikeets screeched, there was a gentle buzz of traffic on a busy four-lane highway — I had no idea where it began or finished. I looked up into the sky again as three black waterfowl floated delicately over my head. Half a dozen galahs glided by to land in a rare flowering eucalypt tree, whose smell reminded me that I am but a guest in this wondrous, ancient land, and ultimately a servant to its laws. And one day nothing more than food to help the trees grow their flowers for the birds to suckle. I noticed a massive bird of prey — perhaps a kite or sea eagle — flying around in circles, higher and higher, until I could no longer see it amid the blue. No ordinary bird would fly that high; it moved effortlessly in a vertical direction, all the while maintaining perfect grace and poetry. The further I looked into the sky, the more birds I could see — birds you wouldn't notice unless you stared for a long time, as I was doing. I had no answers, I had no revelations, I had no real plans other than going overseas, I had no idea what I was going to do, or where I was going to live, or what was going to happen, or whether I would find anybody worth loving again. Yet at that moment, the universe was infinite, and my possibilities alive and endless. I guess there was not just possibility but also hope. There will always be light, and whatever light is, is light.

Chapter Fifteen

Two steps forward, one step back

I RETURNED TO
Melbourne four weeks before I was due to leave for Kuala Lumpur. I decided to work on a project I'd been planning for quite some time — to move into Australia's most notoriously dangerous boarding house, The Gatwick in St Kilda. The Gatwick is a spooky old mansion on Fitzroy Street, a privately owned hostel that gives shelter to 90-odd people at any one time who can't find anywhere else to live: the mentally ill, sex workers, the Indigenous and indigent, the drifters and yes, the drug addicts. I had wanted to write a live-in piece about The Gatwick for a long time. I felt my experience with drug addiction, mental-health problems, and homelessness gave me unique insight, and a unique position from which to understand life for The Gatwick's residents.

It was also a good time, in practical terms, to stay there. I had four weeks to fill before heading Malaysia, and finding a room for a short period of time would have been tricky. I had nothing keeping me in Bundaberg, and after going public with my psychotic episodes and drug addiction in
The Saturday Paper,
I didn't feel comfortable asking anybody if I could stay with them.

One of the major issues I identified that the residents face is boredom. They don't have jobs, they don't play any sport and, in the end, for most of them, there really isn't much to do but find drugs and get high. Most of the Gatwick crew live lives of intense highs and lows, moving from Centrelink paydays to dry days, with nothing much of what many of us would consider to be a meaningful life in between.

I was still not using, and so, with an increasingly clear head, it seemed like a good time to investigate ‘Crystal Meth: the policy problem'.

From the very outset, the issue that stood out again and again was a lack of treatment services for people seeking help, and a lack of expertise about crystal-meth treatment among staff in both private and public health institutions. Robyn Reeves, chief executive officer of the Ballarat Community Health Centre told the Victorian parliamentary inquiry: ‘Currently there are no detox facilities apart from some youth detox throughout the entire Grampians region, and the same thing applies for rehabilitation services, so we have staff spending a great deal of time transporting people around the state.'

Debbie Stoneman from Latrobe Community Health Services also told the inquiry: ‘When we look at hospital admissions for withdrawal, we are limited in this region to be able to admit a person to a local hospital primarily for a withdrawal, and of course beds are at such a premium that often we cannot keep people in hospital long enough anyway to get through a withdrawal.'

Kit-e Kline from Wathaurong Aboriginal Co-operative also highlighted the lengthy waiting list: ‘For me to get someone into detox at the moment is about a six-week wait. That is what you are looking at. Then there could be a three-month wait on rehabilitation. There is definitely a lack of services.'

A lack of drug treatment services appears to be a national problem.

Writing about the New South Wales situation to the federal parliamentary Joint Committee on Law Enforcement's Inquiry into Crystal Methamphetamine, which was initiated in March 2015, Matt Noffs told the inquiry:

Our hospitals, psychiatric facilities, and jails are full. Adult drug treatment services such as the Stimulant Treatment program at St Vincent's Hospital, Sydney are full. The economic (not to mention social) implications of intervening in the lives of ice users only after their addiction has become ingrained is enormous.

The South Australian Network of Drug and Alcohol Services told the federal inquiry:

Funding for Alcohol and Drug treatment services at a Commonwealth level is inadequate and uncertain. Individuals who are not able to receive treatment create a further cost burden on health, policing, and correctional systems.

Mission Australia also told the federal inquiry that the lack of treatment services was of ‘urgent priority' because:

The absence of appropriate detoxification facilities, particularly for young people, remains a considerable barrier to effective interventions and treatment. When a person with ice use is motivated to seek change, appropriate detoxification and rehabilitation facilities need to be available to capitalise on what is often a narrow window of opportunity.

An SBS
Insight
program broadcast in October 2015 featured a former user named Jay, who said he waited three to six months, and called dozens before he could find a rehab. Additionally, Sharon Mestern from Odyssey House in New South Wales told the program that ‘we actually have a waiting list to call people back'. A few weeks earlier, SBS
Dateline
broadcast a story showing that an increasing number of Australians are opting to travel to Thailand for immediate treatment rather than joining the waiting list for rehab at home. The story quoted Simon Mott from Thailand's Hope Rehab Centre: ‘I need to be grateful to the Australian government for not providing adequate treatment … We've been able to build a strong foundation of having a lot of clients come from Australia'.

In one sense, it's not particularly difficult to work out why there was a lack of government-funded services for crystal-meth addicts. In 2011, Alison Ritter at NDARC put together a remarkable study quantifying how Australian governments spend their drug-related expenditure. She found that over 2009–10, federal and state governments spent a total of $1.7 billion in direct response to illicit-drug use including: