Eaten alive

THE News spoke to James (not his real name) in March, who beat his ice addiction after three years of dependency on the drug.
Heavily dependent on the drug, the 32-year-old’s life spiralled out of control soon after he began using it.
James 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 had 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 lived in Doveton, said he started “hitting the drugs” when he made his way from rural Victoria to Melbourne, 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.”