By LACHLAN MOORHEAD
AT THE height of his three-year ice addiction, James wouldn’t sleep for four days straight and hallucinated that snakes were eating him alive.
Heavily dependent on the drug, the 32-year-old’s life spiralled out of control soon after he began using it.
James (not his real name), who has now been clean for more than 12 months, spoke of the extreme paranoia that consumed him while he was high on ice, including a harrowing episode which saw him hallucinating on the floor of a shed in Cranbourne for eight hours, taken to hospital the next day and transferred to a psychiatric ward for 10 days after that.
“I was thinking I was getting eaten alive, for eight hours,” James said.
“I thought there were bugs crawling down the wall, I could see them. I could actually see them, and spiders crawling down the wall.
“And snakes kept coming to bite me, and they were biting into me and eating me alive. But it was through numbness, I was all numb.”
James, who lives in Doveton, recalled how he couldn’t even recognise his own mother when she came to visit him at the hospital.
“I thought I was going to die a few times, when I was in hospital.
“My mother came to see me and I didn’t even know who she was,” James said.
“I really thought I was going to die, and I kept telling her, ’I’m gonna die now, it’s time for me to go.’
“She was in tears; she couldn’t believe I didn’t know who I was.”
At the age of 16, James made his way from rural Victoria to Melbourne.
He started “hitting the drugs” a few years later, experimenting with marijuana, speed, heroin and everything in between.
By the age of 28, James had started using ice, injecting the methamphetamine into his bloodstream after a friend showed him how to.
James said the drug was like nothing he had ever taken before and extremely hard to stop using.
“You’re also addicted to the actual needle, going in and feeling that instant feeling,” he said.
“You could feel it run through your whole body, straight to your head, up the back of your neck.”
James was soon caught in the throes of an ice addiction, one which saw him stay awake for four days straight without food and hardly any fluids.
Employed at a pallet company in Springvale, James would work and drive while he was high on ice.
His workmates let him sleep at the warehouse overnight because he had nowhere else to go.
As his life spiralled dangerously out of control, James grew estranged from his parents while falling deeper into the world of addiction, living in boarding houses where ice was commonplace.
Devastated by the deterioration of his relationship with his parents, James sought solace through taking the drug.
“I ended up choosing that (ice) and with my father not wanting to know me, I’d use more ’cause I was hurt, and so you try and escape that hurt.
“In the end I just wanted them back, so bad.”
With his life in ruins and his body a shadow of itself after years of drug abuse, James woke up one morning more than 12 months ago and told himself enough was enough.
He staved off his ice addiction through going cold turkey, pushing friends away who offered him the drug and continually reminding himself of the new life he wanted – a life which now includes his mum and dad, who James has reconciled with.
“I woke up one morning and I was thinking, ’I’ve got nothing.’ All the years that I’ve worked, I’ve got nothing to show for it and I was sick of having nothing,” James said.
“Losing good people around me, all my family didn’t want to know me, I had had enough. I used to sit there and cry, every day I’d be crying towards the end.
“I just wanted my family back and good people. I didn’t want that lifestyle.”
While he carries the memory of his addiction with him every day, James uses it as motivation to remain clean, confident enough to decline the drug if ever it was offered to him.
Now on his way to finding a new job and a new home, James has taken the first steps towards a new life, with the hardest steps behind him.
And he’s urging others who are battling substance abuse to do the same and seek help.
“I do have a lot to do to re-build my life and make it strong. I’ve got to start from scratch again, it’s like getting re-born and that’s where I’m at now. I’m only at the start,” he said.
“But this is the best I’ve felt for a long time.”
For information and support contact Stepping Up on 1800 828 466 or visit www.stepping-up.org.au.
