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From Heroin to Hope: Patrick McKenzie’s Road to Redemption · Real Crime with Adam Shand

• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Real Crime with Adam Shand. I'm your host,
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Adam Shand. Heroin has taken an awful toll on society
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: and families around the world. From the early 1970s, hundreds
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: of people each year in Australia have died from overdoses
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: and associated misadventure. And of course, the craving for this
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: drug has driven crime and billions of dollars have been
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: spent on law enforcement. It's been a losing battle with
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: so many casualties. Some people, like my guest today, Patrick McKenzie,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: have descended into the depths of heroin addiction and other
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: drugs and.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: Live to tell the tale.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: I began seeing Patrick's social media posts this year, where
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: he tells the stories of the people who didn't make it.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: These are poignant stories of people who fell victim to
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: heroin and life on the streets. mostly in Sydney's King's
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Cross in the 1980s, when the cross was the epicentre
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: of Australia's heroin epidemic. Patrick is now writing about his experiences,
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: and I caught up with him recently for this chat.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: Patrick McKenzie, welcome to Real Crime.
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: Thank you, Adam. Glad to be here.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: My pleasure to have you. Listen, you got through the
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: break more by good luck than good management, I guess.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: Where are you at now in your life?
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: I live in Townsville, North Queensland.
• 1:36
  Speaker 4: I have a very stable, sane and low-key life compared
• 1:42
  Speaker 4: to some of my more previous hectic times. I'm plugging
• 1:47
  Speaker 4: away at writing and things are good.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Excellent, because you sent me a CV, which is a
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: very colourful account in the normal sort of somewhat dry
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: language of a CV, but thrown in are things like 1984, 1987,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: Everywhere and Nowhere, Drifter, Thief, Pest, Ducker and Weaver, Haunted Spirit.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: That's a full-time job.
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: It wasn't.
• 2:15
  Speaker 4: The short version is I started using heroin in Melbourne
• 2:20
  Speaker 4: in 1980, held it together kind of, sort of for
• 2:24
  Speaker 4: a few years and And then from the years 84
• 2:28
  Speaker 4: to mid-87, I was totally out of control, out of
• 2:33
  Speaker 4: my depth, running amok, and my life was pretty chaotic
• 2:38
  Speaker 4: and shambolic. In about April 1987, I was arrested in
• 2:43
  Speaker 4: a hawk shop in King's Cross, Sydney, with a bag
• 2:48
  Speaker 4: full of stolen cameras and leather jackets. I was locked
• 2:52
  Speaker 4: up in a bunker police centre in Surrey Hills in
• 2:56
  Speaker 4: Sydney for five nights. That was a turning point. I'd
• 3:01
  Speaker 4: never been to prison. I was looking at three years
• 3:04
  Speaker 4: I was held by the police. And that got me
• 3:07
  Speaker 4: out of my rut into my fourth drug rehab, which
• 3:12
  Speaker 4: was a place called Serenian House that turned my life around.
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: And for the next 20 years, I was going very well.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: Because prior to that, as you say, you were ducking
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: and weaving and thieving and basically supporting your drug habit.
• 3:28
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: What was your lifestyle at that time? And try to recreate,
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: I guess, the cross of the day. Things cross.
• 3:35
  Speaker 4: All right, so my first visit to the cross was
• 3:37
  Speaker 4: in 1981 when I was 19. Came up from Melbourne
• 3:41
  Speaker 4: and it was a week of mayhem. I had a
• 3:44
  Speaker 4: few visits in the mid-80s and then in the end
• 3:47
  Speaker 4: of 85, I was living in squats in Darlinghurst in
• 3:51
  Speaker 4: Sydney and was in the cross a intensely for about
• 3:55
  Speaker 4: 18 months. It was pretty bleak. I was a full-time
• 4:00
  Speaker 4: petty criminal. My girlfriend was doing sex work. It was
• 4:04
  Speaker 4: just awful and quite scary.
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: I had a lot of pretty ugly times.
• 4:11
  Speaker 4: I had some good times for that matter. Not all
• 4:13
  Speaker 4: drug use is a total horror story at all.
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: But, yeah, the.
• 4:18
  Speaker 4: Dark and scary times outweighed the positive for sure.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a really important point you raise.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to be a proponent for people taking
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: illicit drugs, but sometimes the narrative needs to be challenged
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: a bit where people talk about their past drug use
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: and the things that went along with it with a
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: sense of shame and they talk about redemption. And I
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: kind of call bullshit a little bit because in the
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: period that they're doing the drugs, they're having a jolly
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: good time. Obviously, when they get caught and things turn
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: to shit, then this kind of rewriting of history takes place.
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, look, both things are true, you know.
• 4:54
  Speaker 4: I mean, I had the best of times on drugs
• 4:56
  Speaker 4: and I had the absolute worst of times. And if
• 5:00
  Speaker 4: the best of times continued, part of me might even
• 5:05
  Speaker 4: still be using drugs, you know. But, you know, the
• 5:08
  Speaker 4: scale tipped and, you know, the bleak and ugly stuff
• 5:13
  Speaker 4: ran rampant. And, you know, these days with a bit
• 5:17
  Speaker 4: of distance and a bit of clarity, I can pick
• 5:20
  Speaker 4: out the good times and I can look at them
• 5:22
  Speaker 4: and have a bit of a laugh.
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: But, yeah, they weren't to be. And, look, you know,
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: there are tens of.
• 5:29
  Speaker 4: Thousands of hundreds of thousands of people in Australia using
• 5:33
  Speaker 4: drugs and not everybody's having a woeful time, you know.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: No, and it continues and we have to accept that
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: and that's why I think to be accountable... for the
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: decisions is the most important thing. And you clearly have
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: done that. But I think we're about the same age.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: I mean, I finished school in 1980. I grew up
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: in the eastern suburbs of Sydney. And King's Cross was
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: one of our playgrounds. But then I was on work
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: experience with the Australian newspaper with a journalist called David Hurst.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: And he went up to the cross on a Monday morning,
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: the summer of 84, whatever it was.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: And he was determined to show what was going on
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: in the cross at the time.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: And he took us to a place called Hope Lane,
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: which probably you remember. Yes, I know, Hope Lane, yeah.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: It was a favourite place for people to shoot up there.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: But prior to that, he found some young.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: Boys who.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: Were committing petty crime to feed their habit. And they
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: basically broke into a car for us, got some things
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: to steal, went and bought drugs. and shot up in
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: Hope Lane. And that was the front page picture of
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: the Australian the following day. But the next day, these
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: three youths had been arrested by the police.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: And that was the response. When clearly there was.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: An organized crime network who were selling drugs into that area.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: And Ted Knopf of the Wayside Chapel in this second,
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: which I found, I found this, actually this article, it's
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: still yellow and piece of newsprint in my archives, where
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: he was talking about the boss of the cross, that
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: there was one major distributor who had a sort of
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: umbrella network of sub-dealers.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: Was that accurate? Do you think was there a couple
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: of big names doing it?
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: I don't think so.
• 7:19
  Speaker 4: Look, my understanding, I've done a lot of reading, I've
• 7:22
  Speaker 4: done a lot of talking and I've spent my time.
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: There is, you had many bosses.
• 7:26
  Speaker 4: There was multiple overlapping crime figures involved. The police had
• 7:31
  Speaker 4: their fingers in the pie. Roger Rogerson was quite overt.
• 7:36
  Speaker 4: I saw him a number of times. Never had, well,
• 7:38
  Speaker 4: I bumped him years later at a book launch, but
• 7:41
  Speaker 4: never had dealings with him, fortunately. He was out of
• 7:45
  Speaker 4: my league. I was just, you know, a bumbling drug pest.
• 7:49
  Speaker 4: But there seemed to be multiple people running all kinds
• 7:53
  Speaker 4: of operations overlapping.
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: The one Mr. Big thing I don't think holds water necessarily.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: I thought so at the time, to be honest.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: I thought it was a little bit convenient that you
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: could cheat at home to one person who was the
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: headline boss of the cross, flaunts his heroin dealing. Whereas
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: I think it was the demand for heroin at that time.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: which was bringing the supply. And how many people, and
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: you met a lot of people and you've actually written
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: about them very articulately on your Facebook page, these casualties
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: of that era. And that's what first got me interested
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: in talking to you was the way you described these
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: people and that street culture that's really gone from King's
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: Cross now. What were the people you were knocking around
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: with back then?
• 8:35
  Speaker 4: You could probably cluster, and this is largely true for
• 8:40
  Speaker 4: a lot of people who use illegal drugs, people coming
• 8:43
  Speaker 4: from a background of trauma, abuse and neglect who came
• 8:48
  Speaker 4: to King's Cross when they were quite young, as in
• 8:51
  Speaker 4: their early teens or mid, even late teens, those people.
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: And then people more like me, the kind.
• 8:57
  Speaker 4: Of middle class chaos seekers who who were chasing intensity.
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: And a wild experience.
• 9:04
  Speaker 4: I mean, I've got children in my history too, don't
• 9:06
  Speaker 4: get me wrong, but it was largely I was, you know,
• 9:11
  Speaker 4: a middle-class kid who grew up listening to Rolling Stones
• 9:14
  Speaker 4: and Iggy Pop and Lou Reed and all that stuff,
• 9:18
  Speaker 4: and that kind of dragged me into the whole thing. But,
• 9:22
  Speaker 4: you know, everybody came together. It was on for young
• 9:26
  Speaker 4: and old. Some people came through and a lot of
• 9:28
  Speaker 4: people died. And, you know, that Facebook stuff you're talking
• 9:32
  Speaker 4: about there is, I feel, a bit of an obligation
• 9:35
  Speaker 4: to make sure that a lot of people aren't forgotten,
• 9:39
  Speaker 4: you know, because with a lot of overdose deaths and
• 9:42
  Speaker 4: really tragic deaths, a.
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: Lot of people died.
• 9:47
  Speaker 4: Things get covered up, pushed away and not spoken of. And,
• 9:53
  Speaker 4: you know, so Overdose Day every year on August the
• 9:56
  Speaker 4: 31st is a big day for me, as is for
• 9:59
  Speaker 4: a lot of people to remember people who died in
• 10:02
  Speaker 4: the drug wars.
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: You call them drug wars.
• 10:05
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: Were there two sides? What was the nature of the conflict?
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: No, no, that's not my... I said that in inverted commas.
• 10:12
  Speaker 4: You can trace that back to Richard Nixon, the American president.
• 10:17
  Speaker 4: When in one of his political campaigns, him and Henry
• 10:20
  Speaker 4: Kissinger came up with the notion of the war on drugs,
• 10:24
  Speaker 4: the Americans are still prosecuting.
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: It, running amok. We have elements of it. He's still, until.
• 10:31
  Speaker 4: We reach some kind of place where there's drug law
• 10:36
  Speaker 4: reform to save people from, you know, trauma and horror
• 10:40
  Speaker 4: to deal with illegal drugs and to reduce the crime rate.
• 10:44
  Speaker 4: You know, police and border... I'm just looking at stuff
• 10:47
  Speaker 4: this morning, this morning. Police and border force do their best. But,
• 10:51
  Speaker 4: you know, there's a great stat, and I can't find
• 10:53
  Speaker 4: it again, a stat that said law enforcement intercepts about 10%
• 10:58
  Speaker 4: of illegal shipments. And the price of cocaine is still
• 11:04
  Speaker 4: in Sydney about $ 300, $ 350 a gram. I was paying
• 11:08
  Speaker 4: that 17 years ago. You know, there's massive drug arrests
• 11:13
  Speaker 4: every week and the price is still the same.
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: So what's that tell you?
• 11:17
  Speaker 4: You know, those well-meant operations hardly make a dent.
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: They really don't.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: And I think the AFP in particular likes to have
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: these show and tells where they have all the drugs
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: there and the guns and the money on the table
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: and so forth. And the idea is we're supposed to
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: think this will have an impact on the supply, but
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: it doesn't.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: You're dead right. The price is exactly the same.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: And I think I wonder, you know, you were just
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: declaring war on your children effectively.
• 11:46
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: And pushing them into the arms of the drug dealers
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: and and also the corrupt police who stood behind some
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: of those individuals. But also you would have, like in
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: that story that I quoted before, young people getting charged
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: with drug offences and theft and held without bail, being
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: inculcated into the criminal world for which there was no
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: escape for many of them.
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree 100%.
• 12:16
  Speaker 4: And one thing I will say in defence of some
• 12:20
  Speaker 4: drug dealers who There are two groups of drug dealers.
• 12:23
  Speaker 4: One is the people who sell drugs to support their
• 12:27
  Speaker 4: own use, who are drug users themselves and they sell
• 12:32
  Speaker 4: to other drug users and there's nothing predatory about the
• 12:36
  Speaker 4: whole thing.
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: And then you've got the other, some overlap, but then
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: you've got the other.
• 12:40
  Speaker 4: Group who are the more, for want of a better word,
• 12:43
  Speaker 4: predatory dealers who are in it to make a buck
• 12:46
  Speaker 4: and to flaunt their power and status and And, yeah,
• 12:51
  Speaker 4: so there's probably two distinct groups. So, you know, not
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: all drug dealers are loitering outside of primary schools to
• 12:59
  Speaker 4: trust free drugs on kids.
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: You know, that's a bit of a furphy.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: I'm sure it is.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: And as I say, you wrote with great poignancy about
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: the people that you knew on the streets at that time.
• 13:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: And it really reads like, a survivor talking about the
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: casualties of a war. And I got this impression of
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: a fellowship between people in this dismal, bleak circumstance, as
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: you called it.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: What were those relationships like?
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: I'm sure there was a dark side as well, that
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: there were people ripping each other off and heinous stuff
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: going on as well between people.
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: Both things are true.
• 13:43
  Speaker 4: There was in many ways a sense of solidarity, of
• 13:47
  Speaker 4: common purpose, of connection, mateship if you want to call
• 13:53
  Speaker 4: it that. that stuff was really genuine, you know, the sense,
• 13:56
  Speaker 4: you know, you're an outsider and you're banned with other
• 13:59
  Speaker 4: outsiders and you're up against stigma and prejudice and judgment.
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: So, you know, you kind of team up and form
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: a bond. That's true. And the other side is true
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: that people ripped each other off and.
• 14:13
  Speaker 4: People would occasionally give their mates up to the police
• 14:17
  Speaker 4: to get out of a criminal conviction and, You know,
• 14:21
  Speaker 4: so it was.
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: A bit of both worlds. There was a lot of grey, you.
• 14:24
  Speaker 4: Know, things weren't black and white and that sort of
• 14:28
  Speaker 4: gets overlooked a lot of the time.
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, it was, like I said, the best and
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: worst of times.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, who were the people that you remember that, I guess,
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: fall into that former category that you did form bonds with?
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: And as I say, people should look at your Facebook.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: I should put the link there and I think people
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: will be surprised that at the portraits, the portrayals of
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: these people.
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: Who are the people that you remember?
• 14:54
  Speaker 4: My best mate, a guy called Tommy Jorovic, who died
• 14:56
  Speaker 4: of a heroin overdose.
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: Another guy called Peter Orr.
• 14:59
  Speaker 4: There were many men and women, you know, who I knew.
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: A lot of them died of overdose. Some were murdered. Yeah,
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: off the top.
• 15:09
  Speaker 4: Of my head, another guy called Simon Smith, who died
• 15:11
  Speaker 4: of an overdose. Many names, you know, who I knew. And...
• 15:15
  Speaker 4: And I'll just say this, since we're talking about overdose,
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: going on to that. The problem with a drug like
• 15:22
  Speaker 4: heroin in the illegal economy is when you buy a
• 15:26
  Speaker 4: $ 50 or $ 100 deal on the street, There's no way
• 15:30
  Speaker 4: of knowing, because it's illegal, what the purity and strength
• 15:33
  Speaker 4: of that drug is. And that's what kills people because
• 15:36
  Speaker 4: it's cut and, you know, there's no way.
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: Is it 5%?
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: Is it 95% purity? And that's what kills people. So
• 15:45
  Speaker 4: I'm a bit of a fan of... drug prescription for
• 15:48
  Speaker 4: a drug like heroin. There's two drugs substitute medications. One's buprenorphine,
• 15:54
  Speaker 4: one's methadone, both highly effective for a lot of people
• 15:58
  Speaker 4: and ineffective for others.
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: Europe and Britain.
• 16:02
  Speaker 4: Had, I don't know if they still do, a bit
• 16:03
  Speaker 4: out of the loop, but they had prescribed heroin programs
• 16:07
  Speaker 4: where people worked and studied and lived great lives as
• 16:12
  Speaker 4: people do with methadone, buprenorphine.
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: There's about.
• 16:17
  Speaker 4: It's about 58,000 people in Australia on those drug treatment
• 16:20
  Speaker 4: programs and many of them are living great lives.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: Some aren't, but a lot are.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: I'm far from an expert on any of this stuff,
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: but I do hear people criticise methadone by saying that
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: it's another opiate. How can you get off an opiate
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: with another opiate? Is that a fair criticism?
• 16:37
  Speaker 4: Well, kind of, because, I mean, a lot of people
• 16:41
  Speaker 4: aren't ready or willing or able to necessarily stop using
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: that opiate, yeah?
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: That.
• 16:47
  Speaker 4: If places like rehabs and detoxes and abstinence-based self-help organisations
• 16:54
  Speaker 4: are fantastic, but they're not for everybody. For many of
• 16:58
  Speaker 4: those people who are on things like a methadone program,
• 17:01
  Speaker 4: that is the best and most feasible.
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: Option that they have at that point in time.
• 17:07
  Speaker 4: So, methadone enables– and, mate, I know people in the media,
• 17:11
  Speaker 4: I'm not going to name them, who are very successful
• 17:13
  Speaker 4: methadone graduates, and no one knows. They're doing great work. And,
• 17:19
  Speaker 4: you know, there's a lot of people– my ex-girlfriend is
• 17:21
  Speaker 4: a long-term methadone user, 30 years, and she lives a
• 17:25
  Speaker 4: great life.
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: And people function and get on with their lives.
• 17:29
  Speaker 4: So, abstinence works for me as it works for a
• 17:33
  Speaker 4: lot of people, but– There's a bunch of other people. No,
• 17:37
  Speaker 4: methadone or buprenorphine or heroin prescription would be the best option.
• 17:42
  Speaker 4: And it lets people get on with their lives and
• 17:44
  Speaker 4: stop committing crime.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: Because 1987, that was your fourth stint In rehab.
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: What were the earlier versions and why didn't it stick
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: for you?
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: Because a couple of reasons.
• 18:00
  Speaker 4: One is I was not necessarily ready and able to
• 18:02
  Speaker 4: stop taking drugs. And the programs that I entered were
• 18:08
  Speaker 4: not the kind of programs that meshed with me. So
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: back then a lot of rehabs were harsh, authoritarian and
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: highly structured. I don't like being told what to do
• 18:23
  Speaker 4: and I arc up, unfortunately, as I did and I
• 18:27
  Speaker 4: would leave.
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: And then the rehab that worked for me in.
• 18:30
  Speaker 4: 87 was a much cruisier type of joint and that
• 18:35
  Speaker 4: hit the spot. So, you know, it's horses for courses.
• 18:38
  Speaker 4: A lot of those structured rehabs, I've got very close
• 18:42
  Speaker 4: friends who thrived in those kind of environments.
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: I didn't. And so that's where you need diversity. Yep.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: Yes, you were anti-authority, seeking chaos, but you'd come from
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: a middle-class family in Melbourne, Caulfield grammar, nice private school.
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: Your dad was an Air Force pilot, flying instructor and
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: senior bureaucrat.
• 19:06
  Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: What impact did your background have on your choices? Were
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: you estranged from the family? How did that take place?
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: I wasn't close with my parents.
• 19:16
  Speaker 4: They did the best they could, I see now, but
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: I wasn't close to them.
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: I wasn't close to my siblings.
• 19:24
  Speaker 4: I was a bit of a black sheep and dark
• 19:27
  Speaker 4: horse from an early age.
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: Why, I don't necessarily know.
• 19:31
  Speaker 4: But, you know, when I was 14, we were living
• 19:34
  Speaker 4: in Papua New Guinea.
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: And that's when I really ran off the rails.
• 19:37
  Speaker 4: I started committing stealing cars and taking lots of drugs,
• 19:42
  Speaker 4: a lot of magic mushrooms, a hallucinogen. Cannabis grew everywhere.
• 19:47
  Speaker 4: For whatever reason, 14 was the pivotal age. We moved
• 19:51
  Speaker 4: back to Australia. My parents sent me to Crawford Grabber School,
• 19:54
  Speaker 4: which was an elite private boys' school.
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: I didn't fit in. I didn't belong.
• 20:00
  Speaker 4: But I fell in love with reading and books saved me.
• 20:04
  Speaker 4: And books have always been an important thing in my
• 20:07
  Speaker 4: life and reading and literature. And I was shown interest
• 20:12
  Speaker 4: by a couple of teachers of Caulfield grammar, which kind
• 20:17
  Speaker 4: of stopped me from getting expelled. But, you know, look,
• 20:20
  Speaker 4: I had, you know, a lot of friends of mine,
• 20:22
  Speaker 4: their backgrounds, nothing like mine. They had nowhere near the
• 20:27
  Speaker 4: advantages and privileges I came from.
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: My parents weren't rich, but we weren't poor either.
• 20:32
  Speaker 4: And, you know, I left school in 79 and started
• 20:37
  Speaker 4: university after six weeks of I dropped out and, you know,
• 20:40
  Speaker 4: heroin took over.
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: So, yeah.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: So in that period through the 80s when you're bouncing
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: around the cross, what was your relationship with your family?
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: Were you in contact?
• 20:51
  Speaker 4: Occasionally, yeah, they bailed me out a few times. My
• 20:57
  Speaker 4: parents were tearing their hair out. They were in despair,
• 21:00
  Speaker 4: to be honest, about my lifestyle. I had a big
• 21:04
  Speaker 4: impact on my sister. My lifestyle really impacted her. It
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: was pretty bleak, yeah. So, you know, I've got a
• 21:12
  Speaker 4: lot of– I don't have so much guilt and regret anymore,
• 21:15
  Speaker 4: but I did for a long time about what I
• 21:18
  Speaker 4: put my parents through.
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: I mean, they were good people.
• 21:21
  Speaker 4: You know, they hardly drank. They both came, you know,
• 21:25
  Speaker 4: they're both survivors of the depression of poverty and alcoholism
• 21:30
  Speaker 4: and mental illness, their own families.
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: But, you know, I took them to hell. That's the
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: short version. I took them to hell. Yeah.
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: Was there an opportunity ultimately to make it right with them?
• 21:43
  Speaker 4: Unfortunately, they died before I really set things straight.
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 21:50
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: Which was a bit of a regret.
• 21:53
  Speaker 4: So, yeah, I went through what they call in 12-step
• 21:57
  Speaker 4: recovery fellowships the amends process, which is fronting up to
• 22:01
  Speaker 4: people you harmed and spending time with them and asking what,
• 22:05
  Speaker 4: if anything, you do to set things right. By the
• 22:08
  Speaker 4: time I did that, they're dead. So, yeah, I never
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: actually got around to it, sadly. Yeah.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: Well, I think they'd be proud of what you've ultimately
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: managed to achieve in your own life through, I guess,
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: mostly through strength of willpower.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: Is that a fair comment?
• 22:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah, strength of willpower, psychology, psychotherapy, mental health medications. It
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: was a combination of all kinds of things. I mean,
• 22:37
  Speaker 4: I've got a lot of, I'm pretty stubborn. I do
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: have a lot of willpower, but that only takes it
• 22:42
  Speaker 4: so far. Somewhere there's a saying, skill power, not willpower,
• 22:47
  Speaker 4: is what gets you through.
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, I've learned a lot of skills. Yeah.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: And, you know, you have that period to 87 where
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: you do that five days in the Surrey Hills lockup,
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: and it is a Soviet-looking concrete block.
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: It's an amazing architecture, isn't it? It's an incredible joint, yeah.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: Brutalist.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: So you're alone with your thoughts now. over that five days.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: What were you thinking the rest of your life held
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: for you if the trajectory remained the same?
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: I knew that I had to go back to rehab.
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: Do you know that Paul Kelly song, Dumb Things? Do
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: you know that song? I do. Well, that was going
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: through my head. I've done all the dumb things. I
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: lost my shirt.
• 23:31
  Speaker 4: I've torn my ring. I've done all the dumb things.
• 23:34
  Speaker 4: And I had that song in my head. I knew
• 23:36
  Speaker 4: I had to go back to rehab. I knew that
• 23:39
  Speaker 4: my lifestyle wasn't sustainable. And I didn't want to go
• 23:42
  Speaker 4: to prison. And, you know, I was released. I finally
• 23:46
  Speaker 4: got bailed. And I didn't stop using straight away. I
• 23:50
  Speaker 4: used for about another month. But something had shifted, you know.
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: Something deep had shifted and I knew, yeah, so, yeah.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if I'm getting the right song, I think the
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: other line that always impacted me from that song was,
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: I've lost my tenderness.
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: Oh, okay. Yeah, that's true.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: Lost my connection with my humanity.
• 24:12
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I was pretty cold and pretty instrumental in my
• 24:19
  Speaker 4: relationships and my connections. I certainly didn't have much tenderness
• 24:24
  Speaker 4: or compassion or care for me or for anybody else,
• 24:28
  Speaker 4: you know. And you're running around living that life, you
• 24:31
  Speaker 4: get pretty, or I did, I got pretty shriveled inside,
• 24:34
  Speaker 4: I've got to say, yeah.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: So... From 87 to 90, you start your work history, really.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: You're a scaffolder, builder's laborer, brickies laborer, high-rise window cleaner.
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: You can't do that high on drugs. And a storeman.
• 24:48
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: So you're rebuilding, but you're also now getting involved in
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: helping others in recovery.
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 24:55
  Speaker 4: So I had a long and pretty fruitful relationship with
• 25:01
  Speaker 4: a group called Narcotics Anonymous, which is a self-help organisation
• 25:06
  Speaker 4: for drug addicts.
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: And I had about a 38-year on and off history.
• 25:13
  Speaker 4: And that group gave me strategies and skills and connections
• 25:19
  Speaker 4: that changed my life. You know, that was a really
• 25:22
  Speaker 4: big part of my life and, yeah, Yeah, I have
• 25:26
  Speaker 4: no regrets about my involvement, but I sort of drifted
• 25:29
  Speaker 4: away from it.
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: It doesn't have the.
• 25:31
  Speaker 4: Same power and connection that it used to, so I
• 25:36
  Speaker 4: don't really go anymore. But that was a really big thing,
• 25:40
  Speaker 4: as it is for a lot of people. As alcoholics,
• 25:43
  Speaker 4: most people would have heard alcoholics, not only for alcoholics.
• 25:46
  Speaker 4: And I assume also that was in there. What else
• 25:50
  Speaker 4: did I say? Psychology. I did a lot of counselling.
• 25:54
  Speaker 4: And then in 1991, I started working as a counsellor
• 25:59
  Speaker 4: at Serenian House, the rehab that I was once a
• 26:02
  Speaker 4: client in. And that pathway is a pretty common one
• 26:06
  Speaker 4: for a lot of people who turn their life around.
• 26:09
  Speaker 4: They move into the helping professions and the same pathway
• 26:13
  Speaker 4: is open to me.
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: And I had about a 30-year history of rehab.
• 26:18
  Speaker 4: Working in health and human services, and I ended up
• 26:20
  Speaker 4: being a consultant before I relapsed and cocaine took everything away.
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: I was going to say, you're zooming away from that
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: bleakness of the 80s, and you get to 2011, and
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: you're in Sydney, and the entry in the CV is
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: missing in action, relapsed.
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: What happened?
• 26:40
  Speaker 4: So what happened was I was a consultant and I
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: was a freelance learning development consultant was called. I was
• 26:50
  Speaker 4: making a shitload of money, travelling around New South Wales, ego,
• 26:55
  Speaker 4: mixture of ego, lots of money and unaddressed trauma all
• 27:00
  Speaker 4: kind of came together. I started drinking alcohol. Alcohol is
• 27:04
  Speaker 4: a terrible drug for me. I started drinking alcohol. I
• 27:07
  Speaker 4: started using cocaine. Everything fell apart slowly. It took about
• 27:12
  Speaker 4: four years before I really lost the plot. I ended
• 27:15
  Speaker 4: up living in my car, smashed up car. Everything turned
• 27:20
  Speaker 4: to shit. And, yeah, so that was three and a
• 27:23
  Speaker 4: half years ago that I turned it all around again.
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: Because by then you had a partner, you had a
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: little girl. Yeah, I've got four.
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: Adult kids as well. I haven't mentioned them.
• 27:35
  Speaker 4: So, yeah, that was part of what got me back
• 27:41
  Speaker 4: into recovery and abstinence was being a parent of a
• 27:44
  Speaker 4: young child and wanting to save my.
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: Relationship as well as that cocaine.
• 27:51
  Speaker 4: Injecting cocaine is a pretty traumatic process and I was fried.
• 27:56
  Speaker 4: I was, yeah, I had really lost the plot and, yeah, So, yeah,
• 28:03
  Speaker 4: on whatever that date was, 13 and a half years ago,
• 28:07
  Speaker 4: I was in the middle of Moore Park and I
• 28:10
  Speaker 4: had a bit of an epiphany, a bit of a
• 28:13
  Speaker 4: rock bottom wake up call. And that's when I stopped
• 28:17
  Speaker 4: using and been onwards and upwards ever since.
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: Well, take us back to that rock bottom moment in
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: Moor Park. What happened?
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: I had the last of my cocaine.
• 28:28
  Speaker 4: For some reason, I was in the middle of this
• 28:30
  Speaker 4: giant grassy oval. I was watching two women trying to
• 28:35
  Speaker 4: separate two dogs who were humping each other. I was
• 28:38
  Speaker 4: looking at this and I had the cocaine and I
• 28:42
  Speaker 4: just looked around me and it was kind of like,
• 28:45
  Speaker 4: this is it, I'm done. My life is just total
• 28:48
  Speaker 4: rubbish and... Like I said, I was living in my
• 28:51
  Speaker 4: car and I'd lost everything. And I went into a
• 28:55
  Speaker 4: homeless shelter and I slowly but surely turned things around.
• 29:01
  Speaker 4: And after 89 days in Sydney, I knew I had
• 29:04
  Speaker 4: to leave and I wanted to save my relationship and
• 29:08
  Speaker 4: got in my beaten up car and drove up to
• 29:10
  Speaker 4: Townsville where I've been ever since. And I go back
• 29:15
  Speaker 4: to Sydney occasionally. It's okay now. I couldn't go there
• 29:17
  Speaker 4: for quite a while. It was too traumatic. But it's
• 29:20
  Speaker 4: fine now.
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: It's all past.
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: You couldn't save the relationship, unfortunately, but you did rekindle
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: the relationship with your young daughter, obviously the adult kids
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: as well.
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: Yep.
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: That's a major victory, isn't it?
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: It's a huge victory.
• 29:38
  Speaker 4: She's a great kid and my relationship with my older
• 29:41
  Speaker 4: kids is kind of a bit how you're going with
• 29:44
  Speaker 4: some of them.
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: And close with the others.
• 29:46
  Speaker 4: I put them, you know, the fact that their father
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: was making a mess of his life again had a
• 29:51
  Speaker 4: big impact on them and, you know, I guess the
• 29:54
  Speaker 4: thing is with this kind of stuff, some relationships you
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: can rekindle and some the damage is maybe deeper than.
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: I'd hoped, you know. So all I can do is
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: what I can do, yeah.
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: Still a work in progress?
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: A work in progress, yeah.
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: And what's the.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: Feedback you get from them about those years when you,
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: and I think cocaine of all drugs that I've known
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: and had experiences with other people with, heard about their experiences,
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: is it renders people very self-centred.
• 30:26
  Speaker 4: Yes. Look, all drugs possibly do that to a certain extent,
• 30:30
  Speaker 4: but I mean, yeah, cocaine's in a bit of a
• 30:32
  Speaker 4: class of its own, and like, plenty of people use
• 30:35
  Speaker 4: that drug, they go out dancing, they have great sex,
• 30:38
  Speaker 4: they get creative, you know, good luck to them, and
• 30:41
  Speaker 4: other people like me just become self-absorbed, narcissistic, and like
• 30:47
  Speaker 4: I said, ego, my ego was just enormous, you know,
• 30:51
  Speaker 4: and I'm You know, I was making a grand a
• 30:55
  Speaker 4: day running workshops and, you know, I had a big
• 30:58
  Speaker 4: pile of money from my work and I lost everything,
• 31:03
  Speaker 4: you know. And I just became this, you know, this, yeah,
• 31:08
  Speaker 4: ugly person. So, you know, some people get away with
• 31:12
  Speaker 4: coke and others don't.
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: I wasn't one of them.
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, whatever fun you had, you paid for ultimately.
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: Of course, back to the CV. I love the CV,
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: by the way. It's the most unique one I've ever seen.
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: I put a lot of work into that, mate. Thanks
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: for saying it. I appreciate it.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: And I think this would mirror a lot of people's experiences,
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: this rollercoaster between.
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: In insight, relapse, have another go.
• 31:37
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: The life force is strong, though. And 2013 to 2024,
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: you worked back in that same sort of space, counselling
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: and working with people in correctional centres, narcotics anonymous and
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: all these types of things. So how much did that
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: help you close the door on those earlier chapters?
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: To a large extent. I mean, I get.
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: Like a lot of people do, satisfaction and meaning out
• 32:04
  Speaker 4: of doing good work with other people, yeah? And I'm
• 32:07
  Speaker 4: reasonably good at it when I have my shit sorted out,
• 32:12
  Speaker 4: you know? So when I moved here, yeah, I was
• 32:16
  Speaker 4: running facilitating groups in the prison and doing outreach work and...
• 32:21
  Speaker 4: All kinds of stuff. And that, you know, work is
• 32:23
  Speaker 4: really important. Focus, commitment, all that stuff helped. There was
• 32:28
  Speaker 4: no one magic bullet answer. It was a combination of stuff.
• 32:34
  Speaker 4: I also found I was also a long time using
• 32:38
  Speaker 4: a medication called Olanzapine, which is anti-psychotic. And that really
• 32:45
  Speaker 4: helped rewire my brain after cocaine had fried it. Not
• 32:49
  Speaker 4: recommending that necessarily for anybody, but that's the one that
• 32:52
  Speaker 4: worked for me.
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: Exercise helped. Exercise has been a huge part of my recovery.
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: I do a lot of cardio, go to the gym,
• 33:00
  Speaker 4: but it's the cardio that's helped. You know, there's been
• 33:03
  Speaker 4: a multiple cluster, the bits and pieces that have helped. So,
• 33:08
  Speaker 4: you know, I think a lot of times people want
• 33:09
  Speaker 4: to hear the silver bullet answer. Oh, this rehab, this
• 33:14
  Speaker 4: self-help group, this style of counselling, this is going to
• 33:17
  Speaker 4: be the thing that turns it all around. And sometimes
• 33:21
  Speaker 4: that happens. And, you know, for me, it's been a
• 33:24
  Speaker 4: whole range of things.
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: So you had that period of six years where you relapsed.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: Is there a fear even now that given the right
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: set of negative circumstances that you could fall back?
• 33:37
  Speaker 4: I don't have a fear, but I know that if
• 33:42
  Speaker 4: I take off the ball for too long and, you know,
• 33:46
  Speaker 4: stop doing what works, I would put.
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: Myself at risk. You know, I don't have a fear, but,
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: you know, I've got.
• 33:52
  Speaker 4: A healthy respect for the notion of relapse and everything
• 33:57
  Speaker 4: it entails, you know. I, yeah, I don't put myself
• 34:02
  Speaker 4: in risky situations and I'm just careful. I mean, look,
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: you know, I worked in the injecting centre in King's
• 34:09
  Speaker 4: Cross in the early 2000s and seeing people inject and
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: it didn't bother me because that was my job.
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: And I had.
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: Or shifted my perspective, you know.
• 34:22
  Speaker 4: And I don't know if I necessarily want to do
• 34:25
  Speaker 4: that again, but, you know, there's plenty of people who've
• 34:29
  Speaker 4: got complicated histories who go on to do complicated work
• 34:34
  Speaker 4: and they're okay because they've dealt with their stuff, you know.
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: So does that make sense?
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: It does.
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: It does.
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: This is a corny, almost trite question, but have you
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: found a level of happiness that's sturdy at this point?
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, generally. Yeah, yeah, I'm very happy. Very happy.
• 34:51
  Speaker 4: I've got a great life and, you know, I've got
• 34:55
  Speaker 4: work and focus and.
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: My writing and, you know, yeah, I've got nothing to
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: complain about. You know, I've got peace of mind and
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: all the things that people want. Yeah, I've got it.
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: That's excellent.
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: And the regrets we've talked about, not being able to
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: square it away with your parents, issues with your kids
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: and so on and so forth, have you managed to
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: come to terms with those regrets and.
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: Accept what happened?
• 35:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah, most of the time, yes, I have, you know,
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: because I've dealt with my past and sort of processed
• 35:27
  Speaker 4: it and, you know, I'm not proud of many of
• 35:31
  Speaker 4: those things but I certainly don't have regrets the kind
• 35:34
  Speaker 4: of guilt and shame.
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: I had a lot of shame, you know, to do
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: with my behaviour.
• 35:40
  Speaker 4: I mean, you know, I'm not going to disclose all
• 35:43
  Speaker 4: of my criminal behaviour.
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: It was pretty shitty going, a lot of it.
• 35:47
  Speaker 4: And, you know, I'm not proud of it, but I
• 35:51
  Speaker 4: don't have guilt anymore.
• 35:53
  Speaker 5: No.
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: Fair enough, fair enough.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: And I guess at the time, though, it's– I'm not
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: going to excuse the crime, but there is an overwhelming
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: need to score– to continue that sort of mouse wheel
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: of heroin addiction.
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that was it, you know.
• 36:10
  Speaker 4: I didn't commit crime because I enjoyed it. I mean,
• 36:13
  Speaker 4: I've met plenty of people who love committing crime, you know,
• 36:16
  Speaker 4: and that's what they do and they get pleasure.
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: Out of it. I didn't, you know.
• 36:22
  Speaker 4: And this is one of the things, looping back to
• 36:24
  Speaker 4: what we were talking about, about drug law reform. is
• 36:27
  Speaker 4: you know how many people have to commit low crappy
• 36:33
  Speaker 4: level crime to make money to get drugs because for
• 36:38
  Speaker 4: them at that point in their life the drugs are
• 36:41
  Speaker 4: what is the best choice they got in front of
• 36:44
  Speaker 4: them you know and that's what it was for me yeah.
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: With all that lived experience the research the study working
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: with people You're writing a book, I believe, which draws
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: on that.
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I am. I'm chipping away slowly but surely.
• 37:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: Tell us what it's about. What can we expect?
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: So there's a couple of things.
• 37:05
  Speaker 4: One is an autobiography of my life and times and misadventures.
• 37:10
  Speaker 4: And the other thing is kind of historical research about
• 37:13
  Speaker 4: drug rehabilitation from the 60s to the 90s, where I'm
• 37:17
  Speaker 4: collecting stories and accounts and oral histories of wild places
• 37:23
  Speaker 4: and times.
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: So two projects.
• 37:25
  Speaker 4: I should have a website in about three months of
• 37:28
  Speaker 4: the historical research and my autobiography maybe.
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: A year off.
• 37:34
  Speaker 4: That's a lot of work, and that gets really overwhelming.
• 37:36
  Speaker 4: You know, I say I've shut the door on my past,
• 37:39
  Speaker 4: which is true, but, you know, there's certain things once
• 37:42
  Speaker 4: I start writing about them and I open it up,
• 37:45
  Speaker 4: I think, oh, God, have I really.
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: Dealt with this stuff?
• 37:49
  Speaker 4: Because the ghosts can sort of swirl around the room.
• 37:53
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and as I said, that's what attracted me to
• 37:57
  Speaker 5: talking to you was that remembrance of of those people
• 38:02
  Speaker 5: that didn't make it through the break as you have.
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: And you've given them dignity.
• 38:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: And memorialized them.
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: In a way that I think is useful for people
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: who tend to look at drugs and crime as being
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: simple moral failings, character failings.
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: It's not.
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah. No.
• 38:26
  Speaker 4: For most people who are problematic drug users, there is
• 38:30
  Speaker 4: a whole complicated backstory of, you know, what I say before,
• 38:35
  Speaker 4: trauma and abuse and neglect, alienation, unaddressed mental health, not
• 38:41
  Speaker 4: for everybody, but for a lot of people, you know,
• 38:45
  Speaker 4: there's a bunch of stuff that you're not aware of.
• 38:48
  Speaker 4: And this is why you need places like rehabs and
• 38:52
  Speaker 4: self-help groups and you know, to help people unpack that stuff,
• 38:58
  Speaker 4: deal with it, share the load, you know. Plenty of
• 39:02
  Speaker 4: people stop using drugs on their own. Onwards and upwards,
• 39:05
  Speaker 4: good luck to them. You know, other people need help.
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: They do.
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: And I'm sure people listening will either have a loved
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: one or a child or a partner who's going through addiction.
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: If there's one piece of advice, Maxim, annoying truism you
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: could leave us with, What would it be?
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: Get help. Seek professional help. And it's a matter of
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: finding the right help for you. There's manual. and groups around.
• 39:37
  Speaker 4: There's a 24-hour government hotline that people can call from
• 39:45
  Speaker 4: anywhere in Australia. They have counsellors on the other end.
• 39:49
  Speaker 4: I can't remember the name of it. Alcohol and drug
• 39:51
  Speaker 4: information or something like that. People find it. don't necessarily
• 39:56
  Speaker 4: jump at the first thing you've got to be a
• 39:59
  Speaker 4: bit worried a lot of charlatans out there and um
• 40:02
  Speaker 4: especially in the rehab space it's really interesting that um.
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: You know there's uh a.
• 40:09
  Speaker 4: Um sort of cluster of um of rehabs that some
• 40:14
  Speaker 4: of which are a bit uh flaky and uh untrustworthy
• 40:17
  Speaker 4: it's hard to know i'm not going to name them
• 40:19
  Speaker 4: but um yeah you've got to be really wary that
• 40:22
  Speaker 4: um People are going to– people, you know, there's money
• 40:26
  Speaker 4: to be made in drug treatment and don't always believe
• 40:31
  Speaker 4: everything you're seeing here.
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: Yep.
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think also your CV demonstrates the fact
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: that it's not a magic bullet.
• 40:38
  Speaker 5: No.
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: Not just do it once. There might be several goes
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: at this.
• 40:43
  Speaker 4: No.
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: Some people do get it.
• 40:45
  Speaker 4: Look, I've got many people I know who, you know, they–
• 40:49
  Speaker 4: They had really complicated drug histories.
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: They went to one rehab. They went to one self-help group.
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: They did this.
• 40:55
  Speaker 4: They moved state, whatever, you know, and that was the
• 40:59
  Speaker 4: thing that turned their life around, you know. But for
• 41:01
  Speaker 4: the majority of people, I read somewhere once years ago,
• 41:05
  Speaker 4: with most complicated health behaviours, it's about seven to eight
• 41:09
  Speaker 4: goes for most people, you know. And, you know, if
• 41:13
  Speaker 4: your watch is thinking about stopping smoking or changing their
• 41:16
  Speaker 4: diet or exercise habits or whatever else it is, you know,
• 41:20
  Speaker 4: people zigzag all over the joint before they finally get
• 41:25
  Speaker 4: on track, you know.
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: Indeed.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm looking forward to the completion of your CV
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: in the coming years, Patrick McKenzie, where all the lessons
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: and the hard knocks and the, The nights you spend
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: on the hard floor will come to bear in the
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: insight you can give to other people.
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: So thanks very much, mate. Appreciate it.
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: Good on you, Adam. Thanks for your time.
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: No worries. That's Patrick McKenzie. It's been a perilous journey
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: for him, but he got through. And I think there's
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: some very useful practical advice for people.
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: And as I say, I grew up in that area
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: near King's Cross and saw what was going on. It's
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: very different now. Very different indeed. We're going to continue
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: to focus on on some of these redemption stories. So
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: I'd like to hear from you if you've got one
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: to tell us. And maybe it's a good thing where
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: you tell your story, you share your experiences and make
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: sense of them and close the door and go to
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: the next chapter of your life's book. If you want
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: to report a crime, please call Crime Stoppers 1-800-333-000. You
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: can always email me as well, adamshandwriter at gmail.com.
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: This has been Adam Shand for Real Crime. Thanks for listening.
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to this episode and supporting this story.
• 42:42
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• 42:45
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• 42:48
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