Pathways Drug Rehabilitation Luxury Addiction Treatment & Detox Center
Alcohol addiction made me a drug dealer and landed me in prison. Four years later, my life is transformed
I grew up in a dysfunctional home in a rural area of northern New South Wales. Our house was full of alcoholism and mental health issues and looking back I can see where my patterns were laid down.
I was quite bright at school but I suffered then from what I know now was anxiety. Back then I didn't have a name for it. I was just odd and found it hard to build strong personal relationships.
At school and at home I felt like I was living in fear, and I needed some way to alleviate those feelings of otherness.
Instead I became a very angry child and I had trouble with authority. I simply didn't have the skills to successfully navigate this thing called life.
Alcohol made me feel normal
As soon as I found alcohol that was it. Game over. When I drank it made me feel like I was a normal part of things.
If I was stressed I would drink. If I was angry, I would drink. If I was happy, I would drink. If it was sunny, I would drink.
Every time I had an emotion and I wanted to change the way I felt, I had a substance that would do it for me.
I created a life for myself that was based around using alcohol. Even the jobs I took were chosen because I could keep drinking.
I grew up in a culture in which binge-drinking was really normal. I never, ever questioned it as something to cut down on. I just drank more, and more heavily.
Somehow I had a pretty functional life. I had jobs. I saved some money. I went overseas and drank my way through Europe.
Then I started working in bars.
That job allowed me to be inebriated all the time and never have to explain why or have anyone think, "She's out of control or maybe she needs help?".
It was the perfect job for me.
I didn't particularly like the work, dancing and stripping, but it was a way of being able to stay hidden in plain sight.
As a result, my alcoholism took off.
Down the rabbit hole
I came back to Australia from the UK in 2011 when I was in my late 20s. Drugs were everywhere. They had never really been in my life before that but in Sydney it was impossible to avoid.
I was working in Kings Cross and I started using cocaine pretty heavily. One thing led to another and I started selling to fund my habit.
I knew it was a crime but I was in the rabbit hole and I was selling to the other rabbits. I was so entrenched in that world it seemed natural, normal.
I'd already accepted the idea that I was probably a bad person. I didn't have very many morals so I wasn't sitting there questioning right and wrong.
Before I was arrested there were glimpses of reality when I thought, "Maybe I have a problem" and wondered if there was a life outside drinking.
Looking back, I can see there were moments when things could have changed for me. Instead they got quickly worse.
My life in Sydney had become a cycle of drinking, using, selling.
It was only a matter of time until the police caught wind of me. I didn't know it then, but they had already started surveillance on me, and just before Christmas 2015, I was arrested.
The text just said 'raid'
I had stayed home from work on the day I was arrested because I had a migraine. Out of the blue I got a text message from friends at the club where I worked. It just said "raid". Two of my colleagues had been arrested.
Soon after, there was a knock at the door of my house. It was the police and they were there to arrest me.
I'd never been in any police trouble before. I was wearing a nightie and a hoodie and I just grabbed my bag and a wallet and left with the police.
I thought I was going to come home. I had no idea what was about to happen.
They charged me with a crime called ongoing supply. It doesn't matter how little you sell or what the substance is but if you sell it as drugs more than three times in 30 days then you can be given this larger charge, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years.
That's what happened to me. It was December 20, 2015.
I thought my life was over
When I got to the police station, I closed down. I was in suicidal depression, probably coming down off drugs, and I needed mental health help.
I thought my life was over.
I had tried to take my own life prior to being arrested. I knew there was something really, really wrong but I didn't know how to get help.
At the police station they took my photo, finger-printed me and put me in a cell. They told me I was under arrest and detectives would be in soon.
I remember being really cold. I knew the withdrawals were coming. A guy in the cell next to me was having a psychotic episode and bashing his head against the wall. The walls were covered with shit and toilet paper, body fluids everywhere. All the women were in one room and the cells were full. We could not access a shower. It was disgusting.
I spoke to a lawyer, a friend of the family, but he was terrible.
I was set up on a video link to a judge.
She slammed her gavel down and I said: "What's going on?" She said: "You're going to prison."
I went back to the cell and broke down.
I hadn't eaten anything and I remember arriving at Silverwater as the withdrawal symptoms started really badly. I had never experienced withdrawal before because I'd always just have another drink.
This time I was shaking, sweating, vomiting. Coupled with my suicidal depression, it meant I was looking for any way to hurt myself.
I spent Christmas in the Brady Wing of Silverwater Women's Correctional Centre in a dingy room just designed to let me dry out.
I was zipped into a white suit like a mental patient. My family came to visit and it was hard seeing my dad.
I still had a lot of anger towards the rest of my family but I felt like I'd let my dad down. He blamed himself because he also had a history of being in prison.
It felt like a cycle. You could see it. No-one wants to visit their kid in jail.
I was trying not to internalise the pain I'd caused them so I projected the anger. That was my coping mechanism.
I spent about a month at Silverwater before being moved to Dillwynia prison in Windsor.
I felt hopeless. I had no idea if I was going to be there for two years or 20. I felt like a shameful creature and the whole world had turned its back on me.
I felt like the best thing I could do was get through the prison sentence and then go somewhere no-one knew me, change my name, skulk away into the shadows. Hide.
And try to start over.
A turning point
The thing about hope, when you are in prison, is that you can't hold on to it with both hands. You need to hold on to hope lightly and keep it as a little beacon in the back of your mind.
I used to imagine hope like a balloon, like Banksy, and I was holding on with just one hand.
We have a term for it in prison, we call it "keeping your head in the jail". If you start thinking about a life outside you be heartbroken over and over again.
We all say that to each other: "Keep your head in the jail, girl. Don't start dreaming. For now these four walls are your life".
If you don't think like this, you can go insane.
One day I saw a piece of paper stuck on one of the prison walls with different sayings on it. One of them said: "No matter how far you have fallen, you will see how your experience can benefit others."
I stole that piece of paper and took it back to my cell and stuck it on the wall and read it to myself every day.
It changed me. In that moment I found purpose.
It meant all that I was going through, the suffering, the despair, was going to mean that I could come back and use it as a way to help someone else.
I found purpose and it gave me hope
That purpose gave me hope.
I thought all I have to do is survive this. Get through today and tomorrow, and I will be able to use my story to help someone else. All of this will have some meaning.
This realisation led to a full-blown spiritual awakening.
I never had any kind of concept of God or religion or spirituality, and I still don't.
What I found was a connection to something outside of myself for the first time.
That was wild to experience.
For the first time, I could see and feel my part in all of 'this'.
I would sit and be at ease watching the trees, the flowers. I could see colour for the first time. I could smell things and taste food again. It was remarkable. When I was in addiction I never noticed that stuff.
Suddenly, I was sitting in a f***ing jail yard thinking: "Wow, the world is so beautiful!"
That, my art and a few good friends, got me through.
Early on in prison, someone gave me a pen and I drew every day from that moment. I never stopped.
Art saved my life numerous times.
For the first time in my life, people wanted things from me. I drew tattoo designs and other things for people.
People respected what I could do. I didn't get into trouble. I didn't use or drink or do any drugs. I just had my art and I threw myself mentally into that.
Drugs are quite easy to get in prison but I knew I didn't want to relapse.
I can be very stubborn and I decided that whatever energy I put into destroying myself I would put into not using. No matter what. I don't care if someone has a gun to my head, I'm not going to use or drink ever again.
It was hard for people to understand when I got out. People would say, "Well, maybe you can drink one day at a wedding" and I'd have to say, "You don't get it. To drink for me is to die. I'm not going to drink. Or use. Ever".
Release – and learning to forgive myself
I was not in a good headspace when I was released from prison. I was manic. I was unwell. I was homeless.
I went into a women's shelter in Redfern. I was hard, untrusting and I didn't understand why the women who ran it were offering me this room.
I kept waiting for the penny to drop; what do they want? But they were so kind.
It took me weeks to accept that they didn't want anything from me, they just wanted to help me.
But I realised it was only a matter of time until I drank again.
I couldn't handle day-to-day life. Even walking up the street and getting a drink from the corner store was too much.
People don't really understand that addiction is a disease. Yes, we do make the choice to have that first drink but most Australians have a drink at some point in their lives.
We don't choose to become addicts. It is a brain disease and science has known that for a long time.
When I internalised that fact, I was able to forgive myself for what had happened.
For a long time I thought that I was defective, a selfish, horrible person.
But knowing it was actually mental, inherited possibly, meant I was able to let go a lot of the shame and the guilt and forgive myself for all the years I'll never get back.
I found a rehab and knocked on their door over and over again until they finally took me in.
They agreed to a month and I stayed there for two years.
So I lived at the refuge in Redfern and went to rehab in Glebe. I walked there every day, sometimes twice because they could ring me up at any time and say, "You have breatho" and I'd have to turn around and go back to be breath-tested.
It wasn't easy but I was determined.
One of the things that breaks my heart is how hard it is for women upon release to access support. I think it's easy for us as a community to say: "F*** them. They did the crime. They made their lives hard."
But I think we forget that these women are often mothers and are often victims of some kind of violence.
We have a responsibility as a community to help these women.
In my case, I was lucky to find support from the refuge I lived in when I was released.
While I was in rehab, I went two nights a week to TAFE and by the time I left rehab, I had finished my Certificate Four in Community Services.
Life begins
Life is just beginning again now.
In February, it will be three years since my release and I'm about to move into my 'forever home'. I have a job I love.
Since being released, I've done art exhibitions, I've done talks at schools. I even work in the youth prison and I am just about to start a program of creative engagement where I sit with the girls and use my art and my experience to talk to young people who have been in trouble with the law.
I feel very, very, very lucky.
It's been a long journey for me but I'm still privileged. I'm white. I've seen institutionalised racism and Indigenous women do get treated differently.
I have a loving father and family. I had a period of time when I had to work on the family relationship but today that relationship is good. What about all the women who don't have that?
We have a long way to go as a society and I want to do whatever I can. If it means telling my story then I will. I don't have any guilt or shame.
I mean to do what I said I would do, which is to support other women to get the help they need.
But I can't help but feel there is so much work to do.
As part of the ABC's Australia Talks project, we are asking people to share their experiences of life in Australia.
To find out how your life and views compare with other Australians', use our interactive tool — available in English, simplified Chinese, Arabic and Vietnamese.
Then, join Annabel Crabb as she takes you through some of the most surprising and exciting insights with Waleed Aly on the Australia Talks TV special on iview.
