Addicts on their recovery: ‘Being a good drug addict equals not being a good human being’

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They come from all walks of life but a connection to drugs will next week see them march down Auckland's Queen St next weekend, in New Zealand's first Addiction Recovery Walk. They aim to strip stigma from recovery, writes AMANDA SAXTON.

THE PUNK

Seventeen-year-old Damian Holt worshipped Sid Vicious.

He named his cat after Vicious, the troubled bassist for British punk group The Sex Pistols. Holt fancied himself Auckland's version of the spike-haired subversive.

It was 1979 and Vicious had just died from a heroin overdose. Holt says he'd have considered it a badge of honour to go the same way. There'd be a bag of dope in his coffin, at least.

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Addiction didn't kill Holt, but it drove him to a serious shot at suicide and contaminated needles gave him Hepatitis C. By the end of more than two decades of drug dependency, Holt says he was "lonely, sad and pathetic".

"I didn't trust anyone and I was scared. Dishonest. The people around me weren't good people. They were drug associates. Not friends."

Now 58 and a peer support worker in the addiction recovery field, Holt is looking forward to being 20 years clean in 2020.

He grew up on Auckland's North Shore, a middle class boy with a nuclear family. He says "there was no such thing as childhood depression" in those days, yet remembers black moods descending for no reason and the sense they'd plague him forever.

Then he discovered marijuana, via a co-worker, and got high for the first time.

"The euphoria I experienced, it was just … amazing. I was like, wow, I've found something that makes me feel good and I've been feeling crap all my life," Holt says.

"And the next day I woke up and wanted to feel like that again."

The punk scene quickly followed, and heroin. It was the era of the Mr Asia drug syndicate: "the streets of Auckland were flooded with Thai buddha sticks [a potent type of marijuana] and Chinese white heroin."

His black moods disappeared. He believed he'd found his medicine. Daily joints plus four separate intravenous opiates: heroin, morphine, methadone, and eventually pure opium poppies.

Holt was holding down a job as a printer, but not doing it well. He says he was skilled in the art of getting others blamed for his mistakes.

"To be a good drug addict you've gotta have low standards for yourself but be a really good liar. Being a good drug addict equals not being a good human being."

After moving to Christchurch, he found a drug dealer before he got a new job. It was "as easy as going to the shop and buying a mince pie," he says. His lifestyle remained essentially the same as it was in Auckland.

Holt thought he was keeping depression at bay by using drugs and didn't notice exhaustion, paranoia, and dysfunction were gradually engulfing him. Until the day he realised that all he wanted to do was sleep.

"I was buggered. I became absolutely hell bent on going to sleep and not waking up, so decided to take my own life," he says.

But he also didn't want his parents to forever wonder what had happened to their son. Ben Smart and Olivia Hope had recently vanished and their anguished parents were all over the news, so Holt left a note.

He downed a bottle of Drambuie, and smoked the last of his weed.

"Then I had this dream," he says.

"I remember it so clearly. I dived into the water and went 30ft down … I was swimming like crazy in my dream, trying to break through the surface. And when I did, I came to in real life."

Back in Christchurch, he was was admitted to Hillmorton Hospital – a mental health facility – and stayed for two months. From there he went to now-closed Queen Mary Hospital for drug rehabilitation.

Holt relapsed "immediately" upon his release. It took 18 months until he was ready to flush his last bag of drugs down the toilet.

Looking back, Holt admits to a sense of gratitude for his addiction. It almost killed him, but through recovery he found a vocation he loves – helping fellow addicts overcome their demons.

"If I had a choice, I'd have maybe five years in addiction – to know what It's like – and have more time to build my life up again," he muses.

"But you know, my parents might never have left England. I could have grown up there and become a football hooligan. The ship could have sunk on the way to New Zealand.

"It is what it is and I'm really lucky."

Asked how society should view addicts they know, or see in the street, Holt suggests imagining them pre-addiction.

"Imagine a teacher asking students what they want their future CV to look like. Not one of them would write, 'I'm gonna be a drug addict, I can't wait to go to jail, I'm going to run someone over while driving drunk'.

"It's life situations that do that to people. A mental frailty, abuse, bad luck – behind every addict there will be a story."

Holt uses himself as proof that recovery is possible.

THE DAD

Mark Cowan called prison his second home between the ages of 17 and 37.

The 44-year-old Aucklander was addicted to "anything going" – methamphetamine, heroin, cannabis, barbiturates, alcohol – and says crime was the easiest way to get a fix. Burglary, mainly.

"This lifestyle was available to me. It was easy for me. I'd see opportunities to get my needs met in the moment," he says.

Cowan found himself in the middle of a large shopping mall once, after hours, inside a car. He and "some associates, not friends" had got a vehicle through sliding glass entrance doors –which were locked – and parked in front of a phone shop. They stormed the store, filling black rubbish bags with cellphones, then escaped.

The phones were sold to get money to buy drugs, says Cowan. The men were eventually caught and Cowan went to jail – again.

Life was simple behind bars for Cowan. He says he had "quite a well renowned family member" doing time, whose reputation protected him somewhat. He became well known himself, forging bonds with guards as well as inmates.

In the mornings, guards would unlock Cowan from his cell and he'd be served porridge or powdered egg for breakfast. He'd then spend a few hours in the yard, "talking, playing chess, plotting ways to get drugs, causing a bit of havoc".

"Then you get locked up again. Go into the yard again. Get locked up again. Et cetera. You call it the 'go slow' because time goes slow."

Each time he was released, he'd spend his $350 Steps to Freedom grant – given to inmates who'd just spent more than 31 days in jail – on drugs. Then he'd turn back to crime.

The cycle didn't stop until Cowan wound up in drug court, which has a treatment focus for offenders. He got clean after 20 years of addiction. With no need to buy drugs, he stopped stealing. He says he established himself as a "present father" for his kids for the first time.

Cowan's not sure what set him on the track to addiction, nature or nurture. He thinks life might have been different if his upbringing had been – "but there's no point even thinking like that, eh".

He's rebuilt the ties that had broken. It's what he does now that matters, Cowan says.

"I'm a law abiding citizen who pays my taxes. I pay my bills on time. I'm a role model to my children and my brothers.

"I'm an asset to my community. That's how I see myself."

Cowan still spends most of his time in jail, but these days it's as a counsellor for incarcerated addicts. He describes his job as "to give people hope".

THE HAIRDRESSER

Maree Matthews was a North Shore party girl in the early '80s, drinking cheap wine on the beach from age 14.

Raised in a middle class Catholic family, the now 50-year-old says she "just wanted to have fun and feel good". That became "get written off", and by her early thirties Matthews felt like her brain was a neon sign "flashing DRUGS DRUGS DRUGS".

"Every single other thing with meaning in my life slowly disappeared," she says.

She lost custody of her daughter – not yet school age – and get sent to prison for three years.

Matthews says her teenage self never imagined a future like that. She lived for the day.

Her mid-twenties self lived for dancing and Auckland's clubbing scene; speed and ecstasy enthusiastically included. She and six friends lived in a massive Parnell pile, known as the Heartbreak Hotel. Their house parties knew few bounds.

In her late twenties, Matthews discovered amphetamines. Nights out became days-long benders. Her job as a hairdresser started getting in the way.

Then she got pregnant and gave birth to her daughter. Matthews managed to stay away from drugs and alcohol for a couple of years, during which time her friends discovered methamphetamines.

The peer pressure became too much and Matthews couldn't resist giving P a go.

"It had suddenly became this big thing, my friends were all doing it, and I got addicted fast," she says.

"I stopped putting my daughter first. I thought I was being a good mum, I'd buy her stuff. But meth was all I really thought about, finding ways and means to get it … nothing else mattered."

Matthews says she began dealing the substance to fund her habit. She was telling lies and mingling with gang members.

Police arrested Matthews, as part of a big drug bust, in 2006. She was jailed in 2008 and released in 2011.

Prison helped save her, Matthews says. Its social detox, Narcotics Anonymous (NA) meetings, Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meetings. But losing her child was the biggest jolt.

At 38, Matthews got clean and decided to "finally do something meaningful".

Out of jail, through rehab, and reunited with her daughter, Matthews studied counselling. The NA philosophy of one addict helping another addict had resonated strongly with her – and hairdressing gave her solid experience in listening to people's stories, she says.

Now she's a team leader at West Auckland's Higher Ground drug rehabilitation centre.

"I'm honest with everyone now, about everything," she says.

"I've got a degree. I've got a responsible job and help people every day. And I'm really happy without drugs! I'd never imagined I could be."

Looking back on her time as an addict, she sees lost opportunities.

"Financially, it's been huge. People I grew up with have homes – holiday homes, even. I've had to start from scratch.

"But my biggest regret is my daughter having her mum go to prison. That broke my heart, I was just so worried it would screw her up."

To Matthews' relief, her daughter is thriving. She says she "kinda freaked out" when the teen started going to parties and drinking, but Matthews is taking deep breaths. She accepts it's a natural part of teenager-dom.

"I'm just making sure our lines of communication are wide open – which wasn't the case with my own parents – and that she's clued up on safety," Matthews says.

"I also try to make [the past] up to her every day by staying totally clean myself."

THE DAUGHTER

Amy Alexander grew up with opiate addicts.

First at home, then in rooms full of people in 12-step-recovery programmes. While she's never sampled drugs herself, Alexander, 39, has barely left the latter.

She didn't realise her childhood, in Ponsonby, was unusual until starting school. There's an unwritten rule that you don't invite friends home when your mum's a user, Alexander says. Other kids' parents eyed her strangely – sensing something was off in that little girl's family.

"If my mum hadn't got into recovery when she did, when I was seven, I know my life would have been very, very different," she says.

"There's a high chance I'd have been a user too."

Instead, she did her BA in addiction studies and became an alcohol and other drug (AoD) practitioner at Wings Trust, in Auckland's Mt Eden. There are fewer mums hooked on heroin – as hers was – these days, but plenty addicted to alcohol. She sees pilots addicted to uppers, businessmen whose wives have fled their P habits, and hardened criminals wanting to get clean.

"Drugs and alcohol don't discriminate; no one comes here because things are going well," Alexander says.

But, in her experience, anyone can recover. She says it's a privilege to be part of the process: "I get to witness a whole lot of people that society deemed terrible and awful turn into really lovely, kind people."

Recovering addicts become the best citizens, Alexander believes. Not only does their skin improve and posture get better, but she's noticed a trend in their desire to give back to society.

She doesn't believe that shift comes – or should come – from a sudden stocktake of karmic debt.

"It's more like when they come in here they've often never really felt loved, or had a relationship with anyone who didn't want something from them in a really long time. They're at rock bottom: families have given up on them, they're about to lose their kids, there are legal concerns - then we help them.

"They discover what they want their own personal morals to be. Develop a conscience. They become a bunch of adults with this new-found feeling of gratitude.

"People in general don't often reach a point where they want to give back and do extra, but these ones do."

* The Addiction Recovery Walk, He Hikoi Mātūtū, starts from Auckland's Albert Park on December 7 at 2pm.

WHERE TO GET HELP:

1737, Need to talk? Free call or text 1737 any time for support from a trained counsellor

Youthline – 0800 376 633, free text 234 or email talk@youthline.co.nz or online chat

What's Up – 0800 942 8787 (for 5–18 year olds). Phone counselling is available Monday to Friday, midday–11pm and weekends, 3pm–11pm. Online chat is available 7pm–10pm daily.

Kidsline – 0800 54 37 54 (0800 kidsline) for young people up to 18 years of age. Open 24/7.

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